"Get him water. Now."
Celeste's command cut through the dark as Beckett ran off. Rhett's body convulsed on the cot, a sheen of sweat drenching his chest as his fists clawed at air.
"No... not him... Father?" Rhett mumbled, his voice hoarse and broken.
He wasn't conscious, not fully. The fever had taken him.
Inside the fever-dream, Rhett stood barefoot in the woods, the moonbone trees glowing silver-blue. The air pulsed with magic, sharp and bitter on his tongue.
"You were warned," came the voice, not in front of him, but inside his spine.
Rhett turned. His dead father stepped forward from between the trees, pale as bone, his long cloak dragging over dead leaves that didn't rustle.
"Father," Rhett whispered, chest tightening.
The man who had raised him, beaten strength into him, taught him to never bow, looked... diminished. As if time had unraveled him thread by thread. His eyes burned, not with warmth, but the hollow flame of regret.
