The capital of Terria slept under a thin sheet of mourning. Flags hung at half-mast, banners that once proclaimed triumph now drooped like tired wings. Three days of official silence had been declared after the fall of Masques Miller; funerary trains and fleets threaded the sky, bringing courtiers, officers, and whispers back to the city. Among them, General Leonora Kaelthorn returned because duty had no calendar. The minister's summons left her no choice. She had a face to show, a salute to make — even if the part of her that mattered was far away, riding the ghost of an old promise.
They met Anna at the estate gate. She waited in the car, motionless and patient as a shadow. Leonora and Roland stepped down from the vehicle; the city's chill clung to their coats. Anna opened the door with a soft, smile. "Welcome, my lady. Sir Roland." Her voice was a ritual. Leonora answered, there were a thousand things she could say, but small courtesies steadied her like armor. "It's good to see you, Anna," she said.
The drive home traced familiar roads folded into memory. Leonora had not been home in nearly a year; since the incident seven years ago she had come back rarely. Loss had a way of hollowing her out and filling the space with work. When grief could not be fought into silence she hammered it into strategy, into campaigns and calculated cruelty. Over the last five years she had commanded thirty percent of the empire's military actions. When she moved through a battlefield, it felt like a ghost passing: precise, inevitable, and impossible to stop.
The gates of the Kaelthorn estate opened. On the porch, Aurelion sat in his chair watching the view, the long lens of an old man's gaze trained on horizons. He rose when the engine died. "So you finally decided to come home," he said with a smile that had softened with time. Leonora hugged him without ceremony. "I'm sorry, Father. It took me longer than I thought." "Don't worry," he said. "I'm just glad you're here." The house felt like a paused breath: elegant furniture wrapped in years and absence, walls that had learned to hold their grief in polite folds.
Leonora climbed the stairs alone. The bedroom waited like a museum of what she had left behind: a life in pieces, mementos that would not be moved. She stripped under the shower, letting hot water cut through the knot in her chest. Her silver hair streamed over her shoulders, catching the light. Then the dam broke. She cried as if she had waited seven years for permission, tears that were at once sorrow now relief — the relief of hearing the news that a dead man might still be alive. A rumor had come before departure: whispers that her husband, thought lost, might yet be found. The hope lodged there like a fragile shard.
Downstairs, Roland and Aurelion spoke in low, practical voices about Youri. Roland's news were the kind that served men in uniform: where, when, and how. Aurelion listened, the old lines of worry arranging themselves in his face. "If they catch him, will he be treated as a noble or an outlaw?" Aurelion wondered aloud. The question sat heavy. Titles meant length of leash; the Empire could forgive a noble transgression in ways it never forgave a commoner's. For now those were puzzles for after the funeral.
Leonora returned with a glass of whiskey. The living room smelled of old wood and a faint lemon polish — domestic and sudden in a life defined by strategy rooms and war tables. Aurelion asked the question she expected: "How will you get him back?" She took a steadying sip, letting the burn map the answer into her bones. "I don't know how," she admitted, "but I know I will find him. I'll drag him back if I have to pull him through the galaxy by his ears." The bluntness of it made Aurelion laugh — a small, honest sound he hadn't used for years. "I don't doubt it," he said.
Roland leaned forward with the clarity of planning. "Last contact was ten days ago. They should be near the Pascal region. If we deploy after the funeral, we'll likely meet them in a few weeks. The bounty helps — information leaks faster when money's in the mix." He spoke of coordinates and assets and windows of opportunity, words that framed danger into a job. Leonora listened, plotting trajectories in the hush between sentences. "We'll reach him before anyone else," Roland promised. The certainty in his voice steadied her more than any map.
She set the glass down and let silence sit a moment, tasting the sharp metal tang of fear. "I'm sure of that," she said finally, but the phrase carried a caveat: "But I'm afraid of one thing — what if he truly is gone?" The question was less rhetorical than a confession of dread. In that room, for a breath, the practical plans and the Grand Strategy thinned to a single human knot: the possibility that hope could be wrong.