Sasha’s POV
Rebuilding wasn’t loud.
It didn’t roar with the clash of steel or the thunder of marching boots. It wasn’t marked by fanfare, parades, or crowned declarations shouted from marble steps.
Rebuilding whispered.
It hummed in the laughter of a child echoing through a half-burned courtyard. In the slow, rhythmic scrape of stone being laid atop stone. In the creak of a hinge oiled for the first time in years. In hands once calloused by battle now planting, stitching, mending—not to conquer, but to heal.
We didn’t rule from thrones.
We led from the earth.
Alex and I slept on straw mattresses in a rebuilt cottage, ate meals beneath open skies, and spent our mornings beside farmers and smiths, carrying buckets, gathering herbs, cleaning wounds. We wore tunics, not crowns. Dirt, no
