Hours after their meal, Ashlynn and Virve walked quietly through the gathering gloom of the autumn afternoon, having left the ancient fortress and the town surrounding it far behind.
Their meal together had been an opportunity to put down the barriers of guardian and liege lady, along with the need to play their parts before the people around them. It let Ashlynn see a side of Virve that the older woman had kept bottled up and rarely showed.
Ashlynn had no idea how much courage it had taken Virve to be honest about her struggles to consider integration with the humans of Lothian March, but she wasn't about to cast aside her veteran guardian just because she bore deep scars from personal losses. Ashlynn herself struggled to imagine a world where she reconciled with the Lothians after what Owain had done to her.
