A Fragile Armistice

“You shouldn’t care what happens to me.”
“That’s the problem, Vane. I already do.”
—Dialogue between Tillman and Vane

Let me tell you where this story doesn’t begin:
It doesn’t begin with a grand battlefield charge, or a sweeping Southern mansion, or patriotic speeches about freedom.

“I don’t need forgiveness, Colonel. I need… I need you not to look at me like I’m something you pity.”
—Lt. Col. Barrett Crowell Vane

It begins in a room that stinks of rot and blood.
A place where rats gnaw at boots, where men go to die slow, and where hope is something you ration like water.
It begins in Libby Prison.

A Fragile Armistice is the story of two men caught in the brutal machinery of the American Civil War—one imprisoned for his cause, the other tasked with keeping him there. It’s a love story, yes. But it’s also a story about power. About survival. About what happens when two people are forced to confront not only each other—but everything they were taught to hate, suppress, and obey.

Colonel Silvanus March Tillman is a Union officer with sharp eyes and a battered soul. Scarred—inside and out—by Gettysburg, he’s been dragged into the hellhole of Richmond’s Libby Prison, where dignity is stripped like a bloodied uniform and every day survived is a quiet act of defiance. He’s introspective, fiercely intelligent, and resilient in a way that doesn’t come from strength—but from surrendering to pain without letting it define you.

Lieutenant Colonel Barrett Crowell Vane is the Confederate officer assigned to oversee the prison. To uphold rules he no longer believes in. To look men in the eye and still let them suffer. He is burdened by the weight of his uniform, of his name, of what’s expected of him as a Southerner, a soldier, and a man who feels things he was taught to bury.

And then—they see each other.

Not in the poetic sense. Not at first.
But in the subtle glances. In the unsaid apologies. In the shared grief neither of them can name out loud.
Their bond isn’t easy. It isn’t clean. And it’s never safe.
But it is real.

“They can cage my body, starve it, break it—but they’ll never get the part of me that still believes there’s something after this. Something worth surviving for.”
—Col. Silvanus March Tillman

This isn’t your typical historical romance.
It’s not fanfiction for the Confederacy. It’s not about glorifying gallantry or rewriting the war through rose-colored glasses.

“The war taught me how to kill. This place is teaching me how to live with what I’ve done.”
—Tillman

A Fragile Armistice is about what happens when you’re dehumanized and still find a way to reach for someone else. It’s about the prison of ideology. The cage of duty. The cost of repression. And how, even in the darkest corner of America’s bloodiest conflict, two men might still find a flicker of peace in each other—even if it’s too fragile to last.

This book was hard to write.
Because I didn’t want to flinch. I didn’t want to romanticize trauma—but I also didn’t want to erase the possibility of beauty within it.
It’s not a story about perfect people.
It’s a story about witnessing. About risk. About that unbearable, holy moment when someone really sees you—and doesn’t look away.

So if you’ve ever found tenderness in the most impossible place…
If you’ve ever had to choose between who you are and who the world tells you to be…
If you believe love is an act of rebellion, especially when you were never meant to survive…

Then this one is for you.

It’s not about surrender.
It’s about the quiet, aching possibility of peace.
Even if the war still rages outside.

—Brandon Cloud