I can hardly dare to think about it. If the commander proves to be a man of his word, then some good might come out of this whole ordeal after all. But the sight of our recently emptied hospital keeps my hope in check. First, I must survive the next ten days.

The healers allow ourselves a day of rest before resuming our battle against the disease. Men from the village bring in three of our own who fell ill with rose plague. Zad takes over their care, while the rest of us begin the work of cleaning up.

The makeshift hospitals have to be scrubbed. The sleeping mats, rags, and blankets have to be burned. It’s hard, backbreaking work, but I attack it with obsessive ferocity, scrubbing until my arms ache, rubbing away the foul residue of sickness. After days of helplessness in the face of active disease, expelling its final traces feels like a battle I can win. I volunteer to make trips to the well for water, relishing the burn in my legs and the buckets’ weight on my shoulders. Everything I feel is proof that I’m still alive. I just need to hang on for another fortnight, and then I will know that the plague has passed me over.

I don’t even make it two days. On my third trip to the well, I collapse.

It’s like my test all over again—faces swimming in and out of view, disembodied voices talking about me, though I cannot make sense of anything they say. My skin burns, yet I shiver incessantly. In my dreams, I see rows of dying soldiers. I mix endless batches of potions for them and coax them to drink. Sometimes the soldiers morph into my sisters, sometimes into the other healers.

I do have some moments of clarity. I wake a few times to see Kaylah or Doron or Zad by my bed. A few times, I choke on whatever they hold to my lips. I look down at my arms and see red, and some part of me knows that this is a bad thing. But those moments are few, interspersed with dreams and hallucinations. I am at the fever’s mercy.

When my mind finally clears, it takes me a while to figure out that I’m in the same cottage that housed Arxa. Kaylah sits at my bedside, watching me. I think back to my last coherent memory of walking to the well, and then to the confusion that came afterward. I remember that even in my madness, I’d looked down at my arms and seen the bright marks of plague.

But what color are they now? I close my eyes, and I thank the Goddess for sparing me. And then I pray, harder than I’ve ever prayed before, that my marks will be brown.