This sound is steadier, measured, as if the mountains themselves keep time. The lodge is waking, plank by plank, nail by nail, and I find myself standing still sometimes just to listen.
I am not used to this kind of building. For years, construction meant conquest. Towers of glass meant control. Signing deeds meant power. I thought foundations were just another way to pin down the world under my heel. Here, in Silverpine, foundations mean something else entirely. They mean roots. They mean belonging.
The eco-lodge project began with skepticism, with arguments over wood choice and insulation, with Clara biting back at every one of my suggestions until I learned not to frame them as orders. But once the first timber went up, the whole town came alive.
Men and women who hadn’t lifted tools in years showed up with saws and hammers. Fae strung lanterns along scaffolds at night, lighting the work long after sunset. Even children carried buckets of nails like they were treasures. This is not my empire. It is theirs. And I am content to serve it.
I spend mornings walking the site, checking beams, tightening bolts, hauling lumber with my own hands. The crew has stopped flinching when I take the heaviest loads; they know now I do it not to prove my strength but because strength is what I have to give. Clara flits in and out, clipboard in hand, scarf trailing in the wind, her eyes sharper than any overseer I’ve ever known. She counts every head, measures every cut, and still finds time to argue with me about roof pitch while her hair whips into her mouth.
“You’re setting it too steep,” I tell her one morning, pointing at the skeletal outline of rafters rising against the snow.
“You’re setting it too shallow,” she fires back, boots crunching over frost, eyes narrowed. “If you want half the ridge in here come spring, we need a roof that breathes.”
“Too steep and it won’t hold snow,” I counter.
“Too shallow and it’ll collapse under weight,” she says, throwing her hands up.
The crew pauses, some hiding smiles behind their gloves, watching us spar like it’s part of the day’s entertainment.
Finally, I shake my head. “You’re impossible.”
She smirks, lips pink from the cold. “And you’re still here.”
The men laugh, the tension breaks, and work resumes. But I don’t miss the way her eyes linger on me before she turns back to her clipboard, or the way my chest tightens every damn time she does.
At night, when the work ends, I walk the ridge alone. The snow crunches under my boots, the pines whisper with frost,and the stars hang low and sharp enough to cut. I think about permanence, something I once swore never to crave again.
Exile taught me to keep moving, to never root myself where the soil could sour. But here, with the lodge rising from ruin, with Clara’s laughter echoing through rafters not yet filled, I feel a pull I cannot deny.
A permanent residence. The thought makes me pause. For years, every bed has been temporary, every roof one to leave behind. My name is carved into towers across cities, yet none of them have ever felt like mine. Here, in Silverpine, a cabin at the edge of the ridge with smoke curling from its chimney feels more powerful than all the glass and steel I once claimed.
I picture mornings with Clara at the stove, evenings with the town gathered around fires, winters where the lodge stands bright against storms instead of falling silent. I picture peace. Not the fragile, temporary peace of contracts, but something bone-deep. Something I never believed I could hold again.
The next council meeting is different than the last. There’s no shouting, no paper waved like weapons, no smug suits on my porch. Instead, Mayor Thorne stands with a ledger open, his spectacles sliding down his nose, and he smiles as he reads out volunteer rosters and donation totals. Pippa hovers above, scattering glittering frost like confetti as she announces lantern-lighting ceremonies and caroling nights. Dee scribbles furiously, muttering about budgets and cocoa shortages.
And Clara sits at the front with her chin up, her hand steady on the table, her eyes gleaming like fire. When the mayor asks me to speak, I stand, and the room doesn’t bristle this time. It waits.
“The lodge stands because you chose it,” I say, voice carrying through rafters older than any of us. “It will stand as long as you keep choosing it. I came here thinking power meant tearing down what was weak. Clara showed me that strength comesfrom keeping what is worth saving. And this lodge is worth everything.”
The cheer that follows shakes the windows. Clara blinks fast, tears spilling despite her best effort to keep her face set. She hides behind her hand for a heartbeat, then lowers it, and the look she gives me is not just stubbornness or defiance. It is trust.
Later, when the meeting empties and lanterns burn low, I find her outside on the steps. Snowflakes fall in lazy spirals, catching in her hair, melting against her cheeks. She doesn’t move when I approach, just crosses her arms and watches the night.
“You tore down an empire for me,” she says quietly, not turning.
“No,” I answer. “I tore it down for myself. You’re the reason I didn’t stop halfway.”
She looks at me, eyes glimmering wet in the lamplight. “And now?”
“Now I build something better. With you.”
Her lips part, but no words come. Instead, she steps closer, rests her forehead against my chest, and exhales like she’s been holding her breath for weeks. My arms go around her automatically, steady and certain, and the weight I carry feels like belonging instead of burden.
The hammers resume at dawn, the heartbeat of a new beginning. The lodge rises, and with it, so do we. I no longer see Silverpine as a place I came to conquer. It is the place that conquered me.
I have found more than power here. I have found peace. And her.
CHAPTER 27
