Two more weeks.

Two more Ordeals.

Then she could be free.

Then she would be free.

“Oh, sweets, you’re still here.”

Kiva scrunched up the note and kicked it under the bench before spinning around to find Olisha walking through the infirmary doorway.

“What are you doing here?” Kiva asked, her voice hoarse with all that she was feeling.

Olisha patted the rucksack she held, the tinkling sound indicating shifting glass, and answered, “Just came to top up the supplies.”

Kiva blinked. “Supplies?”

Olisha headed over to the worktable and knelt before it, opening a panel at the front. Kiva gaped, having never realized there was a cupboard built into the wood.

“Supplies,” Olisha repeated, reaching into her bag and pulling out a vial of clear liquid, waving it at Kiva. “You know, the immunity booster.”

A cold feeling gripped Kiva as she walked on numb legs toward the other woman. “Immunity booster?”

“Mmm-hmm,” Olisha said, her voice muffled from her head being half in the cupboard as she cleared a space around the other identical vials that were already in there. “I wish I wasn’t allergic to goldenroot. Nergal, too. Otherwise we’d be downing these by the bucketful.”

“Can I—” Kiva cleared her throat. “Can I see one of those, please?”

Olisha was just about to place a new vial in the cupboard, but she instead handed it up to Kiva and reached for another one, continuing to fill the space.

With a shaking hand, Kiva unstoppered the lid, raising the vial to her nose. One whiff was all it took for panic to seize her, but she forced her voice to remain steady as she asked, “Where did you get these, Olisha?”

“Hmm?” the woman asked, distracted by her task.

“These vials—where did they come from?”

“Nergal gave them to me, sweets,” Olisha said. “He’s heading out with the others to watch your Trial, but my nerves can’t take that. I offered to drop them off since I was on my way here anyway. Someone has to watch over the patients while you’re gone.”

“Nergal . . . gave you these . . . immunity boosters?”

“Well, yes,” Olisha said, and something in Kiva’s voice made her pause what she was doing and look up at her. “But he got them from someone else. We’ve been handing them out all winter. Anytime someone comes here to see us, we make them take one. Just like you do.”

“I—what?”

Olisha’s brow furrowed. “You have been giving them out, haven’t you?”