KAEL

She collapsed in the car.

One moment she was sitting beside me, her head resting against the window, the journal in her lap and her hand on her stomach. The next, her eyes rolled back and her body went boneless and I caught her before she slumped forward, my arm around her shoulders, her head falling against my chest.

"Sera." I shook her gently. Her eyelids fluttered but didn't open. Her skin was burning, a fever heat that radiated through her clothes, and her pulse under my fingers was ...