When I escape from the basement I see the dullest shade of pink breaking over the horizon outside the windows. I sneak back to my room and change into my tunic. I light a fire, tossing my dirty nightdress into the rising flames. After tomorrow I will no longer need it anyway.

I stand in front of the open window by my desk, letting the chill spring morning air wash over me, cleanse the scent of must and old wine from my body. I stare past the graveyard at the fences, allowing my eyes to blur until the Forest is nothing but a smudge of fresh green, the Unconsecrated dull specks, the fence nonexistent.

Nothing in life is clear to me anymore. Nothing makes sense and I don't know how to make it right.

Tonight is my Binding with Harry. Today is the last chance for Travis to claim me. The celebrations will start up again this afternoon. But for now my time is my own and I sneak from the Cathedral and skirt around the edge of the waking village until I am back on the hill.

Instead of looking to the Forest, to the edge of my world, today I look down on the village. At the cottages and houses that huddle against the earth starting at the bottom of the hill and spreading toward the Cathedral on the other side of the village. The Cathedral is a hulking shape, its wings spreading out like arms. Behind the Cathedral is the familiar sight of the graveyard and the small drop to the stream where Harry and I held hands the day my mother became infected. Dotted throughout are the platforms set into the trees, stocked and ready for our refuge if there is ever a breach.

The fence surrounds all of it, tall intertwining links forever keeping us safe. I think about how fragile those fences are, how vines like to snake around them during the summer causing endless work for the Guardians who are always on patrol, always repairing and mending.

It astonishes me how something so delicate, like lace metal, keeps us trapped in this world.

Unhampered by the Unconsecrated, but also by our dreams. The sun slips across the sky, for a brief moment glinting off the fences protecting the path beyond the gate by the Cathedral.

I spend the morning thinking about how together Travis and I can make it all right. And I continue to pace at the top of the hill, waiting for Travis to come claim me, time slipping around me like water over a rock.

When it is time to prepare for the Binding ceremony that night I sit on the bed in the small cottage near the Cathedral that will become Harry's and mine once our union is completed tomorrow. My hands lie limp in my lap as I realize that Travis may never come for me after all.