Eliantra stopped.
The word — child — hit somewhere the exhaustion hadn't reached yet. A part of her that had been packed carefully away in the years of her husband's descent into corruption and his eventual execution and the avalanche of consequence that followed.
She didn't say anything.
She walked.
The hallways of Hartfield Mansion had been grand once. Still were, technically — the architecture didn't change because the staff did — but the absence of two-thirds of the household was legible in small ways. Dust on the second windowsill. A portrait slightly crooked in its frame. The stillness of corridors that should have carried the background noise of a working household.
She let Marta lead her to the main hallway junction and then, at the old woman's small gesture, continued alone.
Walked to the railing.
Looked down.
The main hall below.
Stone floor. The tall windows letting in the mid-morning gold in long, clean lines across the flagstones.
