The air was keen that evening,
whistling low through the war camp like a threat.
Smoke lazily curled from flickering fires,
winding around tents and above the trampled path
where soldiers marched or lay in quiet.
The sky above was black, unstarred — a drawn curtain,
as if the heavens themselves were holding their breath.
In one of the bigger tents,
Amelia faced the wooden table filled with maps,
her arms folded, looking at it.
She hadn't said a word for a while.
The silence wasn't unfamiliar —
just denser now.
Claude stood opposite her,
clenched jaw, his fingers wrapped around the edge of the table
tightly enough to pale his knuckles.
Clara stood just within the flap of the tent,
arms crossed, propped against the post like a cat coiled to spring.
She watched the two of them —
warily, cautiously,
as if waiting for the argument to become its own battlefield.
"You're angry," Amelia murmured without lifting her head.
Claude's eyes blazed.
"I'm furious."
"Why? Because I want to help?"
He shook his head, then ceased,
then gazed at her — really gazed at her.
Her hair was pulled back in a rough knot,
dirt smudged on her cheekbones.
Her coat — a man's, taken from a soldier —
fit loosely on her body,
but her stance betrayed her:
proud, unyielding.
She no longer appeared to be a duchess.
She appeared to be a commander.
"Because you believe this is aid," he told her.
"But what you're doing is leaping into flame without knowing the heat of it."
"You believe I don't know?" Amelia's tone hardened.
"I've marched across enough ash.
I've patched up men shredded in two, Claude.
I've dug graves for soldiers I'd shared a meal with the day before.
Don't talk to me as if I'm ignorant of what this is."
Clara shoved off the wall, stepping into it.
"Then perhaps stop treating her like she's made of glass."
Claude spun around, eyes flashing.
"This is none of your concern, Clara."
"It became my concern the moment I stood on the same field as you," she retorted.
"She's not your property, Claude.
She's not some silk-wrapped wife sitting at the manor.
She's changed. We both have."
The words stung more sharply than either woman anticipated.
Claude's expression changed —
not with anger,
but with something older.
Something sadder.
"I know you've changed," he said softly.
"I just don't know if I can stand by and watch you get hurt because of it."
Amelia regarded him then — honestly regarded.
His eyes were line-rimmed with exhaustion,
his cheek still bruised, healing.
The war had leeched the gentleness from him.
And still, she saw it there,
in his anxiety.
In how he regarded her hands
as though they might not be there.
"I never told you to stand watch," she said softly.
"I told you to trust me."
The silence which followed was biting.
Clara stepped closer,
interrupting it with a softer voice.
"If it helps," she said, tilting her head,
"I don't trust her either. But I'd follow her into hell anyway."
Claude blinked.
Amelia blinked.
Clara grinned.
"What? I'm not sentimental.
I just prefer my madness in good company."
A reluctant laugh escaped Amelia's lips.
Even Claude smiled weakly,
though it never reached his eyes.
"This isn't madness," he whispered.
"It's war."
"Which is why we need every weapon we have," Amelia nodded.
"Including us."
He glanced between them —
two women — as unlike fire and ice,
but bound together now, somehow —
and saw the boundary between what he feared
and what he respected
had long since vanished.
Claude breathed slowly.
"Then we begin at daybreak," he told them.
"Training.
Something harder than whatever you've experienced so far.
No mercy.
No shortcuts."
"Didn't request any," Clara smiled.
"We'll be ready," Amelia said.
Claude turned aside from the table
and departed with no further conversation.
Outside, the wind had ash from the still-burning fires,
wafting into the air as if restless specters.
In the tent, Amelia and Clara stood once again by themselves,
inhaling the silence..
"He doesn't know how to love someone who's changed," she spoke finally.
"But neither do I."
They didn't glance at one another.
But they stood shoulder to shoulder,
as the storm rolled in outside the walls of the tent —
not rivals,
not enemies,
not females in need of rescue.
Simply two individuals
opting to remain within the flames.
Together.