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Nessa’s debt.

The merchant.

The hidden exchange my guard failed to witness.

The false rirzed.

My wound may have been chance, but Varrus built a weapon patient enough to wait for broken skin.

I saw the pattern and chose surveillance over warning.

Now Fiona stands inside the trap I allowed to close.

Varrus turns to the royal captain. “You see the condition in which we find him.”

“I see a sick man,” Fiona says.

“You see your lord,” Varrus replies. “Mind your place when nobles speak.”

“My place is beside my patient.”

“Your patient.” His gaze passes over the basin, cloths, and open jar. “How possessive.”

Fiona’s fear reaches our connection as a thin pulse beneath her fury. She contains both. Her hands no longer shake.

The captain steps closer. “What happened?”

“His practice wound required cleaning,” Fiona says. “I applied a salve. It was contaminated with numiscu.”

Varrus looks toward the jar. “A salve she prepared?”

“From herbs purchased yesterday.”

“By whom?”

She hesitates for one breath. “By me.”

The answer sounds damning because it is true.

Varrus’s visible satisfaction deepens. “And who applied it?”

“I did.”

“Then the matter is plain.”

“Only to someone who arrived expecting this exact sight.”

Varrus walks to the treatment table without touching it. He bends close enough to inspect the oily sheen on the jar, then straightens with solemn disgust meant for the royal soldiers.

“Numiscu is not kept in lawful household stores,” he says. “A human healer brings foreign plants into a lord’s keep, prepares the mixture in private, and places it directly into his blood. What alternative would you have us entertain?”

“The one in which those plants were sold to me as rirzed,” Fiona says.

“By a convenient stranger who cannot be produced.”

“You know remarkably much about a purchase you claim not to have expected.”

His red eyes harden. “Mind your accusation.”