“Is that your first question?” Kiva asked, knowing it wasn’t but also wanting to avoid admitting how concerned she was about Tilda’s lack of improvement. She’d hoped time would help, but the ill woman had been under Kiva’s care for three and a half weeks now, with little to show for it.

Jaren studied her for a long moment, seeing everything she wished he couldn’t. As if knowing exactly what she needed him to say, he sent her a grin and replied, “Only if that’s yours.”

Kiva turned away so that he wouldn’t see her lips curling up at the edges, and busied herself by collecting her medical supplies. When she returned to stand in front of where he sat perched on the bench, she reached for his chin and said, “Want to tell me how this happened?”

“Uh-uh-uh,” he tutted. “I get to start.”

“It’s usually ladies first,” Kiva said, turning his face to the side.

“I took you as more of a liberal woman, the kind who’d scoff if I went all gentlemanly on you.”

Kiva snorted. “Nice try.”

“And besides,” Jaren continued jovially, “I’ve already asked my first questions.”

Since Kiva had agreed to those, she dunked her cloth in salted water and said, “This’ll sting,” before pressing it to Jaren’s cut lip. While he was wincing away the pain, she told him about her day at the quarry, and how she’d actually enjoyed being in Naari’s company. He didn’t show any reaction to that—nothing to indicate his own feelings toward the guard—so Kiva went on to share how they’d come back and she’d begun testing Tipp’s rats.

“How long will it take before they start to show symptoms?” Jaren asked, looking at the makeshift pen.

“If they do,” Kiva corrected, since there was no guarantee the sickness originated in the quarry. “I’m not sure, but I’m hoping Mot can help me speed up the process tomorrow. He knows a lot more than me when it comes to experimental testing.”

“Because he’s older?”

Kiva shook her head, dunking her cloth again. “It’s always the case with apothecaries and healers. Apothecaries know so many different remedies, while healers know the bodies those remedies go into.” Seeing the furrow in Jaren’s brow, she tried to explain better. “If someone sick comes to a healer, we diagnose and then treat them with medicine, but rarely do we make it ourselves—a lot of what we use comes from an apothecary, or it’s an assortment of ingredients that we mix together based off an apothecary’s recipe. Their role is to make medicine, ours is to decide which treatment is needed and administer it.”