The words landed without anger. Without emotion. And precisely because of that, they felt unbearably heavy.
Liv smiled faintly.
A wrong kind of smile.
"Oh," she said softly. "So… it isn't just your thought."
She lowered her gaze again, watching the faint tremor in the reflection of her teacup. Only now did she realize that her hands had never truly stopped shaking.
"All this time," she continued, her voice nearly a whisper, "I thought they were just tired. Or afraid of war."
She gave a small shrug. "It never occurred to me… that they were afraid of me."
No one answered immediately.
The leaves above them shifted softly, as if listening. Annie stood rigid a few steps behind, her head bowed lower than before.
Azura finally spoke not loudly, not gently.
"They are not afraid of the Duchess as a person," she said. "But of what comes with the Duchess."
Liv nodded faintly, as if the words made sense in a painfully logical way.
