“Dralgor, she’s turning this into a cause. If we let this, it’s going to become a headline. Small-town heroine fights billionaire tycoon to save her dead grandmother’s dream?—”
“I said no.” I stop outside a rusted fence bordering the town square, the slats crooked and half-buried in snow. “If we try to break her with legalities, she’ll turn the resistance into a crusade. And crusades breed martyrs. I don’t need martyrs.”
Thomas exhales loudly, frustrated. “So we wait?”
“We watch,” I correct. “And when the lodge fails under its own weight, when the pipes burst and the power shorts and the guests start complaining, she’ll come to me. She’ll have no choice.”
He opens his mouth, then closes it again. Probably wise.
I resume my walk, not because there’s anything new to see but because I need to remind myself why I’m here. I don’t build resorts because I want to coddle tourists. I build them because they create empires. Influence. Control. You plant something permanent in a town like this, and it becomes yours. The air shifts. The money flows. You become inevitable.
And yet there’s something about the way she stands against me that doesn’t feel like typical resistance. She doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t hedge. She throws herself into every word like she’s used to being dismissed and has decided never to accept it again.
I know that feeling.
Henrik Mossbloom is waiting outside his forge when I pass. The old orc hasn’t aged a day since I saw him last, still wearing that soot-covered apron like a badge of honor, his arms folded across his chest as he leans on the rail and watches me approach like he’s expecting me to explain myself.
“Henrik,” I say, offering a nod.
“Dralgor.”
His voice is smoke and gravel. He doesn’t smile. He doesn’t offer his hand. Just stares.
“You know I came to speak with you,” I say.
“You always come to speak when you’ve already decided.”
“Sometimes decisions require confirmation.”
He huffs a breath through his tusks. “And sometimes confirmation is just a polite way to ignore history.”
“I’m not here to dig up bones.”
“Then why are you standing on top of a graveyard?”
I glance back toward the ridge. The lodge is just visible from here, crouched against the tree line like a house that doesn’t want to be looked at. The snow drifts have piled up along its gutters, and the chimney curls smoke like it’s trying to remember how to breathe.
“You think I should walk away?”
“I think,” Henrik says slowly, “that you’ve spent so long conquering that you’ve forgotten how to ask.”
“That building is rotting.”
“And still it stands.”
“That woman is impossible.”
“And yet you’re still talking about her.”
I don’t answer. I don’t need to. He knows me well enough to hear the things I don’t say.
I leave him standing there and make my way back toward the inn. The wind cuts sharper now, the cold less numbed bydistraction, and every step feels like it’s grinding into frozen ground that doesn’t want me here.
Clara is standing in the middle of the street near the town square when I reach it. Her hands are full of flyers, her cheeks flushed with effort, and her coat open just enough that I can see the edge of her scarf is unraveling. She’s laughing at something an older woman just said, and when she turns, her eyes land on me again.
This time, she steps forward.
“You like what you see, Mr. Veyr?” she asks, voice loud enough to carry across the crowd. “That’s community. Not something you can bulldoze and replace with valet parking.”
