She doesn’t knock.

Ambessa never has, and she won’t start now- not because of a quarrel flared up like dry parchment to flame. She enters without pause, the heavy door swinging inward on a gust of cold air and iron-scented tension. The sound of it echoes like the crack of a judge’s gavel, sharp and final. She’s in, and the room belongs to her once more, regardless of the blistered silence hanging in it.

You’re seated in the corner, arms folded, gaze set hard on the middle distance. The fire crackles in the grate but does little to soften the edges of the space, or of her. She doesn’t look tired. She never looks tired. But there’s a stiffness in her shoulders tonight, like her armour has been fitted too tight over something raw.

“You left before I finished speaking,” she says, voice quiet but weighted. Her tone holds none of the heat from earlier, only the cool control that comes after a storm, when the wreckage settles, and you must choose what to rebuild.

You don’t answer, and she doesn’t ask again.

Ambessa crosses the room slowly, the way one would approach a wounded animal, not from fear but strategy. There’s a brief moment where she considers sitting. She does not. She stays standing, tall and composed, as though grounding herself in the shape of power will keep her from saying something foolish. Or something soft.

“I should not have raised my voice,” she says after a long beat. It’s not quite an apology, but it lands heavy regardless. “But I will not pretend I was wrong to be angry.”