My limbs got heavier as twilight crept in. Stiffer, with every passing moment. Every breath became more labored and it became more and more difficult to force my eyelids back open when I blinked. And all around me—hanging from the ceiling, bundled away in sacks—were potential solutions.

Plants. Flowers and seeds and grasses with all their interesting uses. Some I knew, some I didn’t. There were other ingredients and what I would have considered healer’s tools. But poisoning could just be considered the other side of healing when it came to plants since it focused on the ill effects rather than the beneficial.

Perhaps I could make an antidote and it would be counted among the poisoner’s area expertise. It’d be a long shot given that I had no idea what the death loving fool had used in his concoction but I likely had everything I needed here. Perhaps I didn’t even need to make the antidote; Dahrii hadn’t been affected by the strong smelling drink so he must have slipped himself the antidote at some point.

And this time, I had time to prepare before I was locked within my own body. Utterly frozen. Unable to breathe or blink or truly think. I could stop it. I could do more than wait to be saved by the others.

But I had to make a choice since I knew I wouldn’t have enough time to search for an antidote and make one if I failed. I knew what I should pick. Which one would make the goddess the least likely to freeze me again and that couldn’t be confused for me working the healing arts. After all patients were never punished for what healers made them take to help with recovery.

I knew but my fingers itched. Itched to use the knowledge I had carefully kept fresh over the years and the plants that were just out of easy reach. To get as close to healing as I could go while hoping that the goddess would see my actions in the same way I did. Just like I had when I had given Melka her breath back.

Except, of course, the goddess hadn’t seemed to agree with my version of things then, so why should She now?

I let out a long, frustrated breath before I dragged myself over to the jar that held the paste Dahrii had used in the first place. That wouldn’t have the “sweet dust” he had mixed in with the water and paste, and knowing the base could help me figure out the rest. After all, I couldn’t know what I was looking for if I didn’t know what I was trying to counteract.

And while Dahrii had said drinking the mixture in the bowl could help me temporarily, I didn’t want to add another unknown factor to my poisoning just yet.

The little jar took more effort to uncork than it should have but I got it open and a dab of paste on one finger. That didn’t tell me much more than when he had shown me the paste earlier so I took the next step.

I stuck the paste on my tongue, rolled it around for a moment and then spat it out and scrapped off the rest. It tasted like purple boulder drop leaf and choke grass and roasted hump root, but I couldn’t place the nutty flavor or smell that had permeated the cave. That must have come from something only in these mountains.

Still, that gave me part of an answer. Purple boulder drop leaf mixed with choke grass did create a lethargic effect though it typically was weak and could be undercut by almost any stimulant. She had never added hump grass to that mixture though it was well known that in large quantities the grass would cause aching and stiffness in the joints which caused its victims to often be hunched over and unwilling to move. And I had seen those victims more than once over the years as people would mix it up with its lookalike, bushel grass.

Mixing the three seemed to take away the hump grass’s aching pain but it also made all their effects more potent. Or perhaps that was the unknown ingredient I couldn’t place.

Still, the antidote would need to have a stimulant to counteract the purple boulder drop leaf and choke grass mixture as well as something to soothe the inflammation and swelling from the hump grass.

Dahrii had shown me his whole collection though he had definitely glossed over some concoctions more than others. A bit of preemptive gloating on his part, a risk he likely hadn’t thought as truly dangerous since he likely thought I’d be too incompetent or incapacitated to make use of what he had shown me.

There were two potential antidotes I could grab—three if I included the watered down paste mixed with sweet dust. And one I could make from the ingredients in the room.

The one I could make would be guaranteed to counteract everything except for the unknown ingredient and all I’d need was two ingredients—one directly above my head and the other sticking out of a sack on the far side of the room—while his concoctions could do the trick, but I wouldn’t known if they’d truly work until I used one.

My fingers itched. Just two ingredients, dried fire blossom and the soaked pulp of a stick of mist bramble. I could make it before I got too stiff to move. It was just two ingredients and could definitely be counted as an antidote. Surely the goddess wouldn’t—

My mark started to prickle as my chest got tighter and tighter. I was gasping more than breathing normally now. Finesse was beyond what my fingers could manage. There wasn’t time to mix anything. It didn’t matter that there was no one here to see or that the goddess might have more to pay attention to than two ingredients being prepped and mixed. It didn’t matter what might be punished or not.

I was out of time.

I eyed the covered little bowl that caused this dilemma in the first place. It’s pungent blocked except for what lingered in the air. If Dahrii had been telling the truth than drinking its contents was the immediate solution, but I was keen on trusting the poisoner’s word and it sounded like a trap even if he had been honest.

Of my other options, one sat straight ahead. A little jar full of a mixture made of crowning glory, red cheeks, gnasher’s seeds, and blackburn sap. A poison, he had said, that made the victim unable to sleep while also making them feel like they were burning from the inside out.

The other option was in a jar to my right. A concoction of honey and spider silk moss and three other ingredients I didn’t know though one had sounded akin to balm nettle which helped with joints. He hadn’t said what that one did but he had handled it with care and it contained both the stimulant and soother that I needed.

Well, if one poison couldn’t kill me than two wouldn’t either. I reached for the unknown mixture. At least it shouldn’t make me feel like I was burning alive and frozen in place at the same time if this went wrong.

My hands had stiffened into claws, so I had to press the jar between my palms and pull its stopper out with my teeth. The thick liquid inside the jar sloshed but it was too low and heavy to escape from the jar. I tipped it back and drank.

The concoction tasted like oversweet melon and it had a slightly sour aftertaste, likely the result of one or more of the ingredients I didn’t know. The lack of knowledge was an irritant but I couldn’t focus on that now.

Now all I could do was wait. The jar slipped from my hands and cracked on the cave’s stone floor so that what remained of Dahrii’s work seeped out over the floor.

Everything kept locking up and my mark’s prickling burn intensified. I wasn’t breathing anymore and my vision swam with the lack of oxygen. Panic rose from the pit of my stomach to further clog the space just behind my ribs. Was I going to be frozen for weeks again? Forever? What if the storming poison never weakened? What if whatever I just took made it worse or stronger?

Something cold bloomed in my gut. So cold that it reminded me of Lithunia’s ice. The cold knifed through me and I wanted to scream but my jaw was locked in place and I didn’t have the breath for it. Tears leaked from my eyes. So that was my fate then: rather just be immobilized I had condemned myself to feeling like I was getting shredded by icicles as well.

Minutes of agony passed but, slowly, oh so slowly, I realized that my mark’s burning was lessening as the ice cold cut its way through more and more of my body. That I could breathe just a bit again and I could shift slightly and I could blink. The cold forced itself further and further and little by little my control returned.

That was when I noticed that some of the cold was concentrating back in my belly and it was getting colder and heavier and my body wanted it out. I heaved. Hacked and spat as my body forced something hard and cutting back up my throat until I finally got it out.

The taste of blood ran down my throat as I stared at a crystal the size of my knuckle that had clattered onto the ground. It was a darker version of gold-blue mixture I had drank. Had it condensed the other poison I had inhaled?

I didn’t have much time to ponder the question before the process repeated itself again and again and again. Half a dozen of the storming crystals littered the ground in front of me before I finally stopped heaving. My throat was raw and bleeding from all the sharp edges I had hacked up, but I could move again, breathe easily, like I had never fallen for Dahrii’s stupid trick except for a heavy tiredness that was likely the result of the rapid changes I had put my body through. My mark stopped prickling.

I eyed the jar that had held the freezing concoction before carefully pouring what little hadn’t seeped out onto the floor into one of my empty jars in my poisoner’s pouch. It barely filled the bottom fourth of the tiny jar but that would have to do for one dose. I wasn’t sure if it could stop other poisons but my gut said that I had stumbled upon Dahrii’s cureall—the thing he could use no matter what if he accidentally poisoned himself with one of his mixtures. Something that I would have said was healing it wasn’t for his seeming lack of punishment for using it.

But, then again, the goddess hadn’t punished him for helping along the death of countless people too. Unless She had simply delayed his punishment until now so that he could receive it through proxy via Mishtaw and the Peacekeepers.

Guessing at the goddess’s motives would get me nowhere. That was something only She and perhaps the Beloved could know for certain. So, instead, I wiped off the crystals I had vomited up and put those in my pouch too for later study. Just in case I could use them later or perhaps learn more about the cureall.

I also helped myself to a couple of the known poisons Dahrii had made. One that could addle and slow a beast the size of a boar and another that collapse a bear with a big enough a dose by making its limbs fall asleep. My jars held enough for three doses of the first and one dose for the second, presuming I actually used it on a bear.

That was when I heard footsteps echoing through the caves and coming closer. Multiple sets. I watched the entrance but I still had a little bit before they’d reach the poisoner’s den. Play dead or gloat?

Both were tempting but in the end I decided I had enough enough of being stiff limbed and stuck, even if I was only pretending. Instead, I leaned against the back wall of the little cave, crossed my arms, and waited.

The footsteps got closer and closer until I could make out a bit of what was being said and Dahrii didn’t sound quite as composed and confident as he had before. Instead there was a fair bit of frustration clouding his voice.

“She’s dead! We tried to—”

“No, she’s not.” That was Mishtaw and her voice cut through his with absolute certainty. “I don’t know what you’ve done but you haven’t killed her and her wounds haven’t either. What I do know is that you’ll regret whatever happened even more if you try to delay us further.”

They rounded the corner and I had the pleasure of seeing Dahrii startle back into Creed when he noticed me glaring at him from across the way.

“You!”

I pushed off the wall with one shoulder and started to respond before I had to clear my throat and spit out a bit of blood to speak. My voice sounded as raw as my throat felt. “I can’t die, idiot.”

Creed shoved Dahrii further into the room and they were followed by Mishtaw and Prevna. Some of the tension surrounding the group relaxed when they saw me upright but it ratcheted right back up again at the sound of my voice and the blood I spat out.

Prevna hurried over to me as the others took stock of the cave. “Are you alright?”

“Better than I was.” I cleared my throat again. “Counteracted his poison.”

She lifted a hand. “Can I help?”

I shook my head. “Mixture. Not a natural source.”

If the poison had come from a singular plant or animal she might have been able to draw it back out of me with her blessing, but as it was the smelling poison had been a mix of ingredients and the cureall had done its job.

Prevna didn’t like my answer. “Are you sure you’re fine?”

“Won’t die.”

She gave me a deadpan look that promised I’d regret it in the future if I didn’t give her a better answer. So I forced out more of an explanation. “Would’ve been frozen again. Throat’s raw from antidote. Some sleep and I’ll be fine.”

Her frown deepened but she didn’t press me further so I gestured to the broken jar and the other evidence of my trial. That drew Dahrii’s attention to the mess too and he froze as his gaze fixated on the broken jar and the puddle that formed around it.

“That’s…all of…” His gaze slowly lifted to mine. Then something in him seemed to snap and he tried to rush me but Creed held him firmly in place. “How dare—”

Creed punched him in the gut with his free hand and Dahrii bent over wheezing.

Mishtaw asked, “Would anyone else have been dead if they didn’t have your blessing?”

I nodded and added, “One per group.”

Her scowl deepened as she immediately understood the implications. “One per group. Creed, take the girls back to the healer’s cave. It seems there’s another death bringer than needs to understand that death was never his domain.”

I held up a staying hand. I could tell that my voice about to give out completely but I couldn’t let her kill our best lead for entering the inner valleys. I pointed at the man. “Fog. Knows cure.”

Mishtaw lifted her chin. “Answers before justice then.” She glanced over at Prevna and me. “Go back to the camp. Eliss is making sure they behave themselves there. We’ll join you shortly.”

Prevna nodded and I let her guide me past the others and back to the relative safety of the main camp.