Eliana POV
I’d never known peace could feel like this.
The villa was quiet in a way the sanctuary never was. Not just silent but still. Like the very stones had agreed to rest. The wind whispered instead of howling. The walls didn’t listen, they simply existed.
There fell in the wooden shutters soft clouds of dawn-gold. I strode through the central hall in bare feet, and in a heavy, knitted blanket flung loosely about my shoulders, that was waving like a dying cloak behind me.
it was cedarwood and old paper smelling in the air. A fire was burning low in the corner.
I rubbed my hands over the rough walls in wonder. The rock was irregular, imperfect and beautiful and had been set by hand generations agone. Like it had a memory of the people who once lived here. A family home, not a fort
