I did not sleep after that.
I sat on the floor with my back against the door until the grey edges of morning began pressing through the window curtains, and then I got up, washed my face in the small bathroom attached to my room, looked at myself in the mirror for a long time, and made a decision.
Not about Caden. Not about the mark or the bond or the conversation that was coming like weather I could see on the horizon but could not yet feel on my skin.
A smaller decision. The kind that keeps you functional when the large ones are too enormous to hold.
I decided to learn this place.
Not as a ward. Not as an arrangement. Not as a woman waiting to find out what was going to happen to her. As someone who was here and intended to understand where here was before anyone else got to define
