"Do you still love them, even when they leave you behind?"
It was a question that came unbidden—quiet, unvoiced, and yet louder than anything Vivienne Elford had heard in days.
The question hadn't come from anyone in particular. Not from a servant or a sister or one of those polished, pale nobles who asked things only when they already knew the answer. No, this one came in the quiet moments. In the mornings before her tea reached her hands. In the sound of her heels against the floor of an empty hallway. In the spaces where her son's voice should have been.
Yes, she loved him.
That was never in question.
But love did not mean certainty. Not when it came to Damien.
Not when it came to this.
