After the physician left, Julia continued to stare up at the ceiling, still feeling light-headed and unsteady even though she had been lying in bed for at least the past half hour. She couldn't remember much about the last few seconds of consciousness before she fainted earlier, nothing except for a wave of intense dizziness that had her collapsing into Agrippa's arms. The sudden vertigo had struck like lightning and with no warning at all.
...No, there had been warnings. Small ones. She'd ignored them all because - well, the time just wasn't right, and it wasn't convenient. But now, faced with the truth...
"Julia!"
She picked her head up off the pillow only with great effort, and she immediately regretted it hard enough to let it plop back down again. In a flash, Agrippa was at her sid
