The Day After

Sophia's POV

The castle woke to grief.

News moved through it the way news always moves through enclosed spaces full of people who care about the same things — quickly, completely, with the particular weight of something that has no good framing and requires none. The King was dead. The threat had been ended. The man who had led this kingdom for a decade, who had been cruel and then been something better and had died in the process of choosing the better version of himself, was ...