The air was heavy with silence after Noah's confession, broken only by the faint hiss of the dying embers in the hearth. James stood still, hands folded behind his back, uncertain if his young master wanted his company or solitude. But Noah's voice, low and thoughtful, startled the stillness once more.
"James... do you remember the old church Eleanor used to visit?"
The butler blinked. "The church, my lord?"
"Yes," Noah said, turning his gaze from the window, those ocean-blue eyes carrying both fire and fatigue. "She once told me it was her sanctuary... a place where silence was louder than prayer." He tilted his head slightly, as if recalling her words. "I thought it was strange, because she never claimed to be pious. And yet, she lingered there... almost every full moon."
James felt a chill at the memory. "My lord... if I recall rightly, the church she frequented lies in the eastern woods, on the outskirts of the kingdom. It has long been abandoned, since the plague years. No priest tends its altar. No hymn has been sung there for decades. Only a few souls wander in and out-scholars of the old faith, remnants of Judaism, people searching for echoes of God in ruins."
Noah's eyes narrowed with a distant light. "Judaism... Eleanor once spoke of it. Not as a believer, but as though it was a language she was trying to learn. She said the old scriptures were heavy with secrets, as if faith itself was written in cipher. Do you think she was searching for answers there, James? Or hiding from them?"
James bowed his head slightly. "I cannot say, my lord. But I remember... she would disappear for hours, sometimes an entire day, and when she returned, her eyes seemed... altered. Like the moon veiled by clouds, glowing but unreachable. Perhaps that church held something she could not share."
Noah rose slowly from his chair, the half-empty bottle of wine left forgotten on the table. His tall figure cut a striking shadow against the moonlight streaming through the vast window. "Then we must go there."
James lifted his head sharply. "Now, my lord?"
"Not tonight," Noah replied, his tone soft but steady. "But soon. Together. I don't trust myself to walk into her memories alone. You knew her too, James. Perhaps not as I did, but you watched... you noticed. You might see what my heart would blind me from."
James swallowed the knot in his throat. "My lord, I am but a servant-"
"No," Noah interrupted firmly, his gaze settling on him. "You are the only one left who has stood beside me since birth. My parents chose their fate. Eleanor chose her absence. But you... you stayed. If I am to unravel what remains of her story, I cannot do it without you."
For a moment, James had no words. He had lived his life in silent loyalty, never expecting to be drawn into the center of his master's grief. And yet, hearing Noah's voice now, steady but cracked with longing, he realized this search was no longer just about a lost woman. It was about keeping Noah alive.
"My lord," James said finally, bowing deeply, "if it is your wish, then I shall accompany you to the church. May it give us light, or shadows, we will face it together."
Noah exhaled slowly, as if a storm within him had stilled for a fleeting instant. His lips curved into the faintest trace of a smile, fragile and fleeting as morning mist.
"Together, then."
The moon cast its glow over the room, silver and solemn. In its light, the abandoned church-silent, hidden, and shrouded in mystery-waited like a forgotten page in a book that refused to close. Somewhere within its ruins lay an answer, or perhaps another wound. But Noah had already chosen: he would walk into its silence, hand in hand with memory, and James would follow.
And so, as the night deepened, hope thin, tremulous, but alive , took its first breath in years.