ARIN
Two months.
Sixty-one days. She'd counted them. Scratched each one into the wood beneath her windowsill with a hairpin she'd stolen from one of her handlers—tiny marks, thin as eyelashes, hidden where no one would think to look.
Sixty-one days since she'd put her hand in Dhaelon's.
Sixty-one days since the serpent charm had stopped burning and started humming—a low, constant vibration against her collarbone that she felt even in her sleep. Especially in her sleep. Because that was when Dhaelon was loudest. When the walls between his mind and hers went thin as silk, and she could feel him thinking, dreaming, wanting—
She pressed her forehead against the cold glass of her chamber window and watched the courtyard below fill with flowers.
Flowers. For a wedding.
They're decorating a cage with roses. How very Kaerethyne.
