The cart rattled through the compound, leaving behind the hush that matched the size of the wound. Servants parted as if to let sorrow pass. The lane narrowed and the air felt colder in the healer's courtyard: bundles of dried herbs, jars of things steeped in strange colors, and the smell of simmering broths that had been meant to mend. Nyssa's hut was a patchwork of clean linens and the stern discipline of tools hung in order. She ushered the other women into motion with a professional briskness that did not obscure the way her fingers brushed for a heartbeat against Liora's arm as if to test whether the woman's skin remembered warmth.
Inside, Nyssa ordered water heated and cloths warmed and the thin blankets pulled out. She moved with a competence that came from necessity. Liora's clothing torn, stiff was removed with quick, quiet motions. Nyssa's breaths sounded small in the space; she had trained herself to take her emotional temperature and keep it stable for the sake of the patient. She told herself to remember the steps, the sequence, the things that mattered: warmth, clean, rest.
The other healers worked under her hand. One applied a poultice to Liora's forehead to revive a bit of color. Another spoke soft, empty words of comfort as they wrapped clean linen around the woman's torso. They did not ask what will be done to her next. Questions were dangerous because they required answers and answers gave power. Here, in the shelter of the healer's hut, the job was narrower: save what could be saved.
Nyssa's hands went to Liora's belly as she checked for warmth and tension, the way a midwife might. There was a thin, empty quality to the place where life had been. The skin had that soft, slack feel of someone who had borne weight and then been paid nothing for the labor. Nyssa's throat tightened. She realized faster, colder than tears, that there was nothing to be done for what had been lost. The body had emptied, and there was a sense of grave finality in the way the tissues lay passive beneath her fingers.
She turned then, because it was easier to do something blunt, tend to the present rather than the absent. She made sure the linens were tucked snugly, changed the bloodied scraps for clean ones, warmed oil for the muscles that had been through too much strain. The work had rhythm: rinse, soothe, swaddle. Nyssa's hands moved in loops that were almost prayerful, and with every movement the old ache in her chest that had been dulled by years of practice clanged clearer.
As she worked the words she had told herself for months. "This is for the pack; this is for safety; this is the cost"—rang hollow. The excuses that had once made compliance seem like a strategy now clattered like brittle shells. Nyssa thought of the way Liora had looked at her sometimes, eyes steady, sometimes accusing, sometimes imploring and she felt something like shame crack the armor she had built. She had told herself loyalty to Vanya meant protection for others, she had told herself that bending the knee now was better than being broken later. Now the truth rose like a smell she could not scrub away, protection had a price and the price had been exacted on an innocent body.
Vanya stood by the doorway, a silhouette against the light, watching the healers work. She did not step inside. She did not need to see the details. Her order had been obeyed. The function that mattered was in motion. People were mending what had been broken so that the broken could be useful again. That was how power was exercised here: not merely in the taking of life, but in the careful composition of the living to suit the will of those who had the right to command them.
Nyssa washed Liora's face and found a smudge of dust in the curl near the temple. She rinsed it away and then paused, watching the water carry off the last of the day's grit. Her hands, used to that work, stilled. Tears collected at the corners of her eyes before she could force them back. She had been a healer long enough to know the difference between pity and compulsion. She had chosen, once, to stand with Vanya. She had thought herself clever in the bargain: a hand in the game that would keep her alive and useful. Now she felt raw with the price.
A small, hot sound escaped her throat. It could have been a sob, she pressed a palm against her mouth until the sound was muffled. The other healer glanced up, and Nyssa gave a quick, forced smile—the kind that pretended at composure. "She must be kept warm," Nyssa said, voice thin but steady. "We will feed her. She must not languish."
They wrapped Liora in clean blankets and laid her on a pallet near the hearth. Nyssa sat for a moment and watched the rise and fall of a chest that breathed shallowly but steady. Her hands, which had been busy for long enough to postpone feeling, finally dropped into her lap. She bowed her head and the tears came then quiet, hot, and full of something that resembled regret.
Why had she ever sided with Vanya? The question curled through her mind like smoke through a shutter, unanswerable and persistent. She thought of her children, those she had raised, those she had delivered and she felt a cold coal of anger at herself. Her choice had been for survival, for small safety. But what security had she purchased with this silence but the knowledge that she could still be ordered to repair the body of someone who had been used and then discarded?
Nyssa touched Liora's hand then, lightly, as if to test whether whatever small spark of life remained might respond. Liora's fingers twitched against the healer's knuckles. Nyssa's breath hitched. That small movement was a grievous thing, proof that the woman still lived and therefore would be required to live in a way Vanya commanded.
She closed her eyes. The tears slid down and were hot against the lines of her face. "Forgive me," she whispered, not to the woman on the pallet but to the part of herself that had believed obedience was the same as protection.
Outside, the courtyard kept its thin, watchful rhythm. The palace went on as it must. But inside the healer's hut, something had shifted: a woman breathed under layers of cloth and, under the hands of a healer who had begun to question the price of her bargains, there was no kindness to be had that could not be counted and charged. Nyssa wrapped the last blanket and sat beside Liora, hands folded in a posture of mourning for choices made and not yet unmade.
The Luna's orders had been obeyed. Liora would be cleaned, fed, mended as far as mending could go. She would be made whole enough to be useful. Nyssa's tears broke quietly as she regretted the day she had put her faith in power. The hut hummed with the small sounds of tending: the clink of jars, the soft pull of thread, a murmured prayer gone private. The day was new, and a life had been taken from a future it might have been.
Nyssa looked at the bound woman and thought of futures, those she had allowed and those she had stolen by staying silent. The regret was a heavy thing, and she let it sit with her like a stone. She would tend to the body because that was what she knew to do. She would wonder for the rest of the morning why she had ever believed silence would keep anyone safe.