Location: Midgard Company HQ – Serina's Administrative Office
Time: Day 364 After Alec's Arrival
It's too quiet without him.
The quills are organized. The scrolls are sorted. Every ledger has been cataloged and filed by region, trade weight, and tax percentage. My notes are complete. Too complete.
The oil lamp burns low now, casting soft amber halos across the table — his table. The one Alec designed and built with his own hands, joints so seamless they feel like living bone. He adjusted the height for my reach. Made the drawers pull silently. Aligned the legs for balance, even on Midgard's warped stone floors.
I remember what he said when he delivered it.
"Every desk reflects its owner's thinking. If yours is structured, I know you are."
His voice had been neutral. Unflinching. Practically mechanical.But I'd noticed the flicker in his eyes. The twitch in his left hand. The way he almost — almost — brushed my sleeve and then didn't.
Gods, it's ridiculous how much I remember.
It's only been five days since he left for Oslo. Five days.And yet the entire room feels... thinner. As if his absence peeled back a layer of air I didn't realize was holding everything in place.
I lean back in the chair — stiff, upright, engineered for posture, just as he prefers — and stare through the slanted glass window that overlooks the northern merchant street. I've looked out at this view a hundred times. Calculated profit lines, timber convoys, water flow into the grain canal.
But today, I'm not looking at trade.
I'm wondering if Elira has touched him yet.
The thought hits like heat pooling behind my ribs. Not jealousy, exactly. Not rage. Something softer. But sharper. Like the edge of a pin pressed against a nerve.Curiosity. Longing. A strangely pleasurable ache.
I asked her to do it. Gods help me, I asked her.
I asked the most experienced, composed, sensually devastating woman I've ever known to use her womanhood — to stir him. To wake him. To help him see us.
What kind of foolish girl makes such a dangerous request of someone like Elira?
She didn't laugh. Not truly. But the way she looked at me…That half-amused, half-knowing smile — it stripped me bare.Because she knew. Knew exactly what I wanted. Knew how badly I wanted him to see me, not as the duchess's dutiful heir, but as me. Serina. Desirable. Dangerous in my own way.
She knows how to be seen. How to fill a room without trying.How to unsettle a man just by shifting her weight onto one hip. How to let a silk gown slip an inch off one shoulder and make it look accidental.
Has Alec seen her in one of those soft morning shifts yet?The ones that cling like water to her skin?Has he stood close enough to feel the heat radiating from her bare arms?Has he heard her laugh when she's not guarded?Has he watched her brush that endless auburn hair, loose and shining like dusk light over honeyed stone?
He acts like he's never touched a woman.Maybe he hasn't.Maybe she'll be his first.Or maybe… I will.
And I don't hate her for it. That's the worst part.
I admire her.
Not because she's beautiful — though she is, in a way that makes older men nervous and younger ones foolish — but because she's complete. She walks into a room and bends it around her without even raising her voice. She commands by presence alone.
She's been married. She's known the weight of a man's body.She's been taken. Loved. Maybe even hurt.She knows.
I've never even been kissed.
And yet I want to compete.
Not by mimicking her. I'll never have her curves shaped by time and motherhood. Her calm. Her gravity.
But I have youth. Energy. Discipline. Curiosity.And I've been sculpting myself since the night she took me aside in the baths and whispered advice like secret spells.
"Your frame is long and narrow," she said, fingers tracing my spine. "You may never fill out like me. But you can shape. Stretch. Tilt. Tense. You can glow — if you learn what lights you."
Since then, I've stretched every dawn. Rolled my hips, practiced breath control, taken the root teas — bitter as betrayal, but effective.
I've studied grooming. What oils make skin shine without clogging. How to buff my nails until they catch candlelight. What to eat — or avoid — before a night when one might need to be… memorable.
She taught me how to wait without standing still.
Because when Alec does see me — truly sees me — I want his breath to catch. I want his brain to stutter. I want every calculation to fail the moment he sees me as a woman.
But I know something Elira doesn't.Something even Alec doesn't realize yet.
It won't just be my figure that takes him.It'll be the way I think. The way I speak in blueprints and iron weights. The way I challenge his models and refine his forecasts. The way I say things no one else dares because I know he respects the sound of logic more than the scent of perfume.
That's how I'll win him.
And if Elira reaches him first?
Then I'll simply outlast her.
Because I'm not here for a touch, or a glance, or even a stolen night.
I'm here for everything.
The man.
The mind.
The empire.
And may the gods have mercy the day Alec Alenia finally turns to face me —— and realizes just how far I've come.