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[Eclyse Christian]

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Red warmth spread across Eclyse like a down blanket. In that space between dreams and waking, she felt happy and calm. And warm. These days, warmth was a commodity she’d had to all but dispense with. Marching in the snow. Training in the snow. Patrolling in the snow. Always the wind tearing at her dark cloak and ebon hair. Always the sleet and ice and snow stinging her face. By the time she fell into her new husband’s embrace each night, she had begun to wonder if she’d ever be warm again. And indeed, those seemed to be the only times she was warm anymore, and for those moments, she was more thankful than she could even say.

Enraptured in the crimson warmth that spread over her, Eclyse smiled faintly in her sleep and turned to drape an arm over Kay, to share the blessed warmth with him. But she found only his empty half of the bed, and a pillow already cold from his departure. Hesitantly, she opened her eyes, realizing that the sanguine warmth was a single ray of sunlight through the window, bathing her as she slept, the deepest crimson glow through her drowsy eyelids. There was no sign of Kay. His armour was gone, but she felt sure he had business to attend, and had wished her to rest without worry.

She slipped to the edge of the bed, and shivered as her bare feet touched the cold marble floor. Times like these, she looked fondly on her recent forays into Magincia. The beach was so much warmer. The sand and sandstone there absorbed the heat of the day and held it till nighttime, to radiate warmth well into the hours of the night, when the sun could not. Indeed, even their reception by the people of Magincia was warmer since the wedding.

A nagging feeling surfaced again within her. Stonegate had reveled with her and Kay on the night of their union. Magincia had shown support of their pure marriage. But two people had been absent that night, whom she was sure would not be quite so receptive to the idea. Perhaps with Kay’s absence, this morning would be the perfect time to travel to Minoc and inform her parents that they had a son-in-law. She cringed, remembering Kay’s description of his first and only meeting with her father. How her father had acted out of arrogant ignorance, and how Kay had drawn a blade to threaten him back to his senses. No, it would be best if she went alone, the first time. To talk with them, and explain what Kay had not the time and patience to explain the first time. And to tell them how very happy she was. Perhaps then they would see him as she did. Perhaps then, she could bring her new husband home to meet them properly.

If not, well…she hadn’t seen them in a year. What was another ten or twenty?