***
They say much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which everyday produces, and which most men throw away. What matters is not the passing of time in itself, but how one chooses to use the time as it passes. For time is the scarcest resource of this world.
For Adaria, two years after her mother’s passing, she could look back and say that time had been a friend rather than a foe. Sometimes it had been on her side, and other times, she wondered if she wasn’t falling into a dark pit from which she could never return.
The night before her twentieth birthday, King Nazar summoned her to his chambers.
“Evening, father,” she greeted from the door.
King Nazar looked up slowly at her from the letter he had been writing, and Adaria held her breath.
He looked different
