Weeks slipped by in the quiet rhythm of recovery. I rose before the others most mornings and walked the fields alone, boots sinking into turned soil still damp with dew.
The first green shoots pushed through in stubborn clusters, fragile but determined. I knelt beside one row and brushed dirt from a tiny leaf, feeling something loosen in my chest that had stayed knotted since the final battle.
The keep changed around us in small ways. Fresh timber replaced shattered sections of wall. New families moved into repaired homes beyond the gates. Children who once carried water now chased each other through the yards with wooden swords.
I watched them from the battlements sometimes, remembering how Lila had once done the same with far heavier stakes riding on her small shoulders.
