Chapter 3: The Empty Room (#3)

Some days later...

Silvania didn't expect the letter, though she had begun to recognize the handwriting as soon as the seal detached from the envelope. The messenger placed it on the silver tray next to her midday tea, without ceremony. The third one had arrived. The previous two rested—unopened—in the deepest drawer of her late husband's desk, among portraits she no longer looked at and objects she hadn't touched in years.

She sat down more slowly than usual. Lately, every movement seemed to carry a negotiation with her bones. Her old friend's infusion—that earthy concoction Dyan had carefully prepared, looking after her even from afar—somewhat mitigated the advance of weariness. But the inevitable continued to slide through her body like a patient shadow. She felt it at her fingertips, which now grew numb for no reason, as if forgetting to be part of her.

She took the letter.

Her fingers trembled slightly as she broke the seal. Not from emotion, or not only from that. It was also physical fragility, resisting being named.

She began to read. Slowly.

The first lines brought a faint smile to her lips. Of course Dyan had repaired Edictus's house. He always found a way to start anew, even if he had to tear himself out by the roots to do it. Frila... What a soft name. She could almost imagine the sweetness of that girl, her provincial warmth, her voice speaking with him as if she didn't know how many secrets slept beneath his skin.

But then came the part where he spoke of magic... of guilt...

Silvania placed a hand over her chest, as if by pressing she could contain the tremor that spread from her throat to her stomach. She remembered the words she had used so many times to advise Eleanor—"You cannot love an incomplete man"—and now wondered if she had ever done justice to the complete man Dyan tried to be. She had tried to guide her daughter, protect her... but how many times had she projected her own fears onto her?

The letter continued. It spoke of happiness as a distant city.

Silvania closed her eyes for a moment.

She, too, knew that map. She, too, had lost her way.

When she read the final paragraph, where the handwriting trembled, almost as if Dyan had broken while writing it, something broke within her too. It was a dry, contained pain, without tears. There had been no crying in Silvania, not for a long time. But the silence that formed within was thick and almost sacred.

She remained still for a long time, the letter on her lap.

Her numb fingers wouldn't let her fold it completely.

Perhaps it was better that way.

She didn't put it in the drawer with the others. That night, before sleeping, she placed it on her nightstand. She said nothing. She didn't pray. She didn't think of writing a reply.

But she lit a candle beside it.

As if Dyan could see it.

-------------------------------------------------

The study door was ajar, which was unusual. Silvania always left everything closed, as if fearing that memories would escape if spaces were left open. Eleanor crossed the threshold without announcing herself, burdened by a question she didn't want to voice aloud.

The day had been long and hollow. The Witan insisted on a consort, her mother on an advisor, and every option presented seemed more a strategy than a solution. How to choose an advisor if all suggested names were shadows with vested interests? She sought her mother's advice, yes, though not with words. She just needed to sit with her, hear her organizing papers, see her expression when she spoke of the old dukes with whom she shared the world as one watches a play with resignation.

But Silvania wasn't there. Only her empty cup on the table and the faint fragrance of the tea—the very same that Dyan used to prepare for her with plants that didn't grow in any official garden.

Eleanor approached the desk. Tidy, as always. Though not entirely so.

A small group of letters rested atop a stack of unsigned reports. They weren't carefully piled. One of them had a bent edge, as if it had been read too many times, held by tired hands that could no longer remain steady.

She recognized them instantly.

Dyan's handwriting was still unmistakable: elegant, precise, with that long stroke at the end of words, as if he always hesitated to finish what he wrote.

She shouldn't have touched them.

But she did.

The first letter spoke of repairs, of new beams in Edictus's house, of kind people. Eleanor couldn't help but grimace. Dyan had always had an irritating knack for making the terrible seem transient. As if everything could be restarted, as if mistakes could be undone with honest work and time.

The second letter was shorter, more scattered, mentioning dreams, insomnia, how much he missed hearing his mother's words.

The third... was different.

Not just because of the trembling handwriting, but because of what it didn't say directly.

Eleanor read it standing, as if sitting down would grant her a consent she wasn't yet willing to give. It spoke of Frila, of simple help, of trying not to use magic, as if every act now were a penance. It spoke of guilt. Of silence. Of the impossibility of feeling, "as if something inside said I cannot show such weakness."

Eleanor closed her eyes as she reached the end. "I hope she doesn't hate me for too long."

She left them where they were. She didn't touch them again.

For an instant, she thought of her mother, of how she would have read those words, again and again, in silence. Of how she would have contained every tremor, every impulse, every memory. As she had always done. As she had taught Eleanor to do.

She also knew how to do it.

But that day, when Silvania returned to the study, she found the third letter carefully folded. And on it, a dried lavender sprig, one of those Eleanor used to place in her room as a child, when she was afraid that the castle's whispers were not just the wind.

They didn't speak of the matter.

But Silvania knew her daughter had read.

And that perhaps, though she still couldn't forgive, she no longer hated.