_Author’s POV_
Maelis had been in pain for three days before she admitted it.
That was her way, endure first, acknowledge later, never let the acknowledgment become a request if it could possibly be avoided. But by the third morning, when the pain in her leg had moved from persistent to the kind that woke her before dawn and kept her there, she called for Elira.
Elira came and looked at her mother-in-law’s leg and then sat for a long time in the chair beside the bed without speaking.
The medical account, the one Rowena had extended to year’s end, covered the treatment costs. That was not the problem. The problem was the specialist.
Maelis’s condition required a specific consultant who did not take standard pack insurance and whose fees had previously been processed through
