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By afternoon, the fever begins to ease.

I keep Briar beside the brazier while we sort seeds. Her breathing remains rough, but the whistle fades. She drinks another cup of the infusion and eats bread softened in broth. When the housekeeper sends a servant to ask after the missing linen, I return it with a written instruction that Briar is assigned to the Lady’s herbarium until released.

No one challenges it.

Not yet.

The next morning, Briar arrives before I summon her. She carries two baskets of clean jars and a bundle of wooden labels.

“You should still be resting,” I say.

“I slept twelve hours.”

“Then you require another twelve.”

“I can sit here as well as in the servants’ quarters.”

Her cough is quieter. The fevered color has left her cheeks.

She begins arranging the jars before I grant permission.

Near midday, she hesitates beside the eastern door. “There is someone in the passage.”

A young kitchen worker waits outside with a rag wrapped around one hand. The cloth bears a dark patch where blood has soaked through.

“I cut it on a broken crock,” she says. “Briar said you might look.”

I bring her inside.

An hour later, a stable servant arrives with a swollen wrist. He claims he injured it three days ago and has hidden it beneath his sleeve. Before the evening meal, an elderly woman from the laundry asks for something to ease the ache in her fingers.

They come quietly.

None wishes the Zagfer healer to know.

I clean the cut, bind the wrist, and warm oil with herbs for the laundress’s hands. Briar helps without being asked. She fetches water, tears linen into strips, and records the servants’ names on a scrap of parchment.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Keeping track of who needs another treatment.”

Her chestnut-brown eyes remain on the list.

“You do not have to help me.”

“I know.”

The answer carries a loyalty that did not exist yesterday.

By the end of the week, the servants understand the solarium’s new purpose. They still enter carefully. They still listen for dark elf footsteps before explaining where they hurt. Fear follows them through the door, but it does not govern what happens after they cross the threshold.

Here, pain is not weakness.

A cough is not insolence. A wound is not proof that a human body has failed its master. The ill may sit beside a brazier without apology. The injured may speak before anyone decides whether their suffering deserves attention.

I cannot change the law of the stronghold.

I cannot give these people freedom, or erase the ranks that place every dark elf above them.