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The first coughing spasm came just after Snow Moon. Maeredhiel shrugs it off at first; the Sanctuary is busy with inventory preparations for the caravans of new arrivals and she's needed in at least a hundred places to oversee the work done by the servants.If nothing else, the work keeps her from wondering why Vieliessar was banished by the Astromancer.&Maeredhiel knew Vieliessar was the Child of Prophecy. She had witnessed her birth on that unseasonably stormy autumn night, had listened to Celelioniel Astromancer's mad ravings that Vieliessar would be the Doom of the Hundred Houses.Rumors swirling around the Sanctuary soon become fact: books mentioning prophecy are removed and locked up. Copies of The Song of Amretheon are either edited to remove mentions of his curse and prophecy or removed entirely. Even Celelioniel’s scholarly works that attempt to unriddle Amretheon’s prophecy disappear.All signs point to Hamphuliadiel Astromancer and this being his doing.Maeredhiel wonders if he means to eliminate her next, for being witness to Vieliessar's birth.&Midwinter comes and goes and she's confined to the Healers with lung-fever. Hamphuliadiel sends Healer Momioniarch to tend to her out of compassion.Momioniarch is one of his lackeys.Her throat is raw and dry, yet she refuses the medicines Momioniarch attempts to give her.Momioniarch tsks but obeys. She leaves a jug of water and a cup for Maeredhiel, but refuses to leave. At her gentle goading, Maeredhiel finally pours a glass of water for herself and drinks. The water is clear and tastes fresh with no strange aftertaste. She thinks she catches a glimpse of satisfaction upon Momioniarch’s face, but she tries to not think of it too much. Healers love nothing more than patients giving in to their demands.Rest and food, that’s all she needs, and Momioniarch agrees. She may be old now, but if she can survive Aradrothiach’s murder and the severing of their half formed Soulbond six hundred years past, she can survive this simple bout of lung-fever as well.&The water. She should not have drunk the water.Or is that the fever taunting her about her old age?Her very bones rattle with her coughing.Momioniarch always tends to her.She thinks she sees her smile.&When Maeredhiel slept before, the walk to the Vale of Celenthodiel was miles upon miles long, the barest pinprick of light in the vast emptiness of darkness.When she sleeps now, the walk grows shorter and shorter every night. She sees the summer’s dawn with her own eyes and feels the caress of warm air upon her skin.Her body burns and her soul begs for release.She can no longer fight back against the slow, undetectable poison seeping in her veins.-Aradrothiach reaches out for her on the final night, and the flames of her pyre lead her home.