Elara
The months stretched on, and the war seemed to drag on endlessly. The news grew more and more troubling with each letter that arrived at the castle. Duke Darven, though faced with fierce resistance, managed to hold his positions, and the human losses were staggering on both sides. Alone in the castle, I found myself in a constant state of worry. My days were spent working, my thoughts occupied by Aldric and the weight of the decisions he had to make. But I also knew that with each battle, with each passing day, he was drifting further away from the king he had been and had hoped to become again.
Messengers arrived rarely, and those who brought news were not always clear. Sometimes a message was optimistic, sometimes desperate. The war seemed to teeter on the edge of disaster, and each moment I received news from Aldric, I felt my heart tighten even more. The distance between us seemed to grow day by day, even though the words he wrote to me remained full of sincerity.
One misty morning, as I stood at the window, gazing at the horizon with an anxiety I couldn't shake, a messenger arrived hurriedly at the castle. His face, grave and exhausted, revealed that this time, the news was different. He approached me with a sealed letter that he handed to me personally.
"For you, mademoiselle," he said in a somber tone before disappearing into the shadow of the corridor.
My heart raced as I broke the seal on the letter. I unfolded it quickly, my eyes locking on the words written by Aldric's hand. It was a brief letter, but the emotions that emanated from it were deeper than ever.
"Elara,
I am about to return. The war, though far from won, is coming to an end. Duke Darven has been defeated, and his armies are retreating. But all of this has a price, and I am not unscathed. This war has changed many things, and it has revealed aspects of myself I was not ready to face. When I return, I will be a different man.
I don't know what the future holds for us, but I want you to be there when I return. Your presence, your words, have always been a form of comfort during this turmoil. Perhaps it's too late to go back. Perhaps it's too late to regain what we were before all this. But I would like to see you. One last time, before everything changes.
Aldric."
The words hung in the air around me. A mixture of relief and fear began to form within me. The war was coming to an end, and the king was returning, but the letter spoke not only of the end of a military conflict. It also spoke of the end of a chapter, of the irreversible change that this war had imposed on the men and women involved.
My mind was flooded with a multitude of questions. What kind of king would return? The one I had known, the one I had seen vulnerable, or a king hardened by the horrors of the battlefield? And what would become of our bond once he was here, back in the castle, perhaps a broken man, but also closer to me than ever?
Time seemed suspended in the days that followed. I prepared without knowing how. I knew that everything was about to change, that this return would be the turning point of a story I had not anticipated. I tried to stay focused on my daily tasks, but my mind couldn't help but wander to the imminent return of the king.
The morning Aldric returned, a palpable tension took hold of the castle. The wind blew strong, like an omen, and the colors of the sky seemed darker than usual. When he arrived on horseback, surrounded by his advisers and a few weary soldiers, he was unrecognizable. His gaze, once bright with certainty and power, was now closed off, distant. His face was marked by war, the trials, and the weight of the decisions he had been forced to make.
I watched him, standing there in the castle entrance, and a shiver ran through my body. He was a king, but he was also a man exhausted, a man who had lost parts of himself along the way. I stepped forward to meet him, aware of the magnitude of what he had endured and what would come of this encounter.