#Chapter 107 Count the Months

Ember I know the moment I walk into his study that something has changed. It's in the way he's sitting—too still, too controlled, the way he held himself on his knees in that courtroom waiting for the axe to fall. There's a calendar on the desk in front of him, and he doesn't try to hide it when I come in, which is how I know it's bad. Kaine hides things when he's unsure. He stops hiding them when he's certain. He tells me to shut the door, and I think about not doing it—think, wildly, about grabbing Clara and running for the third time in five years, out a window if I have to, into the wild where at least the dangers are honest. It's what I've always done when a thing gets too close to my heart: put a wall or a kingdom between us and call it strength. But Chris is in those woods and the Queen is in this castle, and there's nowhere left to run that isn't worse than this room. For the first time in my life, running isn't even an option, and under the terror there's something almos