Over the next week, I clawed my way back from the edge, one grueling day at a time. The healers came and went in quiet shifts, leaving murmured words in their wake. Each time I woke, Aurora was nearby, her presence a steady pulse of warmth in the chill that had lodged in my bones. The fever had faded, the stabbing ache in my head dulled to an insistent, distant throb. My strength returned gradually, as if it were being carefully rationed by some force beyond my control, and I was too tired to argue.
By the eighth day, I could stand without feeling as though I'd collapse. My body felt different, though—a strange, hollow lightness, as if I were carrying less of myself somehow, like parts of me had slipped away in the night.
