Lucien's POV
I woke before dawn the way I always did.
What was different was where I woke.
She was asleep beside me, which she had not been before last night, and watching her sleep was an experience I had not prepared myself for. Not because she was beautiful, though she was, but because of what it meant to have her there at all. The specific realness of it. The way she breathed. The silver threads in her black hair spread across the pillow.
I had spent four years building toward something. Planning. Waiting. Grieving and converting the grief into purpose and letting purpose fill the space where other things had been.
I had not planned for this.
This was not something you could plan for. This was something that happened to you when you were busy planning other things, when you found
