Blood and Blossoms

Vittoria

The garden below was laid out and tended, the roses my father had planted several years back nodding gently in the evening wind. I leaned against the balcony railing, the metal cool and digging into my palms as I looked down over the lands that had been mine to protect, mine to rule, long before I was ready. The house was imprinted with his presence everywhere, even now, months after his