Location: Dain's Manor Estate, Northern Oslo County
Time: Day 362 After Alec's Arrival
The Letter Arrives
The letter was brief.
No wax seal. No sigil. No title flourish.
Just a folded scrap of parchment — weather-worn, slightly smudged — pressed into the steward's palm by a leather-faced trader claiming to have passed through Inner Oslo three nights prior.
Dain read it once.
Then again. Slower.
"She returned with a man. Not old. Not nobility. Rode ahead of the convoy. Lodging inside the high keep. Her staff defer to him. Guard rotation increased. Name unknown."
A man.
In her halls.
He folded the parchment carefully, methodically, creasing it along invisible lines.
So. That's how it is now.
Elira had returned — but not alone. And not to him.
Not that she ever had been his. Not truly. But there had always been space for the possibility.
This wasn't jealousy.
This was invasion.
And he felt it in his chest like a knife turned inward.
He said nothing to the steward.
Just dismissed him with a flick of his wrist.
And walked back into the rot of his own making.
In the Bed of Rot
The sheets stank of sweat, wine, and something worse: desperation.
Two women — tavern girls from a border village — lay draped like discarded linens across the bed. One snored softly, her mouth slack, hair plastered to her neck. The other lay face-down across a fur throw, bruises blossoming along her thighs and ribs, evidence of how brutally Dain had used them.
He had taken his frustrations out on their bodies. Had grunted and cursed and spilled himself into flesh he barely registered.
But it hadn't helped.
He wasn't sated. Not even close.
Dain sat at the edge of the bed, bare-chested, a silver goblet half-drained in his hand, one leg planted firm on the wooden floor as though bracing himself against something invisible.
He stared at nothing.
Elira had vanished from her castle nearly a week ago. First, she claimed she was going to "survey northern county damage." Then the castle gates closed. Her steward gave vague answers. Guards blocked his riders. Her chambermaid — the soft-spoken one with the limp — claimed she had taken Annarella on a "healing retreat."
Lies.
Not clever ones. Not necessary ones.
Just... calculated absence.
And now, out of nowhere, came a letter.
With a stranger's silhouette stamped into her halls.
And she had brought him.
Dain took another swallow of wine. It burned bitter on his tongue. Some of it dribbled down his chin, onto his bare chest.
He didn't wipe it.
Didn't care.
Carnal Reflections
He remembered the way her figure moved through the long halls of the keep.
Wrapped in black during mourning, green when she wished to appear stern, ivory when she forgot to be guarded — and that damned ivory silk clung to her like a second skin. Every time she passed, he memorized the shift of her hips, the sway of her walk. The controlled authority of a woman used to silence.
He had studied her. Obsessed over her.
Her scent lingered in memory: dry rose and smoked tea.
Her voice? Low. Even. Refusing to tremble, even as she denied him access to Annarella over and over again.
"She's not your child.""You are not her blood.""You are not needed."
But now, suddenly, someone else was.
And that someone slept behind the very walls Dain had once dreamed of owning.
One of the tavern girls stirred behind him, groaning.
He didn't turn.
Because in his mind, it wasn't her.
It was Elira.
Elira in her shift.
Elira half-wet from the bath, startled — that single moment, long ago, when he'd walked in without knocking. She had gasped. He had seen everything.
And that image had haunted him ever since.
He had pleasured himself to it countless times — her pale skin slick from bathwater, her curves bare and glistening, the way her nipples hardened in shock. He'd imagined grabbing her hips, bending her over the edge of her council desk, ramming himself deep until her voice — that proud voice — broke into moans.
And Oh gods that ass. Wide, rounded and sculpted to perfection. Oh how he longed to sink his hand into them.
He felt himself going hard.
Even the thought of bedding her made him aroused after all the fun he had with those wrenches sleeping in his bed now.
He had imagined her riding him, staring down with fury and hunger.
He had imagined her mine.
The ache returned. Thick. Unwanted. Hardening again despite the two whores collapsed behind him.
He gritted his teeth.
Now some foreigner had access to her?
Some unblooded bastard?
His blood boiled.
The silver goblet crumpled in his hand with a dull screech of metal. Wine mixed with blood as the edge sliced into his palm.
He didn't flinch.
He just let it drip to the floor.
The Command
An hour later, he was dressed.
Black riding coat — lined with wolf trim.
Boots oiled and scuffed at the toe. His favored gloves. His silver ring, dull but heavy, stamped with the Brenven crest — his brother's symbol, inverted and worn on the wrong hand.
A ghost of a claim.
He stood in the estate's lesser hall, the stone walls sweating from spring rain, facing his steward with silent intensity.
"Prepare my men," he said.
The steward straightened. "How many, my lord?"
"Eight riders. Two carts. Provisions for five days."
The steward hesitated. "Destination?"
Dain's jaw clenched.
"To Oslo," he said. "To the capital seat. I will… pay my respects."
He paused. Then turned.
"And find out who the man is."
"What name shall I inquire about?"
Dain's voice was low.
"I don't need a name. I just need confirmation."
The steward frowned. "Of what, my lord?"
Dain stared down the corridor — past the banners, past the broken lineage, past the point of civility.
"That something I once had… is no longer in my hand."
He didn't say the last part aloud.
And I want it back.