Kiva tucked his blanket back in, offering his arm a quick, comforting squeeze to say she was done, her mind whirling as she sought to put a timeline on what she knew of the sickness. Fever, headaches, and vomiting came first, the rash usually appearing within twenty-four hours. Kiva didn’t know at what point yesterday Tipp had been struck down by the illness, but she’d left early in the morning with Naari. If he’d gone out to the garden shortly afterward, as Olisha had claimed, then he’d already passed the twenty-four-hour mark, even the thirty-six-hour mark and beyond. He should have the rash by now. And he should have had a raging headache since the beginning.

Maybe it was because he was young, the sickness taking longer to flood his system, with the missing symptoms still to come.

And yet Kiva recalled something her father had told her when trying to explain the difference age could play in illnesses.

Children often get it worse, he’d said, brushing his knuckles down her rosy cheek. It comes on you fast and hard, but leaves that way, too. Then you’re up and bouncing around much quicker than us oldies, fully recovered in what feels like the blink of an eye, while we’re still miserable as we wait for the lingering dregs to leave our systems. Winking at her, he’d finished, Cherish the gift of youth while you still have it, little mouse.

If her father was right—and he always was when it came to healing—then Tipp should be considerably worse than he currently was.

Kiva didn’t want to give herself false hope, but . . . what if Tipp wasn’t sick? Or at least, wasn’t sick with whatever was spreading around the prison? His symptoms were similar, but that was the problem Kiva had faced all along—that the symptoms were so generic they could have been caused by any number of ailments, from viruses to allergies to something as simple as having eaten spoiled food.

There was no way to know for sure, nothing to do except ride it out and see what happened over the next few hours.

And so Kiva sat back down beside him, clutching his hands with hers, and waited.

Four hours later, Tipp’s fever broke.

His stomach stopped hurting.

He asked for some bread.

He wanted to play with the rats.

Kiva wept.

Chapter Twenty-Five

“If you d-don’t go, I’ll push you out the d-d-door myself.”

Kiva pulled a face at Tipp, the young boy standing with his hands on his hips beside the rat pen, staring at her like a disgruntled puppy.