Two days.
I sat at my desk in the trade office that morning, the number sitting heavy in my chest the way it had since I woke before dawn, unable to fall back asleep despite how tired I still felt from the sickness the day before. Two days until the fiction I'd been living inside for two weeks came apart entirely, replaced by whatever version of myself the court decided to see once the truth stood in front of them.
"You're quiet today," Corin observed, pausing beside my desk with a fresh stack of correspondence.
"Just thinking," I said, taking the stack from him.
He studied me a moment, something considering in his expression, and then, uncharacteristically, he pulled the chair from the empty desk beside mine and sat down rather than returning immediately to his own work. "Whatever it
