Even the human race can't claim to be natural anymore. We are fake, dying things. How fitting that I would end up in this sham of a marriage.

I nod like I'm not at all unnerved by this new cold side to him. Not cruel like his father. Not warm like the husband who sought me out on quiet nights. Something in between. This Linden has never woven his fingers through mine, never chosen me from a line of weary Gathered girls, never said he loved me in a myriad of coloured lights. We are nothing to each other.

I wanted so badly to tell him, but something about that entire night seemed so beautiful, so bizarre, that I didn't trust it with my secrets.

It's best to let her go," he says. No, no, that's wrong. It's never right to give up on someone.

Things will get worse before they get better.

We figure out what death means when we're born, practically, and we live our whole lives in some kind of weird denial about it.

He sits next to me, careful to avoid my hair that's splayed out around my head like blood. A bullet to the forehead, boom, blond waves everywhere.