The midnight rain had turned into a gentle, rhythmic patter against the basalt cliffs by the time the room finally cooled.
Inside the massive imperial bedchamber, the frantic, sweltering intensity of the post-coronation surge had finally settled into a deep, heavy quiet. The high cedar beams of the ceiling caught the first, tentative amber reflections of a true northern dawn. Gwen lay in the center of the wide cedar bed, her head resting comfortably on Kaelen's thick, bare shoulder, while her right hand was loosely tangled in Lucien's long, cool fingers. The dark velvet sheets were pulled over their hips, the grey soot and dried code-fluid of the old world entirely washed from their skin, replaced by the clean, quiet warmth of a room that no longer calculated its air by the microsecond.
