The winter that year was cruel even for the north.
The halls of House D'Amore carried the cold like memory. Servants moved soundlessly through corridors of marble, their breaths ghosting in the dim light. Beyond the windows, hail swept the gardens until the roses turned to shards of glass.
Arianna moved through that silence with practiced grace. A silver tray rested in her steady hands; on it, a vial of bitter medicine trembled with each step.
The storm outside howled, but inside the mansion, only the slow rhythm of her footsteps could be heard.
When she reached the eastern wing—the private quarters of the baron's daughter—she paused before the tall doors and knocked once.
"Enter," came a faint voice.
The room was warm, yet the air felt fragile, as if one wrong breath could shatter it. Pale curtains drifted in the breeze, and half-finished paintings leaned against the walls—landscapes of places their painter had never seen.
Upon the bed sat Lady Sophia D'Amore, the young mistress of the house. Her silver-white hair spilled across the pillows like snow. Illness had made her delicate; every movement seemed as careful as turning a page made of glass.
She looked up when Aria entered, her crystal-green eyes bright yet shadowed.
"My lady," Aria said softly, bowing before approaching with the tray. "It's time for your medicine."
Sophia's gaze wandered toward the frost-streaked window. Beyond it, the northern world raged in endless grey.
"Even the sun has abandoned us," she whispered. "Tell me, Aria… what is it like in the south, when the sky is clear?"
Aria hesitated. She was no poet—just a servant who had lived her life in cold corridors—but her mistress's voice trembled with yearning.
She lowered her eyes and spoke quietly.
"I once saw the sea," she said. "The waves moved like they were alive. Blue stretched farther than the eye could see. The air… smelled of salt and freedom."
Sophia closed her eyes, letting the picture fill her mind. The storm faded for her, replaced by a sea she would never touch.
For a heartbeat, warmth returned to the room—not from the fire, but from the fragile story shared between them.
"The doctor said your strength will return when spring arrives," Aria murmured, placing the vial into her hands. "He believes the cold worsened your fatigue. When the flowers bloom again, you'll walk among them."
Sophia turned the glass between her fingers but did not drink. Her reflection swayed within the liquid, pale and distant.
Sophia smiled faintly. "I wonder," she whispered, "what it's like… to see the world."
The words hung in the air—soft, trembling, as if one breath could break them.
Aria's grip tightened on the tray. Something unfamiliar rose in her chest, a feeling she had no name for.
Lady Sophia had always been the light of this frozen mansion—gentle, patient, uncomplaining.
Why did her voice sound so far away tonight?
Why did the silence between them ache like grief?
Aria reached out and steadied her mistress's trembling hand.
"The world is vast and cruel, my lady,"
Even as she spoke, she felt her own heart contradict her. The words were meant to comfort, yet they sounded like surrender.
Arianna had never been taught how to offer comfort. She could only serve, not heal.
And so, after a moment of silence, she bowed, extinguished the candle, and slipped from the room. The storm swallowed her footsteps as she left the chamber behind.
***
Morning came slowly to House D'Amore.
The storm had eased, leaving a sky the color of old parchment. Snow still clung to the corners of the courtyard, and the servants whispered that the frost this year would not lift until the gods grew weary of their silence.
Arianna had already been awake for hours.
By habit, her day began before sunrise: lighting fires, carrying water, folding linen, preparing the breakfast trays that would never bear her name. The life of a maid was built upon repetition, upon perfect obedience.
But unlike the others, she was not just another servant in the house.
She was the mistress's shadow.
Arianna Fiorelli, twenty years of age, personal attendant to Lady Sophia D'Amore — the noble daughter confined to her chamber by sickness.
Every moment of her day revolved around that fragile figure in the upper hall.
She knew the exact weight of Sophia's quilts, the warmth of her teacup when her hands trembled, the time her coughing began each night. She knew how to read the silence behind each smile.
It was said that the servants of House D'Amore feared their masters, but Aria feared something else entirely.
The other maids spoke in hushed tones as she passed.
"She doesn't even blink," one said.
"She's colder than the marble floor," said another.
They didn't mean cruelty — only awe.
It was hard to imagine that beneath her steady movements lived a girl who had once wept over a starving brother's body.
Aria did not correct them.
She didn't mind their distance. The fewer who looked closely, the safer she felt.
That afternoon, she returned to Sophia's chamber.
The young lady sat by the window, her hair brushed to a soft sheen, a blanket over her knees. The storm had left behind a pale sun, and light dripped faintly through the frost upon the glass.
Sophia turned her head.
"You've been quiet all day, Aria."
"I always am, my lady," Aria replied, setting a cup of warm milk on the table.
"Yes," Sophia said with a smile. "But sometimes I wonder what it would be like to hear you tell a story that isn't about the weather."
Aria's hand paused midway through folding the curtain.
"I don't know many stories, my lady."
"Then make one up."
Aria hesitated. Her eyes, dark and calm, drifted toward the window. "Stories are for people who dream, I only work."
Sophia smiled faintly. "Then let me dream for you."
Her words were so soft, so unguarded, that Aria looked up before she realized it. For a heartbeat, their gazes met—green and brown, light and shadow—and something unspoken moved between them.
Sophia lowered her eyes first, hiding a small cough behind her sleeve. "You'll sit with me when the painters arrive tomorrow," she said. "They're bringing new works from the southern cities. I want you to see them with me."
"Yes, my lady."
When Aria left the chamber that evening, the air of the mansion seemed quieter than usual. The candlelight trembled on the walls as she walked back to her small room near the servants' quarters.
There, she unbuttoned her uniform and folded it neatly before sitting at her narrow desk. Her reflection stared back from the tiny mirror—the same blank expression, the same hollow calm.
She remembered her mistress's voice, words lingered longer than she expected.
Aria had seen painters come and go through the mansion—men and women who brought with them scenes from the outside world: oceans, mountains, cities that sparkled like glass. She had watched them hang their canvases in Sophia's room and seen her mistress's eyes brighten with a light that no medicine could give.
Sophia would sit for hours studying the paintings, asking questions about every shade of sky or fold of cloud. Aria never interrupted. She only watched from the side, trying to understand what her mistress saw in those colors.
Perhaps that was when something first stirred in her—a faint, unspoken longing.
She didn't have the words for it then, only the quiet thought that maybe, through such paintings, people could touch the beauty she had never known.
That night, she dreamed of the sea—the same sea her mistress always asked about.
It was wide and blue, endless and alive.
But when she tried to reach it, her hands met glass.