I drag air into my chest, steady but rough. “I remembered firelight, and laughter, and the smell of bread on my mother’s hands. I remembered what it felt like to be part of somethingthat didn’t need contracts to prove it was real. And I’ve been terrified ever since, because wanting that again feels like begging for exile twice.”
She blinks, and though her expression doesn’t soften, something in her eyes shifts.
“So what do you want now?” she asks, her voice quieter but not yielding.
“Choice,” I say. “Yours. Not mine. Not the board’s. If you order me to sign this and level the lodge, I’ll do it and leave you in peace. Tell me to burn it and transfer the land to your name, I’ll stand at Henrik’s forge and hold the page while he strikes. If you tell me to keep it unsigned and stay, I’ll stay. If you force me to go, I’ll go. I’m finished fighting you.”
The silence that follows is heavier than any storm. The creek churns beneath us, carrying shards of ice downstream.
“You talk like a man who finally found poetry,” she says, but her tone is raw. “I don’t forgive you. Not yet. You made me believe I was nothing more than a piece in some strategy. You let me think last night meant nothing.”
“I don’t ask for forgiveness,” I tell her. “I ask you not to mistake my silence for lies. I was afraid. That’s the only truth.”
She looks down at the folder, thumb brushing the edge of the paper, then back up. Her eyes are bright, fierce, and unbearably alive.
“I won’t sign anything today,” she says firmly. “Not surrender. Not transfer. Nothing. I want the festival to finish without demolition crews at the gate. I want the lanterns to burn until the last dance ends. After that, we’ll sit at my table and speak plain. If our wants don’t match, then we don’t twist them into something that hurts worse later.”
“Fair,” I say, and the word feels like iron settling into place.
She exhales, then adds, “Do not make me regret giving you this chance.”
“I won’t.”
For a long moment, neither of us moves. Snow drifts between us, soft and endless, dusting her hair, clinging to my coat. Her cheeks are pink from the cold, her breath rising in steady clouds, and I find myself staring at her mouth, remembering the taste of her, the heat of her, the way one kiss in a storm felt like fire burning through ice.
She notices. Of course she does. Clara always notices. Her chin lifts, stubborn as ever, but there’s color in her throat that isn’t from the wind.
“You’re staring,” she says, sharp but unsteady.
“Yes,” I admit, voice rougher than I intend. “I haven’t learned how not to.”
She swallows, lashes lowering for a heartbeat before she meets my gaze again. “You’d better.”
I take one step closer, careful, deliberate, boots crunching against the frost on the plank. I don’t touch her—she hasn’t offered that—but the air between us shifts, heavy with everything we haven’t said and everything we already have.
“I’ll wait until you tell me I can,” I say.
Her breath catches, the smallest sound, but it’s enough. She turns away first, folder clutched under her arm, boots carrying her back toward the ridge with strides that are too quick to be calm.
I don’t follow.
I stay on the bridge, hands braced on the railing, until the cold gnaws through leather and bone. At last, I don’t feel like I’m carrying an empire on my shoulders. I feel like I’m waiting to see if a single woman’s choice can make me human again.
CHAPTER 21
CLARA
The stars come late in winter, slow to pierce the heavy quilt of clouds that hangs over the ridge, but tonight they show themselves in clusters, sharp and white against the black sky. I stand at the window after everyone else has gone to bed, the lodge quiet, only the soft hiss of the stove and the occasional groan of timber shifting under its own age keeping me company.
The bridge feels lodged in my chest, the way he stood there with the contract, the way his voice carried like steel hammered hot, the way he looked at me when he admitted he was afraid.
I don’t forgive him yet. I told him that, and I meant it. But something in me cracked when he said he’d wait until I told him he could touch me. A man like Dralgor isn’t supposed to wait. He’s supposed to take, to bulldoze, to walk through life as if everything belongs to him already.
That he didn’t, that he stood still with his hands at his sides and that steady voice of his, waiting for me to make the choice—well, that unsettles me more than his empire ever could.
I sip at the cocoa Dee left cooling on the sill, my breath fogging the glass. The snow outside has stopped, the worldshining under the stars, and I don’t feel like the lodge is caving in on me. I feel like it’s breathing again.
The next day, I find him in the square where the festival tents are strung with lanterns and the fiddler tunes his bow. He doesn’t step into the crowd; of course he doesn’t. He leans against the post at the far side of the cider stand, coat collar turned up, hands tucked in his pockets, eyes scanning the space like he’s a sentry rather than a guest.
