บททั้งหมดของ HIS FATHER'S LUNA: บทที่ 51 - บทที่ 60

She found him on the balcony again, the same one, and for a second neither of them said anything, just stood there with the cold air doing whatever it wanted to the space between them."Three days," Emma said, because somebody had to say it out loud eventually, and it felt better coming from her than waiting for him to."I know.""I keep doing the math without meaning to. How many meals that is. How many nights." She wrapped her arms around herself, not because she was cold, though she was a little. "It isn't very many, when you count it like that."Jasper didn't answer right away. He was looking out at the training yard below, where soldiers were still drilling by torchlight even this late, getting ready the way men get ready for things they don't talk about out loud."I used to be good at this," he said finally. "Leaving.""Were you.""I told myself I was. Isabella used to say I left like a man closing a door, not like a man walking away from something that mattered. I thought that

Emma had barely sat down for her first hour as Regent when the sound reached her.She was half-listening to a steward read through household accounts, numbers she couldn't make herself care about yet, the ring still strange and cold on her finger, when a low, ragged noise carried up from somewhere near the gates. Not crying exactly. Not anything she had a proper word for. Just the sound of too many exhausted people trying to be quiet and failing at it.She was on her feet before she'd decided to be, her chair scraping hard against the floor."Your Majesty?" The steward, startled, mid-sentence."Later." She was already moving.Naya caught up with her in the corridor, half out of breath. "Protocol says you send stewards first, Your Majesty. You shouldn't be the one who—""I don't care what protocol says." Emma didn't slow down. "Not today."She heard it get louder as she got closer to the gates, and then she saw it, and the sound finally made sense.Bramford. What was left of it.Maybe

He caught her in the corridor outside the Council chamber, waiting until the last Lord had filed out before he stepped into her path."Your Majesty. A moment, if you can spare one."Emma's stomach dropped, though she kept her face steady. She hadn't expected Victor to wait for her directly. She'd half hoped, foolishly, that he'd simply let her comment about the granary pass unremarked, one more piece of noise in a room full of noise."Lord Ashford." She stopped, because refusing would have looked worse than whatever this was about to be. "I don't have long. There's still the matter of the barracks to see to.""Of course. I won't keep you." He fell into step beside her anyway, matching her pace, his voice pitched low and easy, the same warm register she remembered from her very first day as Queen, when he'd told her about Isabella's grief and made her feel, briefly, like she'd found an ally. "I only wanted to say how impressed I was, watching you today. Feeding those people. Standing y

The road north of the last garrison post ran through thin forest, close enough on both sides that six men could disappear into it without much effort, provided they knew how to stay still and knew what they were waiting for.Marcus had chosen the spot himself, two days riding it before he committed to it, checking sightlines, checking how far sound carried in the wind off the hills. He crouched now in the treeline with four of his most trusted men, watching the road, waiting.The cart came at dusk. Later than the schedule said it should. That detail alone told him something.Two guards rode alongside it, not the sleepy garrison escorts assigned to ordinary supply runs, but men who sat their horses like soldiers, alert, scanning the treeline the way Marcus himself might have scanned it. That told him more.He signaled without a sound. His men moved.It happened fast, the way it was supposed to. Two riders down before either guard fully understood they weren't alone on the road, disarme

Ethan hadn't slept properly since his father rode out. He told himself it was the responsibility, the weight of the walls, the constant low hum of what if that came with being the last line between a kingdom and whatever might come for it. Some nights he almost believed that was the whole truth.He was up on the eastern rampart before dawn, the way he'd been every morning for a week now, watching the grey light creep over the hills, when one of the younger guards came jogging along the wall walk toward him, breathless."Your Highness. There's a disturbance at the western gate.""What kind?""A crowd, sir. Some of the Bramford refugees. They're saying they want to leave the city, go back and see what's left, and the gate captain won't let them through without proper escort, and it's getting — " the guard hesitated. "It's getting loud, sir."Ethan was already moving.The western gate was worse than loud by the time he reached it. Two hundred exhausted, grieving people didn't need much t