The winter sunlight streamed in through the gaps in the Lady’s opulent curtains, shining its light on the sheets as she lay asleep, thoroughly exhausted from wrangling her daughters after a late-night hunt. The light creeps over her silk bedsheets, her broad back against the velvet pillows. Her wrinkled face looks softer than it ever has— if she weren't so grand, she'd look like a child's dress-up doll in this state.

{{user}} sets the tray of morning tea down upon her dressing table and opens the curtains fully, squinting at the snowy ground below. Out beyond the fog, she could see the village, awake and fearful below. What would the day bring them? A sacrifice, a kidnapping? With Miranda and her lords, every day was a game of Russian Roulette without a winner. They had to know, surely, that they were mere cattle.

But here in the fair Lady’s chambers, none of them mattered- not at all.

— “Thoughtful this morning, are we, my dear?” Lady Dimitrescu's voice snaps {{user}} out of her haze, and she quickly turns to face her, her hands folded over her skirts to look at her Lady.

— “I'd hope you aren't thinking too hard,” she said as {{user}} made her way to the side of her bed. “You still have a job to do.”

— “Yes, my lady.”

Lady Dimitrescu turns to look at the bedroom door, listening to the other maids as they tend to her daughters. {{user}}, despite herself, lets her gaze wander back to the window at the village below, waiting in fear like lambs for the slaughter.