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The days passed, but they did not feel like days.
Time no longer moved in hours or moments for August—it moved in silences. In the way servants stopped speaking when he entered a room. In the weight of glances cast sideways, quickly averted. In the cold linen sheets that smelled of lavender but never of safety. He did not know how long it had been since the night the world turned to ash.
He only knew that the house had changed.
The fire in the hearth still burned, but it no longer warmed. The walls still stood, but they no longer felt like home. The windows still let in light, but it touched nothing.
August had not spoken since.
Not to the housekeeper, who tried to coax him with sweet bread and lullabies. Not to the doctor, who knelt to eye level and asked gentle questions he could not answer. Not even to the priest, who placed a hand on his head and muttered things about mercy and heaven that made no sense to a boy whose mother had once promised that love always wins.
Each morning, someone dressed him. Each evening, someone put him to bed. And in between, he sat. By the window. In the garden. Sometimes on the steps of the grand hall, legs pulled to his chest, his gaze lost in a place no one else could see.
The images returned without warning.
His mother's outstretched hand.
The silence after the sound.
The fire crackling, uncaring.
He would squeeze his eyes shut, as if by doing so he could unsee what had been seared into him. But it was no use. The pictures lived inside him now.
His aunt—Lady Calverton, a stern woman with sharp eyes and a mouth always pinched at the corners—had taken guardianship. She wore grief like a brooch: visible, polished, but cold. She called him "the boy" more than by name, and though her care was dutiful, it was never tender.
"He's too fragile," she told the doctor once, not knowing August stood nearby. "Best not to coddle him. Weakness must be ironed out."
August did not cry.
Not even when they buried his parents beneath the willow tree at the edge of the estate grounds. The tree had been there since before he was born, its great arms arching like a guardian over the meadow. Now it stood over stones etched with names he could not yet read. He only knew the sound of the soil falling onto the coffins. Dull. Final.
He gripped the hem of his tunic that day until his knuckles went white.
And still, he did not speak.
He hadn't yet learned how to say: I am still here.
He hadn't found the words to ask: Why did they leave me?
And no one, not once, had asked him what he saw.
Only one soul seemed to treat him like something more than a shadow.
Elias.
The stable boy. Barely older than August by a few years, but already with hands calloused by reins and shovels, and eyes the color of wet earth after rain. He did not speak much either—but once, while August sat alone on the cold stone steps, Elias had quietly placed a small wooden figure beside him.
A knight.
Carved with rough edges, simple, but clearly made by hand.
August did not look up.
But when Elias walked away, August's fingers curled around the little knight.
And held on
To Be Continued