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"Tell me what you gave him."
I didn't even get my hands off Jingchuan's wrist before the question came at me like a blade. The warlord—Huo Yanzhan, I think someone called him—stood three feet away, arms crossed, eyes cold enough to freeze blood.
"Gave him?" I shot back. "I just got here. You dragged me in."
"You touched him. His pulse changed."
"Yeah, because I checked it. That's called triage."
He took a step closer. The temperature in the room dropped. "You have three days to save him. Fail, and you'll join the last healer we buried."
I looked down at Jingchuan. Pale as a corpse, shallow breathing, lips going blue. The guy was crashing, and I had nothing. No monitors, no crash cart, no backup. Just a room full of armored men who thought I was some kind of miracle worker.
"Three days," I said. "Great. What's actually wrong with him?"
"Poison."
"What kind?"
"Unknown."
"How long ago?"
"Two hours. Maybe three."
I pressed my fingers back to Jingchuan's neck. Pulse was thready, irregular. His skin was clammy, and when I pulled back his eyelid, his pupils were uneven. Classic signs of systemic toxicity, but without knowing the agent, I was flying blind.
"Move aside." A woman's voice, smooth and cold. I glanced up.
She was tall, elegant, dressed in embroidered silk robes that screamed authority. Her hair was pinned up with silver needles, and she carried herself like she owned the room. Behind her, two younger physicians in matching robes hovered like anxious shadows.
"Chief Physician Su," one of the guards said, bowing.
So this was the competition.
"You must be the so-called Miracle Healer," Su Liyue said, looking me over like I was something stuck to her shoe. "How quaint."
"And you must be the one who let him get this bad," I said.
Her smile didn't reach her eyes. "I've been treating the young master for hours. His condition is beyond mortal medicine. Only divine intervention can save him now."
"Divine intervention? He's poisoned, not cursed."
"You presume to lecture me?" She moved closer, and I caught the faint scent of herbs and something sharper—medicinal alcohol, maybe. "I studied under the Imperial Medical Academy for ten years. I've treated emperors and generals. And you—" She gestured at my scrubs, still stained with coffee and God knows what from my last shift. "You arrive in rags, with no credentials, no lineage, and you dare—"
"He's got a needle mark," I said.
The room went quiet.
I lifted Jingchuan's left wrist, turning it so the lamplight caught the tiny puncture wound near the vein. Fresh. Less than three hours old. The skin around it was faintly discolored, just a shadow of bruising.
"That wasn't there before," Su Liyue said, but her voice was too smooth. Too controlled.
"Yeah, it was," I said. "You just didn't look."
Huo Yanzhan was at my side in two strides. He took Jingchuan's wrist, examined the mark, then turned to Su Liyue. "Explain."
"It must be from the acupuncture treatment," she said quickly. "I administered needles to redirect his inner energy—"
"Where?" I cut in. "Show me the other points."
She hesitated. Just a second, but I caught it.
"You didn't do acupuncture," I said. "Someone else stuck him. Recently. And you either didn't notice, or you're covering."
Su Liyue's face went cold. "You accuse me of negligence?"
"I'm saying he was injected. That's not ingested poison. It's direct delivery. Faster, harder to trace, and if we don't flush it out now, he's dead in an hour."
"Flush it?" One of her assistants spoke up, a reedy guy with nervous hands. "What crude method—"
"Saline rinse, if I had any. Since I don't, we're going with boiled water and hope."
"Boiled water?" Su Liyue laughed, sharp and brittle. "You plan to treat poison with kitchen remedies? This is absurd."
"Then you do it," I said, stepping back. "Go ahead. Save him."
She didn't move.
Neither did her assistants.
I looked at Huo Yanzhan. "Your call. You want me to try something that might work, or you want to stand here and watch him die while she talks about inner energy?"
His jaw tightened. For a second I thought he might throw me out. Then he turned to the guards. "Bring boiled water. Clean cloth. A blade."
"You can't be serious," Su Liyue said. "Commander, this girl is a charlatan. She'll kill him—"
"He's already dying," Huo Yanzhan said. "You've had hours. She has three days. I suggest you stop talking and start watching."
Su Liyue's expression went rigid. She stepped back, hands folded, but her eyes stayed on me like a hawk sizing up a rabbit.
The guards brought the water in a bronze basin. It was still steaming. I dipped a strip of cloth, wrung it out, and pressed it to Jingchuan's wrist, right over the injection site. The heat would dilate the capillaries, maybe slow the spread. Maybe.
"What are you doing?" the reedy assistant asked.
"Buying time," I said. "If the poison's still localized, heat and pressure can limit the diffusion. It's not a cure, but it'll give us a few more minutes."
"Minutes for what?"
"To figure out what the hell we're dealing with."
I checked Jingchuan's eyes again. Pupils still uneven. Breathing still shallow. His lips were darker now, almost purple. Cyanosis. His blood wasn't carrying enough oxygen. I needed to intubate him, get him on a ventilator, but there was nothing here. No equipment. No drugs. Just me and a basin of hot water.
"Talk to me," I said to Huo Yanzhan. "Who had access to him in the last three hours?"
"His personal servants. My guards. Chief Physician Su and her staff."
"Anyone else?"
"No."
"Then it's one of them."
Su Liyue's voice cut in, ice-cold. "You accuse my staff?"
"I'm saying someone in this room stuck a needle in him and walked away," I said. "And unless you've got a better theory, yeah, I'm looking at your staff."
Her assistants shifted, glancing at each other. The reedy one opened his mouth, but Su Liyue silenced him with a look.
"Preposterous," she said. "We are healers. We serve the empire."
"And he's the warlord's brother," I said. "Perfect target."
Huo Yanzhan's hand went to the hilt of his sword. "If you have proof, speak."
"I've got a needle mark and a dying patient," I said. "That's proof enough to start asking questions."
Jingchuan's breathing hitched. I pressed my fingers to his neck. His pulse was fading. We were running out of time.
"I need to drain the site," I said. "If there's any poison left in the tissue, I can pull it out before it spreads further."
"Drain it?" Su Liyue's assistant looked horrified. "You'll cause more damage—"
"He's already poisoned. What's a little blood?"
I took the blade one of the guards handed me. It was a short knife, clean enough. I pressed the edge to Jingchuan's wrist, right next to the injection site. One shallow cut. Blood welled up, dark and sluggish. I pressed the hot cloth around the wound, squeezing gently, forcing the blood out.
"Barbaric," Su Liyue murmured.
"Effective," I shot back.
The blood that came out was wrong. Too dark, almost black at the edges. I soaked it up with the cloth, wrung it out into the basin, and pressed again. More blood. Darker still.
"What is that?" Huo Yanzhan asked, his voice tight.
"Poison," I said. "Or what's left of it. Whatever it is, it's breaking down his red blood cells. That's why he's cyanotic."
"Can you stop it?"
"Not without an antidote. But I can slow it down. Buy him time."
"How much time?"
"Hours. Maybe a day if we're lucky."
"That's not three days."
"No," I said. "It's not."
I kept pressing, kept draining. Jingchuan's pulse was steadier now. Not strong, but steadier. His breathing evened out, just a little. The cyanosis didn't get worse.
Su Liyue watched, her face unreadable. "You're prolonging his suffering."
"I'm keeping him alive," I said. "There's a difference."
"For how long?"
"Long enough to find out who did this."
I sat back, wiping my hands on a clean cloth. Jingchuan's wrist was still bleeding sluggishly, but the color was better now. Closer to red than black. I wrapped it tight with another strip of cloth and checked his pulse again. Thready, but present.
"He's stable," I said. "For now."
Huo Yanzhan didn't take his eyes off his brother. "And the poison?"
"Still in him. I bought him minutes, not a cure. We need to identify the agent and find an antidote, or he's dead by morning."
"Then find it."
"I'm not a toxicologist. I'm a nurse. I need—"
Jingchuan's hand twitched. His fingers curled, just slightly, and his eyes cracked open. He stared at the ceiling, unfocused, and his lips moved.
"What did he say?" Huo Yanzhan leaned in.
I bent closer, ear to Jingchuan's mouth. His voice was barely a whisper, hoarse and broken.
"Black… veins…"
I pulled back. "What?"
His hand reached up, trembling, and he pointed at his own arm. I rolled up his sleeve.
Black veins were spreading up from the injection site, threading under his skin like cracks in porcelain. They moved as I watched, crawling toward his shoulder, slow but steady.
"What is that?" Huo Yanzhan's voice was low, dangerous.
I didn't have an answer.
The black veins kept spreading.