The days grew shorter in Wolthrope, the sky a leaden shroud over streets choked with mud and the cries of costermongers. James rose each dawn, his crutch thumping the floorboards as he donned his waistcoat, its seams fraying like their fragile peace. Eleanor watched him go, the Crown Office a hulking stone edifice where he scratched edicts beneath guttering mps. His wages bought coarse bread and a scrap of mutton, easing the gnaw in Eldric’s belly, but her hands trembled as she kneaded dough, sensing a darkness creeping nearer.

  Whispers slithered through the tenement—of King Edmund III, cloaked in velvet and indifference, decreeing cuts to “wasteful posts.” Veterans like James, scarred from Gallovia’s fields, were chaff to be swept away. Eleanor overheard it in the market, a fishwife’s hiss: “They’ll prune the rolls, mark me.” She clutched her basket, the wind slicing through her shawl, and hurried home, dread coiling in her gut. James was no burden—he bore his wounds with silent grit—but what cared a king for one me clerk?

  That evening, he sat by the fire, its meager glow etching shadows on his hollowed face. “I’m no use to them broken,” he said, voice low, as he rubbed his stump. Eldric crawled near, clutching the wooden horse. “You’re Papa,” he chirped, and James ruffled his hair, a faint smile breaking through. Eleanor knelt beside Henry, humming a tune he’d once sung in the fields, and his clouded eyes flickered—recognition, fleeting as a moth. “Nell,” he rasped, then sank back into silence. Margaret rocked, muttering of lost summers, and Eleanor’s chest ached with their unraveling.

  She csped James’s hand, willing strength into him. “They won’t cast me out,” he said, his tone firm, but she saw the flicker in his gaze—fear masked as defiance. In her heart, a chill settled: the king’s shadow loomed, vast and pitiless, and she knew it would spare none of them its cold embrace.