Part 1: Flight and Realization
The carriage swayed rhythmically over the ruts of the old highway. Carl sat back against the seat, his eyelids half-closed—to an outside observer, it might seem the Earl was dozing. But Lyra, huddled in the corner opposite, sensed otherwise. She was too skilled at reading stillness. This man wasn't resting. He was gathering, like a storm cloud before the strike.
Her own fidgeting, caged and almost animalistic, he didn't even notice. Or pretended not to. His fingers, clasped on his knee, were motionless—no drumming, no nervous tapping. Complete, absolute control. And that made it all the more unsettling.
He's not human, Lyra thought, turning her gaze to the window where autumn groves drifted past. He's a wall. Behind which something burns.
Carl truly didn't see her now. His entire being was turned inward, into that dark, cramped cell he carried in his chest instead of a heart. Thoughts flowed slowly and thickly, like resin.
The matter with Lyra isn't urgent now. I found her. She agreed. Now—time to prepare. Next step—allies at court. Baron Waldeck, he doesn't know yet that he'll be removed in two years… I could offer information in exchange for…
The thought broke off. Because he suddenly realized a simple and humiliating truth.
I ran away.
Not from enemies. Not from danger. From the simplest and most terrifying thing. From two pairs of eyes.
He had fled the moment he understood where and when he was. Grabbed onto the first available task—finding Lyra—like a drowning man clutching a piece of mast. Not because it was the most important thing. But because it was the safest. Far from home. Far from them.
Far from Amalia, whose laughter he remembered but hadn't heard for three years. Far from Eleonor, whose sigh was the last sound she made, fading in his arms.
If I had seen them right away, he thought, and the thought was heavy as a stone on a grave slab, I would have broken down sobbing. Like an infant. I would have fallen to my knees and couldn't have gotten up. And they would have been frightened. Not of me. For me.
He opened his eyes. Beyond the window, the familiar outlines of hills appeared. Erlenholm. Home.
The fear was still there, beneath his ribs. But he seized it by the throat, as he once seized an enemy in a narrow passage, and forced it into silence.
Not now. Not here. Steady, Nowenstein.
The carriage stopped at the gates.
Part 2: Through the House
Returning in the evening and handing Lyra over to Frederick, Carl spoke briefly, concisely, allowing no objections: "The room above the stable. Hot water. Clean clothes. Food—don't impose, leave it where she can see it. Assign Aina for this." The butler, his face remaining impassive, merely inclined his head slightly. He asked no questions. In thirty years of service, he had learned: questions to Earl Nowenstein are asked only when he is ready to answer them.
Carl stepped into the house.
Silence greeted him, like an old mother tired of waiting. Candles burned in the hall, servants gliding silently about their evening tasks. Catching sight of the Earl, they would pause in greeting. And immediately, noticing his pace—unusual, almost improper for his usual languid manner—they would lower their eyes knowingly.
To the orangery, their glances whispered. To the Lady.
Carl didn't hear them. Corridors passed one after another, and each step echoed in his chest with a dull, growing roar. He shed his traveling cloak into the hands of a footman who happened by, not even glancing at him. His fingers undid the top button of his doublet—it had become hard to breathe. Or perhaps it wasn't the doublet constricting him.
The glass door of the orangery appeared before him suddenly, though he knew every turn of this path. Beyond it glowed a warm, golden light—not from candles, not from lamps. Magical. The very one he had ordered from a capital artificer. In that other life.
Now he remembered signing that contract. Sitting in his study, feeling the cool polished wood beneath his elbows, and thinking: This will help. It will be easier for her to breathe. She will smile more often.
He hadn't thought then that he would stand by her bedside and watch her smile fade.
Carl pulled the door open. Warm, humid air, smelling of greenery and blooming earth, struck his face.
He entered.
Part 3: Eleonor
She stood with her back to him, bent over a bush of late-blooming roses. Her white dress fell in soft folds to the floor, her auburn hair gathered in a careless, slightly tousled knot at the nape of her neck—she always did that when absorbed in her work in the orangery and forgot it was time to comb it. Her slender fingers gently probed the petals, checking for any premature blight.
She was pale. Carl saw it immediately, even before she turned. The same sickly, waxen complexion he remembered from the nights by her bedside. The same fragility in the line of her shoulders, as if it was still an effort for her to keep her back straight.
But she was standing. She was working. She was alive.
And she didn't have those terrible, sunken eyes—the eyes of a woman who had buried her daughter.
Not yet, Carl thought. This will not happen. Never.
He didn't notice when he stopped. When the air caught in his throat, refusing to enter his lungs.
Eleonor heard him. Not his steps—he trod almost silently. But she had always felt his presence in her skin, even before seeing him. That's how it is with people who have waited too long and too hard.
She turned.
Carl Nowenstein, thirty-three-year-old Earl, head of his house, warrior who had survived his own death and returned from oblivion to rewrite history—he forgot everything.
Forgot about enemies, about conspiracies, about the daughter he needed to save, about Lyra in the attic, about plans, about vengeance. Only she remained. Eleonor. His wife. The one whose heart he had broken, not even properly saying goodbye last time. The one whose breath he had caught in that final night, begging the gods to take him instead of her.
The gods hadn't answered then. They were answering now.
"Carl," she said.
Her voice was quiet, a little hoarse—she had caught a cold last winter, and her lungs hadn't been perfect since. But in that single word was so much that it took his breath away. Question. Relief. Love. And a barely perceptible reproach: you left so suddenly, didn't even say goodbye properly, just a letter, a sprig of lavender, and—silence.
He wanted to answer. Wanted to say: "I'm here. I'm back. Forgive me." Wanted to approach and touch her face, to make sure she was real, warm, alive.
Instead, he stood rooted to the spot, feeling his lower lip treacherously tremble.
Just don't break down. Not now. Don't frighten her.
Eleonor stepped toward him. Another step. And another. Her eyes, gray with green flecks—she said they came from her northern grandmother—searched his face with that particular, piercing tenderness that always made his knees weak.
"Something happened," she said. It wasn't a question.
Carl was silent. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.
She came close. Now he could smell her—not the lavender of her perfume, but her living, warm, slightly sweet skin. And then, gently, without pressure, she raised her hand and touched his face.
Her fingers—cool, despite the warmth of the orangery—rested on his cheek. Traced along his cheekbone, as if wiping away invisible dust. Lingered near his eye, where moisture treacherously gleamed, which he hadn't managed to hold back.
"You're crying," Eleonor whispered. There was no panic in her voice. Only a slight concern.
Carl caught her hand. Pressed her palm to his cheek and closed his eyes.
And he crumbled.
Not to his knees—he still held his back straight. But something inside him broke. That dam he had built from orders, calculations, plans, cold fury—it sprang a leak. Through it poured everything: three years of loneliness in the future, a year of agony by her bedside, the endless, exhausting emptiness after her death, and then—his own death, cold and swift, almost a relief.
He didn't say a word. He just stood there, pressing her palm to his face, silent. And down his cheeks flowed what he had so desperately tried to hold back for three years, five years, a whole lifetime.
Eleonor watched him. Tears stood in her eyes too—not from fright, but from what she saw. Her husband, always calm, always composed, always slightly distant, stood before her stripped bare. Without armor, without masks, without his cool languor. Just a man. Who had been very afraid for a very long time.
"Carl," she repeated. And now in her voice there was only tenderness.
She stepped forward and embraced him. Slowly, carefully, as one embraces the wounded. Her palms rested on his back, between his shoulder blades, and drew him closer. She asked nothing. Demanded no explanations. Simply held him, allowing him to stand and tremble in her arms.
Beyond the orangery windows, night was falling. The magical lamps glowed with a steady golden light. Somewhere in the house, Amalia slept, unaware that her father, whom she had awaited for dinner, now stood in the orangery weeping into her mother's shoulder.
Time flowed slowly, like honey.
Finally, Carl drew a breath. Deep, convulsive, but steady. He pulled back, lowering his hands, and looked at Eleonor. His eyes were red, his face wet, but his gaze—amber, cold, assessing—was returning to its place, gathering itself piece by piece.
"Forgive me," he said. His voice was hoarse, but didn't tremble. "I shouldn't have left like that. Without saying goodbye."
Eleonor shook her head. She didn't wipe her tears—they simply hung on her lashes, quivering in the light of the magical lamps.
"You came back," she answered. "That's what matters."
A pause. Silence filled with the breath of plants and the distant chime of a bell in the house.
"What happened in the capital?" she asked at last. Cautiously, without pressure. Offering, but not demanding.
Carl looked at her. At her pale cheeks, at her slender fingers still resting on his chest. At the knot of hair from which an auburn strand had escaped and fell against her neck.
She is ill. She is weak. And she is the only person in this world to whom I cannot lie.
"I found someone," he said. "A girl. An orphan. She's fourteen."
Eleonor blinked. Surprise flickered in her gaze, but not jealousy.
"For what purpose?"
Carl hesitated. How to tell her the truth? That their daughter was in danger. That the Academy was a trap. That in four years Amalia would disappear, and Eleonor would die of a broken heart. That he himself would fall on the battlefield, betrayed by those he had called allies.
He couldn't. Not now.
"For Amalia," he said. "In a year, she enters the Academy. She'll need... a companion. Not a servant. Not a guard. A shadow."
Eleonor looked at him for a long time. Her eyes, still moist, suddenly sharpened. Intelligent. She was not just the Earl's wife—she was his ally, his advisor, his conscience.
"You know something," she said quietly. "Something about the Academy. Or about those who there…"
She didn't finish.
Carl took her face in his hands. Gently, as if she were made of the same fragile glass as the orangery walls. With his thumbs, he wiped the tears from her cheekbones.
"I'll explain everything," he said. "Not now. But soon. I promise."
Eleonor nodded. She didn't insist. In their marriage, it had always been this way: he spoke when he was ready. She waited. And that waiting was never resentment—only patience.
"What is her name?" she asked.
"Lyra."
Eleonor tilted her head slightly. "A beautiful name. Star-like."
Carl didn't answer. He still held her face in his palms, and it seemed to him that if he removed his hands, she would disappear. Dissolve into this golden light, leaving him alone again.
"I'm tired," he said suddenly. Simply, without pathos.
Eleonor smiled. That very smile for which he had once built this orangery. Warm, a little sad, infinitely dear.
"Then go into the house," she said. "I'll come later. I just want to finish with the roses."
He shook his head. "I'll wait here."
She didn't argue. Just nodded and turned back to her flowers. And Carl sank onto a bench against the wall and allowed himself, finally, simply to watch.
The light. The greenery. The woman in the white dress, carefully adjusting the petals of autumn roses.
Night settled over the orangery softly and silently. Somewhere beyond the glass, a night bird called. In the house, on the second floor, a light appeared in the nursery window—the nanny was preparing Amalia's bed.
Carl sat and watched. And for the first time in four years of the future, in one day of the present—he felt, within himself, through the cracks in his armor, something very fragile and very alive taking root.
Hope.