Location: Oslo Keep – Private Solar and Morning Table
Time: Day 357 After Alec's Arrival
Morning Reflections
Elira awoke that morning earlier than she intended.
Not because of nightmares. Not because of pressure.
Because she couldn't stop thinking about Serina.
"Use your womanhood. Stir him. Help him notice us both."
She'd laughed at the request when it was spoken. An amused, incredulous laugh — more out of instinct than mockery. What kind of young noblewoman asked something so bold from a rival?
But Serina hadn't spoken with girlish jealousy.
She had spoken with strategy.
And now?
Now Elira stood before her dressing mirror in a shift again — thinner than usual — combing her hair slowly as sunlight crept in through the high window.
Let him look, she thought.
Let him see what age and motherhood and time have made of me.
She wasn't a maid.
But she was still a woman.
And it had been too long since anyone had looked at her like one.
The Meal
Alec arrived to the small morning room with his usual pace: deliberate, silent, economical.
He bowed. She nodded.
They sat across from each other at the narrow oak table.
The staff served in silence: warm wheat bread, spiced cider, boiled egg, dried fig, and pickled onion.
He barely touched it.
Because he was looking at her.
He didn't stare inappropriately.
Not openly.
But Elira could feel it.
His eyes tracked her hand as she lifted her cup. Studied the line of her neck as she drank. Measured the way her throat moved when she swallowed. His gaze lingered when she bit into a fig — too long, too focused.
When she licked the juice from the corner of her mouth with the pad of her thumb, he visibly stiffened.
She flushed.
Actually flushed.
Like a girl at her first feast.
And Alec? He didn't even seem to realize he was doing it.
That's what made it worse.
He looked at her like a man watching fire, not knowing it would burn.
He spoke, finally.
"You changed your hair."
"Yes," she said, voice sharper than intended.
He didn't apologize.
He just kept watching her like he was studying a newly discovered language written across her collarbone.
His food was left half eaten. Almost forgotten.
The Strategy Session Begins
They moved to the solar after the meal — neither speaking until the heavy map table sat between them.
Elira sat first. Alec remained standing.
He unrolled a chart.
"Elira," he said, finally returned to himself, "your barons are slowing your recovery more than your enemies."
She exhaled. "I know."
"Three of them are bleeding their own land to keep titles. Another one are aligned — softly — with Carowen emissaries. I have intercepts."
She sat up suddenly.
"How do you know that?"
"I have my ways." he said without revealing much.
"Show me."
He laid down scrolls — detailed. Not accusations. Evidence.
"Lord Irden has under-reported grain by 30%. Lady Vesch delays road maintenance on purpose — she owns the only river toll house on that fork. And Halren... Halren is an idiot with six children and no war training. He must go."
Elira didn't deny it. "I keep them because I need the illusion of unity."
"No," Alec said. "You kept them because you had no lever. Now you do."
She looked at him.
"Me?"
"No. Power. Real, useful, structured power. The Company. Midgard's ear. Me."
She leaned back. "If I cut them too fast, the county shudders. If I delay, the land rots."
Alec nodded.
"Then we replace them methodically. One per quarter. Reassign their retinues into merit posts. Transfer logistics to Company-administered hands. Rebrand it as optimization. Not purge."
"And when they fight back?"
"We have roads. Supply. Narrative. If they revolt, we make it look like a tantrum."
Elira smiled. "Gods, you're frightening."
"Efficient," Alec corrected.
Annarella's Future
Elira changed the subject.
"My daughter is four. Smart. Perceptive. She's already memorizing house lineages."
Alec nodded. "You want a grooming track."
"I want her protected. And shaped. She'll inherit Oslo — not just the land, but its reputation. I don't want her growing up watching me scramble to survive."
Alec pulled a second scroll. He'd already prepared it.
"Early linguistic exposure. Systems math. Guard etiquette. A hand-selected tutor team drawn from both Midgard and neutral trade cities. And a foreign tongue."
Elira blinked. "Which?"
"English. Later French. She'll be able to speak in trade without a single nobleman knowing her plans."
"I haven't heard of any of those languages..." She started but then remembered the strange language she had from some people during her brief stay in Armathane.
"Was it the strange language I heard from some workers in vaelora castle?"
"Yes."It is the language of the future"
"She will need it. Them. For proper, developed and extensive education, if she is to survive and excel in the world that is to come" he added.
"You have meet her" she said.
Not a question. More of a deduction.
"Yes. Smart. Beautiful. Carbon copy of you. Just smaller"
Elira felt a flush across her face.
It had been a while she have received any sincere compliments from men even though it sounded analytical coming from him.
The silence between them grew heavier again.
He was looking at her.
Still too closely.
Those blue and eyes of his unnerved her.
She had never any one with two different eye colours.
She straightened her tunic collar.
"You think of everything," she said, barely above a whisper.
"Everything but this," Alec said — the words escaping before he could seal them.
They froze.
He recovered first.
"Elira. Do I have your approval to proceed with phase one reassignments?"
She took a breath.
"You have it. And more than that..."
She met his eyes.
"You have my attention."
"Good. Let start with your holdings and estate first"