The cold war settled into the bones of the house.
Auren's visits grew shorter, his words more clipped. The interrogations ceased, replaced by a heavy, watchful silence that was somehow more threatening than his anger. He would bring her food, his jaw set, his molten eyes avoiding hers. He was a prince wrestling with his own honor, and she, the lowborn traitor with a broken leg, had somehow become the heavier weight on the scales.
Arin wore his silence like a cloak, using the solitude he gave her to sharpen her own weapons. The first was her body. Every hour she was left alone, she would force herself to move. The first time she'd swung her legs over the side of the bed, the pain from her shattered limb had been a white-hot scream that made the world go dark at the edges. But she'd done it again. And again.
