The morning light in the North was never a welcome sight, it was merely a bruised, watery silver that bled through the high windows of the drawing room, illuminating the dust motes that danced in the air. Flio sat on the edge of the deep velvet couch, his back as straight and unyielding as the stone walls surrounding him. A low table in front of him was cluttered with the morning's dispatches, not the heavy, formal ledgers of the Duke's desk, but the smaller, more intimate papers that kept the Valtrane estate breathing.
The castle was never truly quiet, but today, the silence felt heavy, like wet wool draped over the shoulders of every servant and guardsman within its charcoal-gray walls. It was a silence born of bated breath.
