50: SHATTERING REVELATION

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At first, Zara thought little of it, it was just exhaustion, a mere consequence of the long days spent overseeing Calithea's affairs, the weight of a kingdom pressing down on her shoulders.

She dismissed the nausea as nothing more than a moment of weakness, the headaches as stress. But as the days dragged on, the symptoms only worsened. 

She would wake in the dead of night, her body trembling with fever.

A bitter taste lingered on her tongue, her throat raw from the relentless coughing. Mornings became unbearable, her stomach rejecting even the simplest of meals, her body betraying her in ways she did not understand. She told herself it would pass. It had to. 

But it didn't. 

By the fifth day, Scarlet grew visibly alarmed. The woman hovered near her at all times, her sharp eyes filled with a quiet concern she refused to voice.