I woke before the bell.
The kingdom had a bell in the eastern tower that rang at first light every morning, a deep resonant sound that carried to every corner of the stronghold, and I had learned to wake just ahead of it the way you learn the rhythms of any place you have lived in long enough. But this morning the waking was different. Immediate and complete, no gradual surfacing, simply there and then fully awake with my heart already at the pace of someone who had not forgotten what day it was.
I lay still for a moment and breathed.
Then the bell rang.
I got up.
The ritual of dressing was the same as every other morning and I held onto that sameness deliberately, the particular order of things, because the ordinary details of an ordinary morning were an anchor and I needed an anchor
