Elenya found her alone in the herb garden behind the eastern wing, a quiet corner of the stronghold Lira had discovered on one of her wandering afternoons — rows of lavender and something that smelled faintly of rosemary, tended with a care that felt strangely at odds with the rest of Draven territory's hard stone edges. Lira had come to realize, one of the few places in this stronghold that felt genuinely peaceful rather than merely quiet — the kind of place someone tended not out of duty, but because they needed somewhere soft to exist within all that stone and steel.
"You're avoiding me," Elenya said, without preamble, settling onto the low stone bench across from where Lira knelt pulling weeds from between the herb rows, an activity that had become an unexpected comfort in the empty h
