Time did not heal the house.
It softened it.
Weeks passed, and the Mwakazi estate slowly settled into a quieter rhythm. The echoes of what had happened no longer rang through every corridor, but they had not disappeared either. They lingered—in the spaces between conversations, in the pauses that came too often, in the way people chose their words more carefully now.
Nothing was forgotten.
It was simply… carried.
Zara learned to live with it.
Not easily.
Not perfectly.
But honestly.
She moved through the house without the same tension that had once defined her every step. There were no more hidden games, no more calculated glances, no more deliberate traps.
The war had ended.
But its scars remained.
And so did the work of rebuilding.
Ethan had changed.
Not dramatically.
Not in a way that others would immediately notice.
But Zara saw it.
He no longer sat at the edges of conversations.
He didn’t allow silence to speak for him anymore.
And more importantly—
He no longer looked at himself the way his brothers once did.
But the greatest change was quieter.
More personal.
He had started trying.
The Therapy Room
The room was simple.
Minimal.
Intentional.
Zara stood near the wall, her arms loosely folded, her gaze fixed on Ethan as he gripped the parallel bars in front of him.
His hands were steady.
His shoulders tense.
His legs—
Still.
But not lifeless.
“Again,” the therapist said calmly.
Ethan exhaled slowly, his jaw tightening slightly as he shifted his weight...