Fallen Eagle-Chapter 8: A Test of Character

The first hints of morning light were a grey smear against the window, but Panagiotis Papadopoulos was already moving. His body rose from the bed with an ingrained discipline that bypassed the need for conscious thought.
He did not have to think about moving quietly so as not to wake his wife. His hands found his clothes in the near darkness. And he wasn't startled when he felt her presence behind him, her hands helping with the ties of his undertunic. She had woken just as he had, despite his best efforts, her silence a mirror of his own.
Together, they helped each other dress. A silent, personal ritual performed in the receding gloom.
“I am interviewing a new officer today.” Panagiotis’s voice was a low, gravelly thing, the sound of stones grinding together, ruined from a lifetime of shouting orders over the din of battle or roaring new recruits into shape.
The words, so mundane, were a disruption of their silent ritual. Lady Anastasia’s hands, expertly folding the cuff of his sleeve, did not still. Her humming, a soft, wordless lullaby, continued unabated. It was rare he spoke of his day, rarer still if he did so in advance. “Oh?” she asked, her own voice a silken contrast. “Who is it?”
“A boy. Fifteen winters, barely a man.” He offered the useless detail, sidestepping her question with the practiced ease of a man used to navigating a 20-year-old marriage.
“So young,” she observed, her hum weaving between the words. “He must possess a great sense of duty.” Anastasia decided to play along.
“They say he attends every liturgy. That he is polite and pious. A sensible young man.”
Anastasia’s fingers straightened her husband’s collar with a soft, delicate touch, the work a personal crusade she fought every morning.
They say.
He had made inquiries. This was not a trivial meeting. This boy, whoever he was, had the Megas Doux’s full attention. “His place seems assured, then.”
“We shall see.” Panagiotis gave a non-committal grunt. He was building up to something, Anastasia knew.
“No? What fault could there be?” He allowed her to turn him to face her, to straighten the front of his heavy tunic. He was staring straight at her.
“He is Konstantinos Sideris’s son.”
The name landed in the quiet room like a thunderstorm. His eyes bored into hers, scanning, dissecting. His trap had been expertly set and masterfully sprung. Her fingers, a moment ago so steady, faltered for a fraction of a second against the fabric of his tunic. It did not go unnoticed. Her humming stopped.
“I see,” Anastasia said simply, her voice a calm surface on a deep well despite the rampaging emotions at its bottom.
“Is that all?” he pressed, his expression a block of granite, implacable.
“Yes,” Anastasia fought not to waver. Memories of another life, another man, warred behind her eyes, but she gave him nothing. “Konstantinos is dead. This boy isn’t. Old grudges should be buried with the dead. If the boy is sensible and loyal, that is all that should matter.”
Panagiotis was silent for a long time, his deliberation a heavy, suffocating presence. Anastasia resumed her work, her quiet hum starting again, a fragile melody against his stonelike stillness. She had given him her answer, the truest one he would get. She knew his methods. He believed the first tremor of an earthquake revealed the fault line beneath. Anything after was just a carefully constructed lie.
“Leave,” Panagiotis spoke, a low rumble that brooked no dissent and demanded full obedience. Despite expecting it, it still stung Anastasia.
She rested her head against the solid wall of his chest, a familiar gesture he always permitted, no matter how long it took. She kissed his cheek, her lips brushing against his weathered skin.
“I love you.” She concluded their ritual as she always did.
Panagiotis didn’t answer. He never did.
“How is your collar crooked again, my Lord?” Demetrios gave an exasperated sigh, his hands fluttering over Theodorus’s tunic like frantic moths. “You must look pristine.” His nervous energy, a storm trapped in the small room, was channeled into the only thing he could control: a single, recalcitrant piece of fabric.
“For the last time, Demetrios, I am a grown man! I can dress myself!” Theodorus grumbled, swatting the old servant’s hands away from his collar for what felt like the hundredth time.
“A grown man who looks like he’s been wrestling a badger!” Demetrios retorted, undeterred, making another lunge at the offending fabric. Their pre-audience ritual had devolved into a chaotic mess, a clumsy tango of flailing limbs and exasperated sighs. Every time Demetrios managed to smooth one wrinkle, Theodorus’s attempts to dodge his fussing would create two more.
Eventually, Theodorus could not tolerate it any longer.
“Enough,” Theodorus commanded. The word cut through the frantic energy in the room. “We risk being late.”
Demetrios’s face sobered instantly, memory of the past week’s relentless preparation running through his eyes. They had spent hours dissecting Zeno’s intelligence, endlessly rehearsing scripts for every conceivable contingency. They had mapped the mind of the Megas Doux as best they could. The time for theory was over. It was time for action.
They arrived at the castle keep dressed in their finest, limited as their wardrobe was. After announcing their purpose to the guards, Theodorus was led not to an office, but to a small antechamber. It was a room designed to intimidate. Gilded oil paintings hung on the walls, their subjects a calculated gesture meant to inspire awe: the rugged mountains of Theodoro; the stern, ancestral faces of the royal family; and, occupying the most prominent space, a massive canvas of the Byzantine eagle, its talons sunk deep into the flesh of a writhing serpent.
It was a vulgar display, meant to awe and intimidate. It was also utterly ineffective. Theodorus took a seat on a plush, velvet chair and waited patiently. The minutes stretched into an hour. It was a classic power play, designed to coax insolence from a nervous supplicant. Theodorus did not move, his calm unshaken.
Lord Panagiotis’s arrival was not announced. There was no herald, no polite knock from a servant. The heavy oak door was simply flung open, and the Megas Doux filled the space with the force of a landslide, his presence a sudden, shocking shift in the room's pressure.
“Theodorus Sideris?”
Panagiotis was not a tall man, but he was built like a siege engine: a short, dense block of muscle and bone that seemed to possess its own gravitational pull. His head was completely bald, shaved to the skin. He wore no beard, leaving his square jaw and grim mouth starkly exposed - the face of a man who had stripped away all softness, all vanity, all weakness. He was dressed not for an audience but for a battlefield, encased in a full suit of dark lamellar armor, a sheathed spatha hanging at his hip.
Theodorus felt a jolt of genuine surprise, but mastered it in a heartbeat, rising smoothly to his feet. He had prepared for the man’s mind, but not for the sheer physical intimidation of his presence.
“The very same, my Lord.”
Panagiotis’s eyes - small, dark chips of obsidian - bored into him, sizing him up and stripping him down to his component parts. The assessment lasted only a moment.
“This way.” He turned and strode out of the door, not glancing back, certain he would be followed.
Theodorus moved at once, his mind racing.
He wants you off-balance. He arrived personally and unannounced, changed the location. This is another test.
He fell into step a precise half-pace behind the Megas Doux, close enough to show readiness but not so close as to be presumptuous. Zeno’s advice echoed in his mind:
He sees distance as a sign of hesitation. Stay close. Do not ask questions. He despises chatter.
Theodorus matched his stride, his gaze fixed forward, his posture a mirror of purposeful silence.
“Why do you want to join the army?” the Megas Doux asked, his voice a low rumble that seemed to emanate from the stone corridor itself.
“To serve my Prince and country.” The answer was immediate, clipped, and flawless - the first of many that Theodorus had rehearsed with Demetrios until the words were stripped of all hesitation.
“Prior military experience?” Panagiotis did not break his stride.
“My family’s estate was recently subject to recent Tatar raids, my Lord. I saw some action there.” Theodorus lied with a placid face, knowing the Doux was not looking at him, but feeling the weight of his attention as if the man had eyes in the back of his head. “Though my talents lie more in tactics than in single combat.”
“What is a soldier’s highest virtue?” The questions came like spear thrusts, rapid and relentless.
“Loyalty, my Lord. Without it, an army is merely a mob.”
“And a commander’s greatest failing?”
“Sentiment. It clouds judgment and costs lives.”
Their stroll continued in the same vein for some time. Panagiotis asked a battery of the standard questions Panagiotis administered to every candidate, designed to expose the slightest flaw in their thinking. Theodorus answered each query perfectly without missing a beat, the words flowing from a well of deep preparation.
The corridor opened into the raw light and noise of the main training yard. The air was sharp with the smells of sweat, dust, and oiled steel. A few dozen men wrestled, sweated, and fought in sparring circles, their grunts and the rhythmic clash of blades a brutal symphony. They parted like water as the Megas Doux passed, bowing their heads. Panagiotis strode directly to a weapons rack.
“Take one,” he commanded.
This, too, was a test Zeno had foreseen.
There is only one good sword on that rack. Do not be fooled by their appearance.
It was a test designed to rush you. To see if pressure made you foolish. Theodorus approached the rack with quiet confidence. He had practiced, and he would not rush. He picked up the first sword, a plain arming shortsword. The balance was off, weighted too far toward the tip. Useless. The second had a finely wrapped hilt, but a subtle rattle from within betrayed a loose pommel. A death trap. The third had a hairline crack near the crossguard, almost invisible. He moved down the line, his initial confidence curdling into a cold dread. Each weapon was compromised - nicked, poorly balanced, cracked, or loose. When he reached the last sword, a chilling certainty settled in his stomach. There was no good weapon. Panagiotis had set him up.
“What is the matter? Choose,” Panagiotis pressed, his voice sharp, judgmental.
He was checkmated. To refuse would be insubordination. To accept was to walk into a duel handicapped. He swallowed his pride, a bitter, metallic taste in his throat, and chose the least terrible option: the sword with the cracked blade. If its weak point wasn’t struck directly, it might hold. That was the only prayer he had. Panagiotis was trying to provoke a reaction, any excuse to deny his petition. Theodorus could not give him the opportunity.
“You.” The Megas Doux pointed to a mountain of a man grappling in a nearby circle. He was one of the biggest specimens in the yard, a head taller than anyone else, his arms thick as tree limbs. The man lumbered over, his expression mean and eager. Panagiotis had passed his sentence. And it was to be a terrible and painful- “Give me your sword.”
What?
Theodorus thought he’d misheard the Doux. The giant’s reaction told him he wasn’t the only one. The man blinked, confused, but obeyed, handing his own perfectly sound weapon over to his commander, who discarded his own sheathed spatha. The courtyard, which had been a cacophony of exertion, fell utterly silent. Every soldier stopped, their eyes wide, watching as Panagiotis stepped into the center of the fighting ring, the borrowed sword held loosely in his hand.
“Come,” he said to Theodorus. “Ready yourself.”
Theodorus’s mind ground the world to a halt. This was no longer a petition. It was an execution. A public humiliation designed for the son of the man he believed had slept with his wife. He looked at the flawed sword in his hand, then at the implacable fortress of a man waiting for him. He was being led to the slaughter. But to refuse now, to show fear, was to surrender without a fight. With the grim resolve of a man walking to his own funeral, Theodorus stepped forward. He would die standing on his own two feet.
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The world narrowed to the ten feet of packed earth between him and the Megas Doux. Theodorus felt a cold, academic terror. He was not a fighter. He was a historian who, in a past life, had handled medieval swords only in carefully controlled archival demonstrations, and he had inhabited this body - an undersized, scrawny youth’s frame - for little over a month. He was, by every conceivable metric, a hopeless underdog.
His preparation had reflected accordingly. For the past weeks, in between his other activities, he had focused on the absolute basics. Torturous morning endurance runs, afternoons spent practicing the simplest, most energy-efficient defensive postures he knew from the medieval fighting manuscripts, holding each stance until his muscles trembled with exhaustion. He drilled his footwork extensively, practicing advances, retreats, and triangles. His goal was not to win. It was to endure. He only needed to last a few exchanges. To show he knew how to hold a sword and could execute the basic forms to some degree.
Panagiotis assumed a simple, low guard, his posture relaxed, almost casual. Theodorus mirrored him, his own stance rigid with tension, the flawed sword feeling heavy and alien in his grip. There was no salute, no preamble. The Megas Doux exploded forward.
The first blow was a simple cut aimed at his head. Theodorus, moving purely on instinct honed by repetition, raised his blade to form a roof over his head. The clang of steel was a jarring shock that vibrated up to his shoulder. He gave ground, trying to force his feet into the retreat pattern he had practiced. Another cut, this one faster, aimed for his leg. He deflected it, the impact jarring his teeth. Panagiotis flowed from one attack to the next, a relentless storm of steel, forcing Theodorus back, step by agonizing step.
“I had expected more from the son of Konstantinos,” Panagiotis grunted, his blade whistling past Theodorus’s ear.
The pressure intensified. The testing probes became a blur of vicious, targeted strikes. Theodorus was no longer thinking; he was merely reacting, a puppet dancing to the tune of his frantic training. His defense grew sloppy, his blocks desperate. A blow slipped past his guard and slammed into his shoulder, the hardened leather of his brigandine saving him from a broken bone but leaving a deep, throbbing ache.
“Is this all?” Panagiotis sneered, his own movements still economical and effortless. “Did your father not train you at all?”
Theodorus’s face, pale with exertion, twisted into a vicious snarl. This wasn't a fight. It was a dissection. It was obvious to everyone watching that Panagiotis could have ended it at any moment. He was toying with him, peeling back his defenses layer by layer, savoring the humiliation. The Megas Doux feinted high, and as Theodorus raised his sword to block, a foot swept out with casual contempt, hooking his ankle. The world tilted, and he crashed to the ground, the impact driving the air from his lungs. He lay in the dust, every muscle screaming, his body trembling with exhaustion.
“Get up.” Panagiotis commanded, his voice flat.
Humiliation coalesced into a deeper, colder rage. It was the same insidious dismissal he had known his entire life: the way his project funding was deemed ‘too traditional’, the polite but condescending comments on his teaching methods as ‘lacking a certain... vibrancy’. It was always the same quiet, effortless contempt, a reminder that he was an outsider, perpetually a few degrees off-center, having to work twice as hard just to be considered half as good because he lacked the right academic pedigree, the proper polish.
Fuck that.
Theodorus pushed himself onto one knee, then to his feet. His eyes, gleaming with a tightly controlled fury, locked onto the Megas Doux. He raised his cracked sword and resumed his defensive stance.
“Attack me.” Panagiotis ordered.
Theodorus did not move. To attack the Megas Doux in public would be a serious transgression and grounds for imprisonment.
“Defend your father’s honor!” Panagiotis bellowed, his voice cracking like a whip across the silent courtyard. “Attack!”
Panagiotis had forced Theodorus’s hand. A desperate, half-baked plan, born of pure instinct, seized him. He lunged forward, not with a proper cut, but with a clumsy, straightforward thrust. As expected, Panagiotis met it with an effortless block. But Theodorus didn't try to power through. Instead, he angled his blade, meeting the solid steel of the Doux’s sword with the hairline fracture in his own.
The sound was not a clang, but a sharp, ugly
CRACK
.
His sword shattered, the top half of the blade spinning away into the dust. Panagiotis’s eyes widened in momentary surprise at the unexpected tactic. It was all the opening Theodorus needed. He surged forward through the broken guard, his body a projectile, the jagged hilt of his broken sword clutched in his fist like a dagger. The sharp, splintered steel struck the Megas Doux’s plate armour a few inches below his throat.
Silence, absolute and profound, descended upon the courtyard.
“Leave us.”
The castle’s Barber Surgeon, having finished a brisk examination of Theodorus’s burgeoning bruises, bowed to the Megas Doux and excused himself. The heavy oak door clicked shut, sealing the two men in a sudden, suffocating silence. Theodorus stood past the point of caring. A strange placidity had settled over him, the calm that comes after one has accepted their own demise. He fully expected Panagiotis to inform him of his failed petition. He was surprised he hadn't been thrown out of the castle already.
Instead, the Megas Doux retrieved something from a low cabinet beneath his desk. It was two heavy silver cups and a flask of dark red wine. He poured for them both and held one out. Theodorus, though wary, took the offered goblet without hesitation. It was unthinkable to refuse a cup served by a man of the Doux’s station.
“You think I hate you,” Panagiotis said. It was not a question. He sat in his simple, unadorned chair, a piece of furniture as spartan and severe as the man himself.
“You don’t?” Between Zeno’s intelligence and the day’s brutal interactions, he thought he finally had the measure of the man. Panagiotis would not be swayed by clever speeches or cloaked half-truths like Zeno had. There was no point in playing pretend.
“I hated your father,” Panagiatos said, but there was no malice in his tone. “He was a demon with a sword, strong as a bull and quick as a fox. After his heroics at Kalamita, every house with a daughter was vying for his attention. He was chivalrous, charismatic…” Panagiotis leaned forward, his dark eyes pinning Theodorus in place. “And he was soft.”
“Kindness is a strength of its own,” Theodorus countered, a hint of challenge in his tone.
“That ‘strength’ cost men their lives. He would sacrifice ten good soldiers on an impossible, heroic charge to rescue five rather than make a hard choice. He won us improbable victories, yes, but he paid for them with the blood of men who didn't have to die. When I took this office, I swore I would never again let sentimentality plague our officer corps.”
“Was that what today was, my Lord? A test for sentiment?” Theodorus couldn’t help the barb.
“When your letter arrived, I felt no joy at your father’s death,” Panagiotis continued, ignoring him. “He was a fool. He disgraced his name for a runaway slave. But he loved this Principality, and he died defending it. The day Konstantinos Sideris fell was a sad one for us all.”
“Then why?” Theodorus was perplexed.
“Because I had to know who his son was. The month-long wait was not to spite you; it was to observe you. I received s of a pious, humble, polite young man. The Metropolitan himself endorsed you. My agents told me you were making connections with clerks, guards, officers, and even servants. That you walked the markets and spoke to nearly everyone.” A cold shock, sharp and electric, shot through Theodorus. His careful, methodical intelligence gathering, his ‘performance’ - all of it had been noted, logged, and analyzed from the very start by the man he sought to impress. Cold sweat trickled down Theodorus's back. He was treading in dangerous waters here. To be suspected of spying by Zeno was troublesome. To be accused by the Megas Doux himself… that was a death sentence.
“You even knew my tests, my methodology,” the Doux stated, his gaze unblinking. “You hesitated at the weapons rack because you knew the swords would be flawed. And you were surprised when you found no good one among them.”
Theodorus had nothing to say. He had been read like a book. The duel, the questions, the entire petition - it had never been the interview he crammed for. It had been a test of his character, and one he had been woefully unprepared for. The hubris of it all crashed down on him. He was a 21st-century historian who thought he could outmaneuver a man born and bred in the lethal world of medieval high politics because he’d read a few books. He was hopelessly, laughably outmatched.
“So where does that leave us?” Theodorus finally asked, his voice quiet.
“Nowhere,” Panagiotis replied, and for the first time, a flicker of something that might have been amusement touched his granite features. “Not yet.”
Theodorus’s head snapped up.
Not yet.
The words meant he still had a chance. This was the final test. The real one.
“What is a commander’s greatest failing?” The Doux barked out the generic question, but this time his eyes held a meaningful gleam in them.
Theodorus understood. No more rote answers. The Doux had shown he could see right through them. “Pride,” He said, his voice clear. “If you cannot learn from your mistakes, you are doomed to repeat them. If you think yourself above your opponent, you will never see his strategies coming.”
“What is a soldier’s highest virtue?”
The Doux was brash and despised pleasantries. He had been unfailingly and brutally transparent from the very start. He didn’t want the perfect answers; he wanted his. “Discipline,” Theodorus answered. “The discipline to trust your life to your comrades, and to sacrifice it for theirs.”
“Prior Military experience?”
There was only one path now: total, unfiltered honesty. “None, my Lord. I was sent to guard our manor during the raid because my father deemed me a liability.”
Theodorus watched as the Megas Doux absorbed his answers. He could see it in the man’s eyes - the shifting of gears. All the lies and half-truths had been burned away. This was it. The precipice.
“Why do you want to join the army?”
The pressure seemed to double. The air in the room was thick with possibility. A wrong answer would doom him. As would the truth - that he was a jaded historian branded by a boy’s naive promise to this doomed state.
So Theodorus didn’t give him his truth. He reached for the one pure, undeniable thing he had: the truth of the boy who died.
“Because,” he began, and his voice was no longer his own, but a vessel for the spirit that wouldn’t leave until it saw its dream come through. “When I watched my father die in my arms. I made a promise.” His eyes burned with a sincerity he could not have faked, a fire forged in the crucible of loss. “I promised that I would never be weak again. I promised that I would protect his home, his people. Everything he died for.”
Panagiotis sat back, his face a mask of stone. The s had been correct. He was savvy, ambitious, and unnervingly intelligent for his age. He had dissected the interview, navigated the city's political currents, and built a network in weeks. A terrible swordsman, yes, and an heir to a tarnished name. But Panagiotis had watched him take a beating in the yard, get knocked into the dust, and rise again with fire in his eyes. He did not break. He did not quit. And that final promise… it spoke of the fierce, unwavering loyalty of a son to his homeland, a genuine loyalty born from grief.
Panagiotis had enough strong swords. What he needed were sharp minds, loyal to the Principality above all else. And this boy, this strange, resilient, cunning boy, might just do.
Demetrios was decidedly tired of waiting. The common room of the inn had grown dim, the afternoon sun giving way to the long shadows of evening, and with every passing minute, the knot of anxiety in his stomach tightened. When he’d questioned the castle guards about his master’s whereabouts, they only confirmed he hadn’t left the premises and was still being interviewed by the Doux. But a petition did not take an entire afternoon. An interrogation did. Or an execution.
Just as he was resolving to storm the castle himself, the inn’s heavy door swung open.
Theodorus stood silhouetted against the fading light, and even through the dim, Demetrios could tell he was a wreck. He favored his left leg, his limp pronounced. A dark, ugly bruise was already purpling on his cheek, and his lower lip was split. He moved with the profound weariness of a man who had survived a shipwreck, but his eyes, when they found Demetrios, were alight.
“My Lord!” Demetrios practically flew from his stool, crossing the room in three strides. He reached for Theodorus, his hands hovering, wanting to assess the damage but not knowing where to begin. “What on earth happened? Are you hurt? Did he - the meeting - were you accepted?” The questions tumbled out, a frantic, overlapping torrent of fear.
Theodorus raised a hand, placing it firmly on the old man’s shoulder, stopping the flood of words. He held Demetrios’s gaze for a long moment, a weary, triumphant, and utterly genuine smile slowly spreading across his battered face.
“It is done.”
The two words were a physical blow. This time, Demetrios did fall to the ground, his relief so profound it was dizzying. Only after a moment did he manage to speak, his head snapping up. “And the position?”
“Border Commander. On the northern frontier.”
“Exactly what we wanted.” Demetrios felt as if he were dreaming.
“It wasn’t difficult to nudge him in that direction once he agreed to the commission,” Theodorus said, his voice low. “A post of little prestige, and this particular one we are headed to just had a position open up.” Theodorus wore an easy smile.
“But how did you do it? Did he-”
“Later, my friend,” Theodorus cut him off gently, turning toward the bar. “First, we drink.” He raised two fingers to the innkeeper, who shook his head at their antics. “Badras! Bring me two of your best ales!”
Demetrios pushed himself to his feet, a real laugh finally breaking free, a sound of pure, unadulterated joy. “I thought my lord did not drink without good reason.”
“I’ve never had a better one, Demetrios,” Theodorus replied, clapping him on the back. “Wait until you find out where I was assigned…”
The backroom dealings had churned all day, a maelstrom of whispered threats and fragile alliances. Anastasia’s head swam with the echoes of it all. Principe Alexios’s shocking proposal - to unleash state-funded privateers against Genoese merchant ships - had shattered the court’s delicate peace. He had done it in open defiance of his father, the Prince of Theodoro, and the resulting political storm had left Anastasia feeling battered and weary to her bones. The thought of feigning a headache and retiring for a week was a tempting fantasy.
It was only when she dismissed her ladies-in-waiting, the door to her bedchamber closing with a soft click, that she remembered the morning’s confrontation with her husband. She sighed. He’d been hurt, she knew. But she would not lie to him.
She found the room empty, the great bed cold and undisturbed despite the late hour. Of course. He would be late again. With tired, practiced hands, Anastasia began the arduous process of undressing herself. The heavy outer gown, the layers of underskirts, the tightly laced bodice - each piece peeled away was a weight lifted, a layer of her public armor shed until she was left in a simple linen shift.
She moved toward the bed, her body aching for the oblivion of sleep, when she saw it. Placed squarely on her pillow was a single sheet of folded parchment. She picked it up. Tucked within its fold was a single, perfectly pressed rose with lustrous azure petals. On the parchment, in her husband’s heavy, deliberate script, she read:
A boulder, grim and grey,
Stood silent, day by day.
A flower, soft and bright,
Grew in its fading light.
The stone gave shade and might,
And kept her safe at night.
The flower, with her grace,
Brought beauty to the place.
Through storms that came and went,
The stubborn boulder never said,
To his rose, soft and blue,
The poem simply stopped, leaving a blank verse on the parchment he could not bring himself to fill.
A soft smile touched Anastasia’s lips. Her fingers, so weary moments before, lifted the delicate blue rose. She brought it to her face, inhaling the faint, sweet scent, and whispered the words her husband couldn’t say aloud or write on paper.
“
I love you.
”