The wedding-that-wasn't-a-wedding (or was the truest wedding, depending on perspective) had been complete for perhaps an hour when the temperature in the throne room dropped precipitously. Not the gradual cooling that preceded the Frostborn Queen's manifestations, not the chill that characterized the Hollow's approach, but something else—the cold that came when reality itself recoiled, when existence recognized that something impossible was occurring, when the boundaries between ended and continuing became negotiable in ways that violated every natural law.
Selena felt it first through the fragments in her chest, through the pieces of potential Gate that had lodged around her heart and were waiting to see if she'd permit their growth. They pulsed with sudden recognition, with response to presence that they knew, that they remembered, that they'd been part of before destruction had scattered them into pieces that could be gathered and formed into new configurations.
