There is a specific distance a woman walks after saying goodbye to a man she doesn't want to lose before the composure gives out.
Four corridors. Two staircases. One door she didn't remember opening.
She found herself in a sitting room. Two chairs. A cold hearth. An unused fireplace. The kind of room that existed in every castle for no clear purpose because an architect a thousand years ago needed to fill a corner.
She closed the door behind her and let the tears fall. She wasn't sure how long it had been. She stared at a dusty mantel seeing nothing.
The mantel stared back with the indifference of furniture that had witnessed centuries of people having emotional breakdowns in this room because they thought it was private.
The tears had no right to be there. Nicholas was doing what a king was supposed to do, and the grief sitting behind her ribs was unearned, selfish, and wrong.
