The water beneath her feet was warm, but the woman felt cold and distant from the world around her. Livia’s goal with her had always remained the sa, just to make sure she left. Serena wondered if peace would only co after she had gone.
She pressed her lips into a thin line and exhaled slowly. She rembered their first true confrontation, how Livia had said, with no restraint, that her parents had been torn apart by rogues before her very eyes. It would be foolish for Serena to claim she understood. She hadn’t watched her own blood be spilled like that. But she had known loss, as well as loneliness and sha.
Serena cast a discreet glance at the woman across the spring and then faced forward once more. It hurt, in a quiet and pathetic way, how she was treated. And how badly, oh, how badly she sotis wanted to reach out and simply tell the truth.
But the truth had beco a foggy, fragnted thing. She was not truly an Evers, she would never live up to her father’s na. She was no longer a Brigman; that identity died with Cullen. Crampton was even further still, cast off with the exile from Silverstone.
Her shoulders sagged, and she looked up at the sky. She was just Serena. And she was tired.
There was no one left to impress, no legacy to live under, no safe na to hide behind. And yet... she remained. Perhaps not as the woman she used to be, but as sothing else. Sothing not yet broken, not yet ready to run. She had lost her purpose after her exile and found it here again in Ironshade. Even though it was hectic and quite difficult at tis she still enjoyed finding a little bit of herself.
She didn’t speak to Livia again. There was no point. Whatever had been offered beneath the veil of that cold kindness would not change Serena’s path. She would not leave not yet anyway.
"Not until spring," she whispered under her breath, not daring to be louder than the hush of the trees.
Until then, she would endure. Because she wanted to. Because she had made herself a promise that this place would not claim the last of her dignity, not while she still had breath to give it aning.
She didn’t know how long they remained there, soaking in the warmth of a spring that could not truly thaw the winter between them. But eventually, Livia rose and stepped out of the water without a word. Serena followed, wrapping herself in one of the thin cloths and drying in silence.
The walk back to the castle was quiet. Their footsteps whispered against the pine-soft earth, the occasional crack of a twig the only sound between them. Livia did not glance back. And Serena did not fall into step beside her. The distance suited them.
When the walls of the keep ca into view, Serena did not follow Livia toward the guest wing. She veered left, her path carved toward a space that had beco her sanctuary.
The library.
The door creaked softly as she pushed inside, and the familiar scent of old parchnt greeted her like an old friend. Cool and dry, with a faint undertone of lavender and cedarwood. It was always warm here, not in temperature, but in mory. It didn’t judge. It did not whisper of exile or of failing fathers or forgotten nas.
It simply let her exist as she was, as Serena.
She nodded at the sleepy archivist near the entrance and moved further in, her fingers trailing over shelves and bindings until she reached the sa table she had used before. Her notes still lay there, where she’d left them tucked into the fold of her book.
Serena sat, her limbs still heavy, her thoughts swimming.
She hadn’t planned on working, not really. But she could not rest yet, not after everything and not what was to co. The spring had llowed her out and, softened the panic within her, but it had not wiped it away.
She opened the book once more, a thick to filled with Ironshade’s political movents over the last two centuries. It was not the grand speeches or bold wars, but the minor notes: a redrafted border here, a delayed shipnt there. Little shifts that changed the whole shape of a world.
She read slowly, her finger tracing the words, and underlined a note about a northern emissary who’d once brokered peace between Ironshade and Stormcrest after a skirmish. It was always one na that changed the tide. One person brave, or foolish enough to take the step.
Serena didn’t know what her role would be when spring ca. But she had no intention of being forgotten. She wondered if it was her foolish pride that had brought about these thoughts. Feyra was quiet these days but she was still there and her presence comforted her.
Her eyes drifted across her own scrawled margins and she reached for her pen again. She tapped it on her chin and sighed.
Maybe she would never be truly accepted here. Maybe Livia would always see her as a liability, maybe the council would always look at her and see a foreign threat wrapped in silk and blood. Even in her wildest imagination, maybe even Darius would be swayed by them.
But she could live with that, if she earned her place regardless. She would not be cast out. She would not leave because soone wanted her to. She would leave, if she ever did on her own terms.
And so, with the castle quiet around her and the fire burning low in the lantern beside her, Serena bent her head and resud her work.
She would read the books from cover to cover, know about every single important detail. She was not a bumbling idiot like they thought she was. So that when her ti ca, she would not speak with borrowed words, but with knowledge earned.
Let Livia glare, even let the whispers continue and the queer looks. She would leave at her appointed ti as was agreed by everyone.
Reviews
All reviews (0)