That was the strange shift she hadn’t expected before taking the seal. Before, “years” had sounded like punishment. Like something stretched too long on purpose. Now it just sounded like life continuing its shape. A life built on stone at the edge of the world, holding something ancient and dangerous asleep below everything. A life with Kael in it every day. With people across distance still tied close. With work that actually mattered instead of fading into noise.
Morwen had warned her early on. The chair changes what love does over time. Decades in, sometimes longer, the work pulls to the center and everything else starts sliding outward.
Five months in, that shift hadn’t come.
Aria checked for it anyway.
She’d promised Kael on the first night they shared the truth of it if anything
