The second sun hung low—a wan disc staining the city a diluted blue, as if the world had been washed too many times and left to fade. The streets below were unnaturally still. Doors shut. Windows barred. Even the birds had learned restraint. Fear taught discipline faster than law ever could.
From the hilltop, the city looked like a held breath.
White tents sprawled across the lower district like bandages over a wound that refused to close. Doctors and members of the Church moved among them, their garments stark against the gloom—figures of order in a place coming undone. Every so often, a bell rang. Not to mark time. To mark another body.
"This has officially been confirmed as an outbreak," Victoria said beside me. Her voice was steady—too steady. "And it's already done more damage than they expected."
"The soldiers from the capital arrived hours ago," I replied, remembering the sharp lines of their uniforms, the way they kept distance even from one another.
Victoria frowned, arms folding tight against her chest. "Then why aren't they helping?"
I let out a breath I hadn't noticed I was holding. "What would they do? March into sickness and fall with the rest? Steel doesn't stop breath. Bullets don't argue with fever."
She said nothing, but her jaw tightened. That was her thinking face—the one she wore when the world refused to cooperate.
Even the remedies Miss Li Hua prepared with the doctors—careful infusions, bitter teas, tinctures measured to the drop—had failed to drive the illness back. They slowed it. Softened the blow. But the disease lingered, stubborn as a bad idea repeated too often.
I sat cross-legged in the grass and closed my eyes, drawing Qi through slow, deliberate cycles. In. Down. Around. Out. It kept the tremor out of my hands, if nothing else.
When I opened my eyes, Victoria was watching me.
"What?" I asked, shifting.
She tilted her head. "Earlier—Miss Li Hua mentioned something. That… charged oregano. She thinks it might help."
"Oh." I nodded. "Origanum vulgare etheric. That's what the doctor called it."
Her gaze sharpened. She wanted detail.
"I've heard of charged rosemary," I added, glancing toward the trees lining the hill. "Had some when I was younger. Same principle. Same plant. Just saturated with aether. Grows different. Acts different."
"So," she said slowly, "a magic plant."
I huffed. "Magic's a lazy word. It's just another species. Same roots. More bite."
She considered that, then nodded, filing it away.
We hadn't left the grounds in seven days—not since the quarantine lines went up. Strangely, the isolation hadn't weighed on me. Fear simplified things. Mortality rates persuaded everyone else.
Below us, soldiers and health officers moved through the streets in new garments—thick coats, gloves, cloth masks tied tight. The city had dressed itself for survival.
Victoria hummed softly and handed me a glass of orange juice.
I blinked. Took it.
Cold. Fresh. Ice drifting lazily inside, unaware the world was unraveling.
"You're not going to tell me how you keep doing that, are you?" I asked, lifting the glass. A half-smile escaped me.
She smiled back—small, but real. "Where's the fun in that?"
We drank in silence. In the distance, a plume of smoke curled into the sky—dark, deliberate. Burn pits. Cleansing fires. Old answers to new problems.
"What do you think caused it?" she asked quietly. "The infection."
I hesitated. "Some blame the foreigners. Some the ports. I don't know." I took another sip, citrus sharp and grounding. "Blame is easy. Accuracy isn't."
Victoria nodded, eyes fixed on the city. "War," she said at last. "People don't like hearing it, but war poisons everything it touches. Even years later."
The second sun dipped lower, brushing rooftops with false gentleness. Spring was trying its best.
The city, however, was changing—whether it wanted to or not.
And no amount of orange juice could wash that taste away.