Back at home, since Burt left for the dragon knight training camp, life had changed in ways his mother never thought possible.
The mockery had stopped first. The cruelty that had followed her through the market streets for years, the whispered comments about the coward's son, the pitying looks that weren't really pity at all but thinly veiled contempt. All of it had evaporated like morning mist under sun, replaced by something she trusted even less at first.
Respect.
People nodded when she passed now. Shopkeepers who'd once shortchanged her suddenly discovered they'd made errors in her favor. The baker's wife, who hadn't spoken to her in a year, stopped her last week to ask after Burt's health with what seemed like genuine concern. Even Lord Carstein's steward, a man whose default expression suggested he'd been weaned on vinegar, had acknowledged her in the castle hallways with something approaching courtesy.
