The blood-water worked– slowly, grudgingly, as if the illness itself were fighting back.
By the sixth patient, the first Delta I had treated was sitting upright on his own. By the tenth, two of the menders were back on their feet, pale and shaky but functional. The younger Delta who had helped me carry the basin– his name was Rowan, I learned– had begun making rounds of his own with a second batch I had prepared.
I cut my finger twice more. Each time the blade stung sharper, the skin around my prior cuts raw and inflamed.
But I felt it fading. Not the pain– the potency.
The blood-water was working on the recently infected, the menders and epsilons who had caught the disease secondhand. Their fevers broke within the hour, color returning to ashen cheeks like dawn creeping in
