I went to Southshore because I needed somewhere to sit that wasn’t the manor. The arm was getting worse. I could feel the heat of it even through my coat.
Elira took one look at me when I walked through her front door and her face changed.
“Sit,” she said. Not a request.
She didn’t ask many questions while she worked. Just rolled up my sleeve, studied the wound with narrowed eyes, and muttered something under her breath that sounded like a curse. She left and came back with a small bundle of dried herbs and a dark glass bottle.
“Poison,” she said simply. “Not the fast kind. The slow kind. Whoever shot you wanted you to suffer before you died.”
She cleaned it again, properly this time, and made a poultice that smelled like earth and something sharp. Then she gave me a small vial.
“Drink half tonight. The rest tomorrow. And don’t argue.”
I didn’t. The relief was almost immediate. By the next morning the swelling had gone down and the ugly color was already fading.
I watched her move around the small back room she used for these things. She knew exactly what she was doing. More than that, she seemed to enjoy it. Like the work itself mattered.
When I left she pressed the rest of the vial into my hand and told me to come back if it got worse.
I didn’t tell her where the wound had come from. She didn’t ask.
Last part