Peace, Amelia learned, was not still.
Not exactly.
Not when your dreams had a lingering aroma of smoke and metal. Not when you paced down familiar corridors and waited for the hiss of arrows, the ring of steel. The war had ended, but its load still rested upon her shoulders.
Everthorne Manor remained unchanged. Spotless. Gorgeous. Silent as only a great mansion could be. But Amelia was a different woman who had departed those gates months ago.
She awoke before sunrise now, uneasy and coiled tight as a bowstring.
Certain mornings, she paced the grounds of the manor in her worn training clothes, the hem frayed and dirty, her limp rigid from cold. The sword at her side was habit. Not ceremony. Not pageantry. Just… necessity.
Grace observed her silently at times from the window, but never intruded. She appeared to comprehend — the sort of comprehension that didn't require words.
Clara Adjusts Differently
Clara had taken up residence in one of the side guest chambers — the same woman who once rolled her eyes at domesticity now spent hours tending to the manor's dogs, occasionally helping in the stables.
"I find it calming," she said once, scratching behind the ears of a shaggy grey hound. "They don't ask stupid questions. Or expect me to wear a corset."
Amelia had laughed. A genuine one. Exhausted, but genuine.
Clara had also changed.
She still swaggered along with a cocky stride, still chewed down insults like sweets — but there was something softer at the edges now. She didn't jump to every provocation, didn't feel compelled to turn everything into a contest. She sat for hours by the fire, quiet, her sword across her knees, eyes unfocused.
At times, they sat side by side in that silence.
There was no necessity to speak. Just… breathing, shoulder to shoulder. Living.
Claude in His Own Way
Claude had returned to political epistles with all the capital — prioritizing what was left of the shattered command structure, holding the borders, managing lords seeking to claw back power now the king's gaze was elsewhere.
But he himself was different as well.
He didn't bark out orders anymore or hold his rank like a shield. There was gravity to his words now — a consideration Amelia had never observed in him.
He kept seeking reasons to drop by the training grounds. To observe Amelia and Clara fight. Sometimes he sparred with them. Sometimes he just stood with his arms crossed, offering nothing.
He never really talked about what had occurred in the weeks he'd disappeared. What he'd experienced while being in hiding within enemy lines, feigning capture.
But there was something in his eyes now that reflected hers — that profound exhaustion, the kind earned from killing and surviving.