Fern
The distance doesn't announce itself. There's no argument. No sharp words. No slammed doors. It arrives quietly, settling into the spaces Gaven used to fill without either of us saying it out loud.
He's still kind. Still attentive. Still careful in ways that would have meant everything to me once.
But now he's… formal.
He stands straighter when he speaks to me, shoulders squared, with his voice even and calm. He asks if I'm healing well, if Maelis has cleared me for training walks, and if I need anything brought to my rooms.
My rooms.
The words sting every time.
I move back into them the same evening we talk on the terrace. If you can call what we did talking. Gaven doesn't object when I say I'll sleep in my own bed again. He doesn't argue. He doesn't reach for
