It didnt help, so Nerra found herself looking around for leaves that she could make into a tincture to slow down the feelings of weakness that were making her limbs start to shake with every step. The effort of looking, though, made it seem as though she was wading through the depths of the great river that divided the kingdom, every step an effort.

Maybe Ill sit for a while until it passes, Nerra said. She found a solid-looking oak to sit against, setting her back against it as she sat there and waiting for the feelings of weakness and dizziness to pass. They always had in the past.

She sat there and tried to think of all the things she might do with her life. All that she had lost hurt so much, but Nerra was determined to think about all the things she might still do, all the things that might still happen for her. Shed hated court life, had always wanted to be out in the forest, had always wanted to spend her time apart from people, only offering help where people needed it. Maybe this was her chance.

Maybe, except that even those thoughts didnt encourage the feelings of sickness to pass. Nerra felt it in the dizziness that threatened to consume her, in a tingling in her mouth, in a pulsing in her arm from where the scale patterns felt as though they were about to burst from her skin.

Help, she called out weakly, but there was no one to help her out there. Even if someone had come, theyd have seen her arm, and killed her for it. At the very least, they would have shied away from her, leaving her to the mercy of the shivering and the weakness and…

Somewhere in the course of it, Nerra realized that she had fallen over to her side, her cheek scraping against the leaves and twigs of the forest floor. Her breathing was shallow now, and the world felt as though it was coming from behind a veil that meant Nerra could barely see it. Her eyes flickered open and closed, and this felt different from all the other times shed felt unwell, different, and worse.

There was a pressure building in Nerras skull now, as if a whole world was there inside it, fighting to get out. She screamed, then realized that no sound had come out; she was just twitching there on the ground, staring up at the canopy of the forest, sure that she would die there alone and unheralded. Would someone find her there, or would her body simply stay there to be scavenged by the animals? Would she even be dead before that happened?

Suddenly, Nerra felt very afraid. She found herself thinking of her brothers and sisters, of the dragon abandoned in the cave. She wished that any of them were here, that someone were here.