Ravena's POV The moment I pushed open the door, the smell overwhelmed me first. Sickness. Old smoke from a low fire, and herbs, and under it the sour, unmistakable smell of a body that had been ill a long time.The room was dark, with the curtains half drawn against the winter light. And in the bed, resting against a heap of pillows, was a woman so thin and so grey that for one terrible moment I didn't know her at all."Aunt Selene," I said.She didn't answer. Her head turned towards my voice, but her eyes didn't find me. They wandered past me, over me, glassy and unfixed, and her lips moved on words that made no sense, a low broken mutter about a garden, about someone called home, about the cold. She was somewhere else entirely, lost in the fever, and she didn't know I had come.I crossed to the bed and sank down on the edge of it and took her hand, and it was so light and so dry in mine, all bone, that my throat closed."Aunt. It is Ravena. It's me. Elizabeth's girl. Look at me."
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