The problem with growing up beside someone is that you don't notice them changing until one day you pick them up and the person in your arms isn't the person you put down last time.
Tristan Aelindor had been in love for seven years before he noticed.
He picked her up the way he always did. Put her down differently. Smiled wrong. Said the right words in the right order with the wrong thing behind them. Then went to his father's study and slammed the door hard enough to rattle a portrait, and Atlas Aelindor, who had been waiting for this moment for three years, poured a second glass of wine.
Rewinding to the part right before that, Gavriel Sterling stood in a court yard. Three years had passed. He watched a nineteen-year-old version of himself pick up a sixteen-year-old version of Serena.
