Chapter 4
DRALGOR
Iwalk Silverpine’s streets like I walk any acquisition site, with my coat buttoned against the wind and my eyes narrowed against the glare off the snowbanks.
The town is exactly what I expected. Wooden storefronts trimmed in tinsel, hand-painted signs with whimsical fonts, and too many wreaths nailed to windows.
It’s the kind of place that sells nostalgia in bulk and serves it with whipped cream on top.
I don’t trust places like this. They reek of stories and sentiment, and sentiment has no place in my work.
Thomas trails behind me, muttering notes into his voice recorder, his gloved hands juggling both his tablet and a coffee cup that’s already stained his jacket cuff.
He’s been trying to catch up with me since we left the inn.
I didn’t invite him. I don’t care if his boots get soaked or his lungs freeze.
If he wants to be here, he can keep pace.
“Dralgor,” he pants, finally catching up, “we need to talk strategy. There’s been chatter. The locals are organizing.”
“I expected that,” I say without slowing down.
“They’re circulating flyers. There was a small rally at the grocer’s yesterday. And apparently, she spoke at the festival committee meeting last night.”
“She?” I know exactly who he means, but I say it anyway because it forces him to acknowledge the core of the issue.
“Clara Wynn.”
Her name feels sharp when spoken aloud. It has weight, grit. She’s made herself the center of this mess faster than I thought possible. And the town, damn them, seems willing to orbit her like she’s the second coming of winter itself.
“They’re holding the festival at the lodge,” Thomas adds. “Unofficially.”
“Good,” I say, pausing at the corner where a brass lamppost leans just slightly off center like the town couldn’t bear to straighten it. “Let them gather.”
Thomas blinks. “That’s your position?”
“They’ll be easier to discredit if they’re all under one roof.”
He mutters something under his breath, but I don’t ask him to repeat it.
Instead, I cross to the storefront across the street, a glass-paned bakery with a garland-wrapped door and a chalkboard sign that reads Today’s Special: Snowflake Shortbread & Sass.
I catch my reflection in the window. My coat’s dusted with frost, my tusks gleam against the overcast light, and I look exactly how I feel, untouchable. Until I see her.
Clara Wynn is inside, bent over a tray of pastries, arguing with the human woman behind the counter: her friend, the one who called me something crude during the council recess.
Her face is animated, cheeks flushed, hands waving as she makes some impassioned point about ribbon placement or cookie texture.
I can’t hear her, but I can read the heat in her posture, the way she leans forward like she’s trying to pull the world into motion with sheer force of will.
I shouldn’t stop. I don’t stop. But I do slow.
She glances toward the window, sensing me like an animal might sense a shift in the wind, and for a half-second, our eyes meet. Her expression goes still, then colder than the frost on the glass. She doesn’t wave. Doesn’t blink. Just stares like she’s daring me to try anything.
I keep walking.
Thomas hustles to my side again. “I still say we file the injunction. Or, if you want it cleaner, we pull the permits for the town’s festival access. We’ve got enough legal precedent from the acquisition to do it without a full hearing.”
“No.”
“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 by distraction, 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.”
I step toward her, slow and deliberate, until there’s just enough distance between us to avoid scandal and just enough tension to suggest it anyway.
“What I see,” I say, “is a temporary distraction.”
She lifts her chin. “You’re not winning this.”
“Winning,” I say, tasting the word. “There’s no prize. Only outcomes. And you’re not built to survive mine.”
“Try me,” she says.
I hold her gaze for one long, dangerous breath, and something shifts. It’s not surrender. Not yet. But it’s not pure war anymore, either. There’s curiosity now. And I don’t like that. Curiosity complicates things.
I turn and walk away before she can see that something about her voice is still echoing in my chest long after she stops speaking.