Petal's POV

The first thing I noticed that morning was the smell.

It wasn’t blood or death not yet, but it lingered in the air like something rotting just beneath the surface. The scent of sickness, of damp sweat, of fear. It had seeped into the walls of the den, into the straw of our beds, into my own skin.

I sat by the fire pit, grinding what little dried herbs we had left. The mortar was nearly empty. Each scrape of the pestle against the stone made my chest tighten. Yarrow, comfrey, ...