The fever hit sometime before dawn.
It started in my shoulder, that deep bone-level heat that radiated outward until my skin felt like it was cooking from the inside. By the time the third light above me had flickered its hundredth cycle, I had stopped trying to sleep and started just breathing through it, slow and measured, the way I had learned to breathe through silver burns in the field.
Manage the pain. Do not let the pain manage you.
I was still repeating that to myself when the door opened and Ivy walked in.
She was dressed properly. That was the first thing I noticed. Hair pinned, uniform clean, the Whitmore crest on her collar sitting straight and deliberate. She was carrying a tablet and a folded transfer envelope and she looked exactly like a hunter fulfilling an administrat
