The passage of time in the Tagor Desert was usually marked by the shifting of dunes and the bleaching of bones under the relentless sun, but inside Alaric's hidden sanctum, time was measured in breaths of pleasure and the deepening of submission.
Exactly thirty days had passed since Queen Cai Wei had been broken beneath the moonlight. Thirty days since the Snake Queen had traded her crown for a collar of invisible influence. To mark this occasion—the one-month anniversary of her total surrender—Alaric had decreed a celebration. It was not a celebration for Yun Lan, who had long since accepted her place, but for the household itself, a cementing of the new order where the former heroines of the North and West now served the same dark master.
