Chapter 19. The Threshold

The room smelled of damp cloth and fever-sweat.

It clung to the walls like sorrow—stale and wet, thick with worry. Shadows stretched across the wooden floor as the sun shifted higher in the sky, but the room remained dim, muted beneath drawn curtains and the heavy silence that came with waiting for a body to break—or survive.

Kaelen and Martha worked in wordless rhythm. Cold water sloshed in the basin. Rags dipped and wrung. Mira’s forehead, her arms, the long line of her spine beneath her shift—all wiped down again and again. Her body trembled under their hands, not from cold, but from something deeper. Something wrong.

Martha sniffled, wiping her nose with her sleeve. Now and then, she muttered prayers in the old tongue. Quiet, desperate things not meant to be heard.

But Mira didn’t stir.

Her chest rose in shallow, irregular breaths. Her skin, though slick from their efforts, still radiated heat that bordered on dangerous.

Kaelen clenched his ja