Paxa Sel didn’t allow Kezra to take another step toward the central cottages until she had seated her on a dry stone grain chest outside the communal tool shed and thrust a wooden cup of warm, salted water into her hands. The water tasted of iron, boiled chicory root. A pinch of dried mountain mint, bitter enough to make Kezra’s tongue curl. But she swallowed it in slow. Then, disciplined gulps, the fluttering weakness behind her knees began to settle into ordinary muscle ache. Paxa stood directly in front of her, the sleeves of her coarse linen shirt rolled up past her elbows. She watched the color return to Kezra’s lips with an unbending clinician’s eye.
“Drink the entirety,” Paxa commanded, her voice pitched low enough to remain between them, though leaving no room for negotiation. “You spent five hours venting bedrock pressure through your rod yesterday. You haven’t eaten a solid bite since the hardtack at dawn. If you get up before that cup is empty, Kezra, I’ll have Yseld sit on your shoulders. A healer’s veto isn’t a polite request. It’s an audit of your physical ledgers. When you push through body recoil on stubbornness alone, you pay for it in permanent tissue scarring. You already gave away the bottom octave of your left ear in Saltglass. I have no intention of watching you throw away your balance in Alderfast.”
