Letter sealed with the royal crest of Willfrost, without ceremony or embellishment. The handwriting, firm, elegant, but written with strokes heavier than necessary.
Dyan,
I have received your letter. I hesitated to open it. I hesitated to answer it. I even hesitated whether I should grant you the courtesy.
Did you expect forgiveness? Did you expect understanding? Perhaps you thought that, from a distance, time would have softened the wounds you yourself opened like a coward.
I remember you, Dyan. I remember you standing before me, in my study, when I finally decided that your presence was a poison too old to tolerate. I screamed at you. Yes. I threw you out onto the street without honor, without glory, without the robe that the Archmage of the Realm once wore with dignity.
And I don't regret it.
Not after the silences. Not after your disappearances. Not after seeing myself alone, again and again, while you wrapped yourself in your books, your mysteries, your internal storms, as if the kingdom was something you could shed when it weighed on you. As if I myself were.
You chose Glavendell. You chose the quiet echo of a past that demands nothing from you.
I, on the other hand, chose to remain here. Governing. Containing armies, signing treaties, and burying those whom you, in your wisdom, would have wanted to protect.
Don't talk to me about magic. Don't talk to me about what you've found there, among ruins and villagers. I'm not interested in knowing who you're making smile now, or what young face has awakened in you the nostalgia you never allowed me to experience.
Do you miss the Court? I don't think so. You just miss someone needing you.
Well, we don't anymore.
I cast you out like a dog because that's what you were then: a being who approached when he wanted warmth, but disappeared when responsibility called.
You write to me now. Why? To ease your guilt? To once more peek over the threshold of what was?
I'll tell you plainly: I don't care about you, Dyan.
And I repeat these words to myself every morning, before sitting on this throne empty of allies, full of shadows.
I don't care about you.
Do not write to me again.
— Eleanor Willfrost