And she worked the rest of the day blindly, bloodlessly, feeling the heavens rage soundlessly about her head. Del asked her once if she was feeling all right (“Many women, some times of the month, they grow dizzy and strange” was in fact the guldwomen’s comment), but she replied that she was fine.

When she returned to her grandmother’s that night, she went straight to the bathroom and began to vomit. She was sick for the next two hours, until one of the servants found her and discovered she had a fever. Her grandmother, the last person Kit would have chosen to see right then, was interrupted at her dinner and brought into Kit’s room.

“Let me see, let me see,” the old woman murmured, laying cool hands on her granddaughter’s forehead and patting the hot flesh along her throat and collarbone. The fierce blue eyes stared down at Kit, boring through the forehead to investigate the brain. No one would be able to guess what the sickness actually was, Kit thought, least of all her grandmother, but the old woman’s eyes narrowed and her head snapped up.

“Bring me some of that miraleaf potion. In the blue bottle in my room,” Granmama said to one of the hovering servants. In minutes, Kit was being urged to drink a mixture of miraleaf and hot tea, and for a moment she thought she would start throwing up again. But soon enough, she felt her whole body relax. She had not even realized how tense she was until she felt the knotted muscles grow lax and compliant. Her eyes closed against the onslaught of her grandmother’s gaze, and she could not open them again. She could not think or grieve. She slept.

She slept nearly two days straight, waking only at intervals when someone brought her food, water, or more of the miraleaf potion. This is pointless. Nothing will heal me, she thought once as she obediently sipped another glass of the mixture, and yet each time she woke she felt a little less despairing. It occurred to her to wonder how her grandmother knew how to diagnose and cure the most severe forms of heartache. It would not have been a skill she would have attributed to Lorimela Candachi.

The third day when she woke, she felt light-headed but functional. Her body was stiff from too much sleep, and her eyes felt unaccustomed to vision, taking in everything as if it were new, but she felt somehow refreshed and made over. Her heart still hurt with an actual pain and her thoughts skittered away from examining, again, her last scene with Jex and the note of refusal she had sent him a few days ago. She still could not imagine either how to repair the breach or how to exist without him. But at least now she felt that she had the strength to consider her options.