One month.
Thirty days since the ceremony. Thirty nights since those electric blue eyes had locked onto hers across the crowded hall. Time had lost its meaning, but Maisie felt every hour in her bones.
Her body was failing.
Constant stress and poor care had worn her down like a stone ground against riverbed. She barely ate — Gaius’s “gifts” from his fingers were never enough, and her stomach had learned to reject most of what it received. Sleep came in fractured snatches on the rug beside his bed, interrupted whenever he tugged the chain or rolled over and decided he wanted her again. Bruises layered over bruises. Her ribs ached with every breath. The skin beneath the leather collar was raw and inflamed. She moved slower now, limbs heavy, vision sometimes blurring at the edges.
Gaius n
