# Chapter 31
Marcus's condition worsened through the winter, slowly enough that each new limitation felt, somehow, both inevitable and impossible to fully accept.
He stopped attending council meetings first. Then formal dinners. By the time the first snow fell across the palace gardens, he rarely left his rooms except to sit, wrapped against the cold, watching the grounds from a chair positioned carefully near the window.
Elena visited daily. Angelo joined often, the two of them filling the quiet hours with conversation that had, over the months, become less about royal duty and more simply about being brothers in every sense but blood.
"Tell me about Sanjara," Marcus said one afternoon, his voice thinner than it had been even weeks before. "Properly. Not the postcard version."
Angelo obliged, describing the compound where he'd trained, the dry heat of the countryside, the particular quality of light at dusk that he still, occasionally, found himself missing.
"You gave up a great deal," Marcus said quietly, when he finished. "For a family that wasn't originally yours."
"I gained more than I gave up."
"Convenient answer."
"True answer," Angelo said, smiling. "Ask your sister if you don't believe me."
Marcus laughed, a weak but genuine sound, and for a while, the illness pressing steadily against all of them receded just slightly, replaced by something gentler — the simple comfort of two men who had, against every unlikely circumstance, become genuinely fond of each other.