Chapter 7
The Fevered Wing
It had been a month since I opened my eyes in this body, a month since Laurine Samaniego ended and Princess Amethyst Celestria Rosaire began. A month of small victories and new dangers. The lake visited my sleep as if it lived inside me. I woke sometimes with water behind my ribs and a taste of iron at the back of my throat. The memory did not soften. It taught me to move with caution that felt like armor.
Ana arranged the curtains for me while the light was still tentative. Her hands were quick and careful, practiced in the language of service and worry.
"You did not sleep again, did you?" she asked, and I hid the tremor in my hands with a smile.
"Sleep is a luxury for those with peace," I said. "We have neither, I think."
She frowned. "You push yourself too hard. They still speak of the marquis's son. The physicians say you shamed them."
"Then perhaps they should learn not to mistake arrogance for skill," I replied.
She blinked at that and then froze as a commotion reached us down the corridor. Footsteps came quickly and panicked. A voice that belonged to one of the servants I trusted was sharp with urgency.
The door burst open and Carlo bowed, breathless. "Forgive the intrusion, Your Highness. Several servants in the western quarters fell ill overnight. High fever, vomiting, convulsions. The senior physicians are summoned."
Ana gasped. My fingers moved before my thoughts. I reached for the satchel Aito had helped me assemble, felt for the small instruments, the vials, the herbs I had bought with my saved coin.
"Prepare my satchel," I said. "Bring those new tools. Tell them I am coming to the physician's court in the north wing. Now."
"But Your Highness—"
"Now," I said again, and Ana did not argue. She moved with the same steady hands that had steadied me for weeks.
The corridors were a blur of marble and torchlight. The physician court felt like a storm. Men in heavy robes shouted orders that collided with one another. The room smelled of steam, sweat, and scented oils that did their best to hide spoiling things.
"Separate the infected!" someone cried.
"No, bleed them," another answered. "Draw the fever out."
"Boil wine," a voice demanded, as if heat from alcohol could answer the logic of poison.
I stepped into the chaos and let my voice cut through the noise. "Enough," I said. It was the same command I used when a man pushed through the crowd and a child fell. The sound that follows a cut is always sharp.
"You'll kill them faster with panic than with illness."
They turned to me as if surprised by the sight of someone who would order them to act. Geroth stood like a cliff. His beard was sharp, and his eyes were colder. "Not again," he said. "The princess who meddles in work she does not understand."
"I am here for the patients, Master Geroth," I said. "Not for your pride."
"I came for the patients you're failing," I said as I moved forward towards the patients.
A cluster of servants lay on cots along the stone floor. Their skins were flushed the color of heat, their breath quick and ragged. The smell of metal and dry herbs made my stomach twist.
I knelt beside a woman half-conscious. Her pulse fluttered under my fingers. "High fever, nausea, tremors..." I murmured, examining her tongue — dry, coated white. She smelled of fever and vinegar.
"How long since the onset?" I asked.
"Less than a day," a young apprentice said. "After last night's supper."
My mind worked like the hands that had stitched and dressed wounds for years. Food-borne illness, perhaps. Toxin in the stew. No rash, no blisters, no sign of infection that would cause such sudden collapse. I tasted the air and thought of metal.
Geroth scoffed behind me. "Do you intend to diagnose them by staring, Princess?"
I ignored him, then turned to Ana and some of the physicians' aides.
"Fetch vinegar, activated charcoal, and clean cloths," I said. "Stop bloodletting and cooling with ice. It'll only hasten dehydration."
"Absurd," Geroth snapped. "We've treated fevers this way for generations—"
"We need to rehydrate and bind the gut. Begin oral rehydration at once."
Geroth's lips thinned. "You would abandon the wisdom of our elders?"
"We have too much wisdom and not enough life," I said. "If you would rather bury them in ceremony, I will save them instead."
"And additionally, it's been a generation of deaths," I glared at him. "Let's not add more to the count."
He faltered, the first ripple of hesitation in the room.
I moved quickly, instructing the apprentices to boil water and prepare solutions with salt and sugar. I taught them measurements I had learned in another life because numbers do not change with crowns.
"Two of these cases are more severe," I noted quietly to the young apprentice who followed my movements with wide eyes. "If they start convulsing, add crushed mint and salt to the water. It will replace what their bodies lose."
The apprentice nodded, trembling but eager.
Observing them reminded me of the things I learned during my days as an intern as I walked in the hospital's ward. Not as modern as in my world, but knowledge is still a power. Two teaspoons of salt and four of sugar to a liter of water for a start. Gentle sips, never set, to keep the stomach from rejecting everything.
I walked to the table where a stew still sat cooling. The broth had a dull sheen like tarnished metal. A cook looked on with fear and a hand to his mouth.
"Bring me the herbs used for this," I said sharply.
The Cook stepped forward, clutching a jar. "It's from the palace supplier, Your Highness. Same as always— except... the label was different this week."
I dipped a spoon in and brought it to my nose. Bitter and metallic. I crushed a pinch of herbs from the supply jar and mixed them with vinegar. The liquid went dark.
"Lead contamination," I said. The words landed and the room inhaled as one body. "Boil water for everyone who ate from this batch. Give charcoal and vinegar to the most affected. Rehydrate. Prevent seizures if you can. Two cases need observation for convulsions. Mint and salt in water if they begin to twitch." Reminding them again.
Geroth paled. "Lead? That would mean—"
"It means that something in the supply chain is poisoned or spoiled," I said. "Someone may have tampered with provisions. For now, we save lives. Later, we investigate."
My instructions spread out like a net. Attendants moved with a new urgency. We gave charcoals and water in measured amounts, cooled foreheads with damp cloths, and shaded eyes from light. I walked from cot to cot, applying poultices to swollen limbs and pressing linen to fevered brows. The apprentices watched with wide eyes. A few copied my knots. A few repeated my measurements under their breath. Knowledge breeds rescue.
Hours passed, and a sweat fog rose. The worst convulsions came in two cases. We soothed them with mint water and salt rinses and careful monitoring until the muscles eased and the breath slowed. By the time night leaned in, half the servants had broken their fevers. Ana appeared with fresh bandages and a tired smile. She folded linens as if they were prayers.
"Half recovered," she said softly. "The rest hold on."
Luck had little to do with it. Knowledge had everything to do with it. Yet the senior physicians would call it a chance, or a miracle, or the favor of a god.
"Finally, the servants are recovering," she whispered, handing me a basin. "The fever's broken for most. Geroth... he told everyone you were lucky."
I smiled faintly, wiping my hands clean. "Luck has nothing to do with knowledge. But let him believe what comforts him."
When I stepped into the cool corridor, my body hummed with the tired satisfaction that comes from work done honestly. The palace felt different. The marble did not seem to gild the rot away as neatly now. Murmurs traveled in the corners like small storms. The court had begun to see me not as a fragile ornament but as a hand that could change outcomes. That truth unsettled them.
They feared what I might do next. Knowledge unsettles those who profit from ignorance.
I returned to the Northern Wing late. The moon washed the garden in silver, and the lilies sighed like memories. I wrote in my journal by a single candle. Notes about doses, symptoms, and the suspect batch of herbs. The name Marquis Scalenia with a circle. The apprentices had learned too quickly. The cook with trembling hands.
My pen hovered. Three months until the duke's arrival. Weeks of watching the supply routes. A palace that hid its knives in velvet.
I closed the book and pressed my hand to my chest. The lake's memory was still sharp, but so was a truth brighter than fear. I had done what I could. I had kept my hands alive. In a world that traded titles for silence, that felt like revolt.
"I will not die here," I whispered to the empty room, and the words sounded less like a promise and more like a plan.
Outside, the palace slept, but beneath its gilded skin, trouble stirred. I would follow its pulse until I found the heart that beat toward murder. For now, there were wounds to tend and people to keep breathing. That work would teach me the rest.