Everything except grief.
Grief obeys nothing. Not tinctures. Not tonics. Not desperate prayers whispered over substances at midnight.
Her mind catalogs names of those she couldn’t save without conscious thought. Tali. Nalya. Lesara. Daelen. Merrik. The baby girl who wasn’t even old enough to be given a name.
Nalya’s face appears clearest of all. Hollow-eyed. Exhausted.
Rubi had measured powders with shaking hands while Nalya begged for sleep that didn’t come with nightmares.
None of it had been enough.
Her jaw tightens slightly at the thought, but the motion of the pestle never falters.
It can’t. Not now. Never again will she falter—she won’t let herself. She will not be the woman who does nothing twice.
Across the workroom, rows of labeled vials rest in rigid formation—powders of crushed bark, sedimented extracts, preserved petals suspended in clear solvent. Each one cataloged. Each one understood. Each one capable of becoming something else when placed in the correct relationship to another.
That is the beauty of apothecary work.
Nothing exists alone.
Everything influences everything else.
Bind. Release. Dissolve. Draw out. Neutralize. Amplify.
Cause and effect.
Balance and consequence.
The world, reduced to mechanisms she cantouch.
Rubi leans closer to the mortar, examining the texture of the powder forming beneath the pestle. Almost ready. Another thirty rotations will break the final oil sacs.
She counts them without thinking.
Twenty-two.
Twenty-three.
Twenty-four.
Her hands do not tremble here.
Outside this room, she numbs herself enough to sleep. Inside it, she strips herself down to function.
Here, she is safe. Here, she can dosomething.
A faint draft slips beneath the door, stirring the hanging herb bundles overhead. Their dry leaves whisper softly against one another—a sound like distant rain, or quiet applause, or warning.
Rubi ignores it.
She presses harder.
The powder darkens, releasing a deeper, more volatile scent—the kind that clings to the back of the throat and lingers behind the eyes. Potent. Active. Ready to be tested.
Something in this room will yield to her.
Something will respond correctly.
