Winter came to the Autumn Court the way winter always came — not suddenly, not with the dramatic rupture of

The two days before the ceremony were the quietest days the Court had given her. Not quiet in the sense

She came back on the third morning. Not the second, as she had told Thessaly — the second day in

The Assembly Hall was the oldest room in the Autumn Court. She had not been in it before — it

The Court she came back to was not the Court she had left. She had known this before she arrived

The Thursdays became the shape of things. Mara had not anticipated how much she would come to rely on them