Time: Day 334 After Alec's Arrival
Locations: Oslo's Borderlands → Lord Dain's Manor → Secret Gathering
The Broken Shadow
They still called him "lord."
They still bowed when he passed.
But Dain knew better.
He was not a ruler.
He was a shadow cast by a dead brother's name.
Everything Elira touched turned to grace. Her presence commanded the room. Her voice stilled tempers. Even her silence had weight.
And she had never once looked at him the way he had dreamed.
He remembered that day — three winters ago.
The towel slipping, her skin slick with steam. The line of her hip. The curve of her thighs. Her breasts, full and bare as snowlight.
He'd stood there.
Felt shame.
Felt rage.
Felt a need that curdled into hatred.
He tried to bury it.
Then he watched her rise.
Ruling in Alrik's name. Refusing suitors. Holding court with the poise of a duchess, not a widow.
The people called her the Rose of Oslo.
He wanted to crush that rose in his hand.
And then own it.
The Plan Begins
The saboteurs were not hard to find.
Ex-soldiers from the Carowen frontier. Bandits with loyalty only to silver. Merchants denied mining rights. Even a monk exiled for drunkenness.
Dain met them not in the county seat — too risky — but in the abandoned wine cellar beneath a burned-out watchtower, ten miles east of Brenven Hall.
They didn't speak in full names. They didn't wear crests. And they didn't care what he promised so long as he paid.
He gave them maps.
Target the canal bridges.Delay grain shipments from Sundhill.Burn the outer fields at night — never close enough to kill, just to undermine.
They understood.
Sabotage didn't need chaos.
Just erosion.
Dain stood over the table, pointing at routes with a gloved finger.
"If you're caught, you were hired by eastern smugglers."
"What's our goal?" one of them asked, chewing on a leather strap.
"Disruption. Humiliation. Panic."
"War?"
"No," Dain said calmly. "Not yet. We don't need war."
He looked at the map.
"We need her desperate."
Entitlement Rotting into Vengeance
Back at his manor, Dain sat alone in his study, wine untouched beside him.
A painting of Elira — from her first year of marriage — hung across from him. Alrik had it commissioned. She wore a silver gown. She hadn't aged since. If anything, she'd become more devastating.
Her beauty wasn't soft.
It was structured. Unyielding. Composed like a blade, not a blossom.
And she had never once yielded it to him.
"She was supposed to be mine," he muttered.
The Bath Incident: As Dain Remembers It
He hadn't meant to open the door.
He'd gone to ask about the treasury logs — a pretense, really — just something to bring him near her that morning. The servants had said she was in her chamber, alone. No guards. No husband.
The door wasn't even latched.
Just… cracked.
And she was there.
Back turned, her skin still wet from the bathwater, curls of steam rising around her in the pale light from the window. The towel was on the bench. Not on her. Her spine was straight, graceful. Her arms were lifted slightly as she reached for something — a comb? A wrap?
He couldn't remember.
All he remembered was the curve of her hips.
The way they tapered from a narrow, muscled waist into full, feminine volume. Not soft, but shaped. Defined. Her thighs were thick, smooth, the kind of body sculpted by riding and posture and practiced stillness. Her breasts — not just large, but perfectly placed — rose with her breath, proud and natural, capped in a dusky pink that did something to his throat.
He hadn't breathed.
He hadn't dared move.
But he hadn't turned away either.
Her wet skin shimmered, kissed with droplets that caught the morning sun like dew over marble. He could see the slight arch of her foot, the tension in her calves, the delicate lift of her shoulder blades as she twisted her hair up, one-handed, without modesty — because she had no reason to expect a man would violate her privacy.
And yet, he had.
And in that moment, what he felt wasn't shame.
It was ownership.
Or the burning absence of it.
He should have had that.
Not his brother. Not the icy corpse they called a husband. Not the political arrangement cooked by the crown's advisors.
Him.
He should have been the one to stand behind her in that steam.
To press his hands against that waist.
To own that mouth. That power.
She turned slightly, and he caught the first glimpse of her full form — not in profile, but near frontal: heavy breasts moving with motion, the dark tuft of her womanhood neatly trimmed but exposed, the way her thighs met with a natural tension he'd fantasized about ever since.
She saw him a moment later.
Her eyes widened, her mouth parted.
She pulled the towel in front of her body, fast — but not before he saw everything.
Not before the image burned into him like a brand.
She'd gasped his name.
"Dain—!"
Then slammed the door.
He had left.
Of course he had.
Any longer and he might've walked into that room. Dropped to his knees. Or worse — touched her without permission. Claimed what should have been his.
But he didn't forget.
Not in the days after.
Not in the years.
Not even now.
He saw that body when he closed his eyes.
He saw it when he fucked a tavern girl from behind, nails in her waist, pretending she was Elira the whole time.
He wanted her because she had power.
Because she was beautiful.
Because she never offered it.
That was the worst part.
She never once treated him like he mattered.
And now she ruled. Wore black like a queen. Stood in court with her daughter in her arms and dared to look down at him with diplomatic patience.
Like he was a cousin. A noble fly. A footnote.
But he remembered her bare.
Naked.
Human.
And if he could reduce her to that — just once — then maybe he could finally be free of her.
Or maybe he never wanted to be.
__
He poured the wine and didn't drink it.
"They whisper about her, you know. All those men at court, and she pretends she doesn't notice. She thinks silence makes her noble. It makes her hollow."
He stood, crossing to the window.
"They'll see soon. What she can't hold. What she can't protect. Then she'll crawl back. And when she does…"
He let the sentence dangle.
He didn't want her forgiveness.
He wanted her on her knees.
False Piety, Real Rot
He visited the outer chapel that week. Sat in the pews like a devout noble.
Even confessed to a priest.
But not to cleanse himself.
To plant whispers.
"She meets envoys without a blessing.""I hear she hires outsiders to draft her letters.""A woman without a husband is… fragile, don't you think?"
Not accusations.
Just questions.
The kind that fester.
The kind that spread.
Final Reflection – The First Fire
The fire started near the grain depot at Sundhill. A small outpost. A flash of night flame. No casualties.
But the wheat stores were gone.
Elira would hear of it by morning.
And Dain would smile behind his goblet, watching the reports pour in — each one like ash against her perfection.