The days that followed blurred into one another—gray mornings that smelled of salt and rain, long silences that stretched across the house like cobwebs. You rose early and walked the cliffs, waiting for something to break the stillness, for a sound or a sign that would tell you which way the wind had turned. Each gull that circled overhead seemed an omen. Each stranger at the gate—a spy.
The city went about its business, unaware or indifferent to the quiet dread that hung over your estate. Fishermen called to one another across the waves, children ran through the markets, merchants haggled over spice and cloth. But beneath the hum of life you felt it—a pulse, slow and inevitable, like the tread of boots in the distance. The Empire had not forgotten. Claudius had not forgotten.
Margaret watched you from the window as you paced the garden path, your cloak drawn tight against the wind. She never said it aloud, but the same fear that lived in you had begun to take root in her eyes as well. Some nights you lay awake and heard her breathing change beside you—soft, uneven, as though she dreamed of pursuit.
No news was good news, you told yourself. Yet the longer the silence stretched, the heavier it grew. You began to think of it as a weight the Emperor had set upon your shoulders: a silence meant to crush you slowly, to make you break before the blow ever fell.
Then, one evening, the illusion of peace shattered.
Seris Vann came riding through the gates at dusk, mud splashed high on her boots, her horse lathered with sweat. You met her in the courtyard, your hand instinctively going to the hilt of your sword though it had long since lost its purpose.
“They’re here,” she said without dismounting. “Scouts—Imperial, by their colors. Asking questions in the lower quarter. About ships. About men who once wore the crow.”
You said nothing at first. The words hit you not like a blade but like a tolling bell, inevitable, hollow, final.
“How many?” you asked.
“Three that we’ve seen. There’ll be more before the week is out.”
Margaret appeared behind you then, her voice calm but taut as a bowstring. “Can we buy them off? Bribe them to look elsewhere?”
Vann shook her head. “These aren’t sellswords. They’re imperial agents—too disciplined, too clean. And they’re not here for coin.”
When she rode off again, you stood for a long time in the courtyard, watching the sun sink behind the cliffs. The air smelled of iron and coming rain. Margaret’s hand slipped into yours, and you realized she was trembling—not from fear alone, but from anger.
“So it begins again,” she said.
You wanted to tell her it would be different this time, that you would find a way out—but the words would not come. You had made that promise too many times before, and it had always ended in blood.
That night, you slept little. The wind battered the shutters, and every creak of the house sounded like the tread of soldiers on the stair. At dawn, you packed what could be carried—maps, a dagger, a small chest of coin—and told Margaret to be ready.
“To go where?” she asked quietly.
You looked out toward the gray sea. “Anywhere he cannot reach us.”
But the thought rang hollow even as you said it. If Claudius could find you here, he could find you anywhere. The Empire had no borders that he did not own, no refuge beyond his reach.
The days passed in slow torment. You sent scouts of your own into the city, but they brought back only fragments—glimpses of men in dark cloaks, questions asked in taverns, a name spoken softly in the markets. Your name.
The uncertainty gnawed at you more than any threat. You stopped eating. You walked the hills for hours until the soles of your boots wore thin. Sometimes you thought you saw movement among the trees—a flicker of armor, a shadow that did not belong—but when you turned, there was only wind and branches.
Margaret stayed close, saying little. You sensed she was trying to hold the world together for both of you. She lit candles at dusk, kept the house in order, and tried to speak of ordinary things: the orchard’s late bloom, the fishermen’s haul, the coming of autumn. But her voice would falter mid-sentence, and she would fall silent again.
One evening, after another day of waiting for a knock that never came, you walked farther than usual—beyond the cliffs, down into the woods where the air grew damp and heavy. Margaret followed at a distance, calling once, twice, before giving up. You walked until the path narrowed into a hollow cut by an old stream. There, in the half-light, you saw her.
She might have been a witch, a magus, or only a madwoman. Her cloak was patched and colorless, her face lost in a hood. Yet her presence stopped you as surely as a drawn blade. She was gathering herbs by the water, her movements slow and deliberate, as though she had been expecting you.
“You’ve been escaping from something you cannot escape,” she said without looking up.
Her voice was calm, worn smooth by years, yet it struck through you like thunder.
“What is it I can’t escape from?” you asked.
“Fear itself.”
You laughed, though the sound was harsh, without mirth. “Fear? I am surrounded by Claudius’s empire—his soldiers, his power. What does fear even mean here?”
She turned then, and in the dim light you saw her eyes—pale, unearthly, like water under ice. “Fear is not given,” she said softly. “It is chosen. By you.”
You stared at her, the words twisting in your mind like smoke. “How can fear depend on me?”
“You either forge your destiny,” she said, “or are melted by life and cast in its shape. That is the truth that matters.”
The wind hissed through the reeds. You felt suddenly small, stripped bare.
“I am melted,” you whispered. “I am untrue to myself. I do not know who I am anymore.”
The woman stepped closer, her eyes never leaving yours. “Be brave,” she said. “Choose bravery over fear.”
From a pouch at her side, she drew a small mushroom, pale and faintly glowing in the twilight. She placed it gently in your palm.
“You can sometimes hold bravery in your hand,” she said. “And waste it. Toss it away. But truth always comes down to bravery.”
Before you could speak, she was gone—fading into the trees as though she had never been there at all.
You stood by the stream, the mushroom cold and light against your skin.
The woods had grown utterly silent. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath. You could hear the faint rush of the river, the beating of your own heart.
Then, footsteps.
You turned to see Margaret emerging from the shadows, her face pale, her cloak trailing in the damp earth. “I thought I’d lost you,” she said, breathless. “Why did you come here?”
You looked down at your hand. “I’m not sure.”
She frowned, seeing the thing you held. “What is that?”
“Bravery,” you said. The word sounded strange on your tongue. “Or madness.”
Margaret stepped closer, studying you as though afraid to touch. “Did someone give it to you?”
You nodded toward the darkness. “An old woman. Or something older.”
She glanced around uneasily. “There’s no one here.”
You said nothing. The forest pressed close around you, damp and secretive.
At last, she reached out and closed your fingers gently around the mushroom. “Whatever it is,” she whispered, “don’t let it decide for you.”
Her hand lingered on yours. You felt the warmth of her skin against the cool flesh of your palm, and something within you trembled—some memory of a younger man, unbroken by failure, still believing the world could be remade by will alone.
The wind rose again, carrying the scent of salt and storm from the sea below.
You looked down at your hand—the pale glow seeping through your fingers—and for a heartbeat you thought you saw your reflection in the water: not as you were, but as you might have been, had you never fled, never faltered. A man unafraid.
“Should I take it?” you asked.
Margaret did not answer.
Her silence said everything.
You stood there together, the night deepening around you, the river whispering its endless song. The mushroom pulsed faintly in your palm, a heartbeat not your own.
Above you, thunder rolled far out at sea.
You closed your eyes.
….
…..
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