Chapter 30 #2
“And if they say no? What then?” Her voice sharpened, the beast inside stirring again, a low rumble in her core that made her fingers twitch. She could almost feel claws itching to push through, to test if Florence’s calm would crack under pressure.
Florence met her eyes directly. “They can. Some do. We respect it.” She paused, her lips curving into a small, knowing smile.
“But most see the value. It’s for the greater good, strengthening us against the Empire, healing our own.
You’ve seen what Thorn’s methods did in the wrong hands. Imagine them in the right ones.”
She couldn’t deny the pull of it, the sheer utility, especially with MahōKi Sap so hard to smuggle in from the heartlands, its golden flow strangled by Empire checkpoints and tariffs.
This could keep the vital healing elixirs stocked regardless of sap shortages.
But the thought clung to her, sticky and wrong, like the aftertaste of a potion gone sour: coercion dressed as choice, resources dangled over starving mouths, indentures that whispered freedom while binding tighter than any chain.
Was it really voluntary when saying no meant watching your family waste away?
Florence turned then and nodded toward a narrow door at the back of the lab, half-shadowed by a shelf of empty vials. “Come with me.” The fine hair on Elora’s neck stood up, but her feet followed.
Through the doorway, the temperature dropped five degrees against her cheeks.
A mechanical gurgle drew her eyes to the far wall where copper and glass pipes twisted like arteries, clear flu-id pulsing through them in rhythmic surges.
The pipes fed into a row of thumb-sized vials, each emitting its own glow—dozens of green, seven sickly yellow, and one blood- red that throbbed like a fresh wound.
Florence said nothing at first, just stood there, letting the hum fill the space between them.
She edged closer. A sharp chemical tang hit her nose and clawed at the back of her throat, threatening to trigger a cough she fought to suppress.
Her fingers brushed a dangling paper tag, its corner dog-eared and soft from handling.
R-E-L-L. The green light beneath it pulsed like a steady heartbeat.
Vye’s name appeared in the same careful script on the next tag over, its glow casting her fingertips in emerald.
When she reached Symond’s, the jaundiced light barely illuminated his name, the yellowed glow struggling to reach the edges of the glass.
She stepped back. “What is this?”
A shadow of a smile touched Florence’s mouth as she folded her arms across her chest, battle-worn sleeves rustling softly in the silence between them.
Florence’s fingers brushed against the green vial.
“We monitor their recovery. Each color tells us something—green for healthy, ready to contribute again.” She paused, then added with practiced casualness, “Should they wish to, of course.” Her eyes drifted to the yellow vials.
“These need time. No donations until the essence replenishes.” When she reached the solitary red vial, her voice softened.
“And this one—this means intervention. Complete removal from the pro-gram until stabilized.” She straightened, professional once more.
“The system tracks more than just donation readiness. It’s a complete health indicator—any illness, injury or distress, we’ll know immediately. ”
The system made sense. It protected them and kept them from being drained too far, ensured recovery.
And yet some-thing in her recoiled at those glowing vials, at decisions made about bodies based on colors in glass.
Care and control tangled together until she couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.
She froze, her thumb digging into her palm, pressing harder until the familiar ache bloomed, a sharp counterpoint to the wild thudding in her chest. The pressure steadied her heartbeat, forced it to slow, just like she’d trained herself to do back then—back when every skip or surge could give her away.
The ring. Tehvan’s ring, that cursed band he’d slipped onto his finger under the guise of care, monitoring her pulse at first, nothing more than a health check to keep her safe, he’d said. Harmless. Necessary.
It hadn’t started as control. It had felt like protection.
Only later had it grown… heavier. Watching more than her pulse. Responding to things she hadn’t realized she was giving away. She’d learned, piece by piece, how much of herself it could see.
She stared at her thumb now, embedded in the soft flesh.
It hadn’t felt like protection in the woods with Rell, that night when desire had sparked hot and unbidden, her body leaning into his touch while terror clawed at her gut.
Tehvan would feel this desire through his cursed ring, would know she’d betrayed him.
She’d dug her thumb in just like this, desperate to flatten her pulse, to keep this one moment private.
She caught her breath and uncurled her thumb, leaving behind a crescent-shaped mark on her palm. Florence’s gaze re-mained steady on her face, clinical and observant, like Elora’s reaction was just another data point to collect rather than something human.
“You see the value in it,” Florence said, her voice threading through the hum of the tubes, “A way to protect everyone, to anticipate needs before they become crises.”
“And if someone’s vial turns red? What then? Do you just... watch them closer?”
Florence’s fingers tapped lightly against her arm, a rhythm that echoed the pulsing lights. “We help them. Offer rest, treatments. It’s compassion, Elora. No one suffers needlessly.”
Compassion. Like Tehvan’s ring had been until it wasn’t.
Elora’s gaze flicked back to Rell’s vial, that steady green mock-ing her, and she imagined it shifting yellow, then red—imagined Florence deciding what “help” meant for him, for Vye, for the children giggling in the halls.
The room felt smaller, the shadows from the lantern pressing in.
“I get the reasoning,” she said, her voice steady, measured, like she was just weighing facts. “Tracking recovery like this—it’s smart. Stops things from going too far.”
Florence waited, patient as ever.
Elora hesitated, then added, more neutrally than she felt, “If it were my blood tied to something like that… I’d want to know where the line was. When watching someone turns to deciding for them.”
Before Florence could respond, Elora slipped away. “I need some air,” she murmured, her back already to the room as she escaped into the hallway, the temperature shift washing over her heated skin while the mechanical pulse of the vials faded with each step.