Page 65

Her fingers tighten around the folded sheet. “It is nothing.”

The human servants use that word often.

Nothing means an injury that has not yet prevented work. Nothing means a fever hidden beneath a cap. Nothing means hunger, exhaustion, or pain that no one of rank wishes to notice.

I step closer. “How long has your breathing sounded like that?”

“It does not trouble me.”

Her next breath catches with a faint whistle.

“Briar.”

She glances toward the passage behind her. “I cannot leave the linen.”

“You can put it down.”

“The housekeeper expects it in the northern chambers.”

“I will tell her I delayed you.”

Alarm sharpens her expression. “Please do not.”

“Why?”

“She will send me to the healer.”

“That is the intention.”

“No.”

The word is quiet, but fear gives it weight.

I lower my voice. “Who tends the servants here?”

“The Zagfer healer comes when summoned.”

“And you fear him.”

Briar looks toward the turn in the passage again. No one appears, yet she steps closer to me before answering.

“He says humans complain because we are too weak to master ordinary pain.”

Anger rises hot beneath my ribs.

“What did he do the last time you went to him?”

“I have never gone willingly.”

“You have avoided answering me.”

Her gaze drops to the linen. “Last winter, Tavin burned his hand on a kitchen stone. The healer scraped the blisters open to prove the flesh was not deeply damaged. Tavin could not close his fingers for a month.”

I stare at her.

“The healer said the wound was shallow,” she adds. “He returned Tavin to duty.”

A dark elf healer who views human pain as inconvenience is more dangerous than illness. He has rank, training, and the household’s confidence. The servants have only their bodies, and even those belong partly to Morwen’thir labor.