Chapter 115

Aria's POV

March arrived with the particular insistence of a season that had been waiting long enough.

The light changed first, as it always did — more particular, more directed, finding the angles that winter had obscured. Then the mud returned, and Kira made her annual announcement from the kitchen window with the authority of established tradition, and Drogo and I came to stand beside her as we had the previous year, and she looked between us with the expression of someone whose rituals were being honored correctly.

"Spring," she said.

"Spring," we agreed.

She returned to her breakfast. The ritual complete. The season confirmed.

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The second...