"Old lady's dead—no, wake up!" Kellan's voice cracked down the chamber like a man hitting his last coin on the table.
"She is cold! Fetch the priest!" Aurora's hands fluttered over the sheet, fingers too pale for someone not pretending grief.
Jaelyn opened her eyes.
Silence snapped. Forks dropped against china somewhere beyond the folding screen. A clock in the corridor kept going, indifferent.
"You're breathing," Johanna whispered, voice low and furious. "You will not scare me into a faint, Kellan."
"I—" Kellan stammered. "We called the mortician. The body was prepared."
Jaelyn sat up. The motion was deliberate and small, a single order in bone and muscle. It made the room move.
"Get the stains off that pillow," she said. "And throw open the curtains. I'm not dead. Clean this room."
No one answered. Aurora's mouth opened and closed like a trapped bird.
"Mother—" a voice started, high and protective, then cut off because it sounded ridiculous in the air.
"Don't 'mother' me," Jaelyn said. She swung her legs over the side of the bed. The sheets slid; the scent of oils and lavender hit her nose. She felt other things: the stiffness in the left hip, a ring on her finger that pinched at a place that had never needed pinching before. She held onto the bedpost and rose.
"She woke," somebody said, voice small and sharp. "She woke."
"Pull yourself together," Johanna snapped. She was at Jaelyn's shoulder
