Chapter 12
DRALGOR
The cold has a way of biting deeper once the storm clears. It isn’t the sharp, cutting kind of cold that makes a man curse the wind. It’s the lingering, seeping sort that slides under your skin and waits there, patient as a wolf.
Silverpine is buried under white, rooftops sagging under the weight, streets narrowed to tight lanes the plows carved out, and people shuffle along with scarves wound high, cheeks raw from the air.
Life resumes in a town like this with a kind of stubborn pride, but the storm’s mark doesn’t fade.
It lingers, the way certain words and certain touches linger.
I tell myself it was just a kiss. A mistake.
Nothing more than heat in the moment, fire meeting fire, survival of a different kind.
I tell myself this while I watch the lodge recede behind me, while I walk into town with the same even stride I use when I enter a boardroom, while I convince Thomas on the phone that the delay is strategic, not sentimental. I tell myself I don’t care.
But Clara’s absence stings.
It stings when I walk into the square and see her laughter carried above the noise of hammering poles and jingling lanterns, laughter that isn’t meant for me.
It stings when I catch sight of her head tilted back, eyes shining as she listens to Henrik grumble about the way the plows dented his fence, or when she doubles over at something Dee whispers in her ear.
She’s surrounded, alive in her element, the center of the storm she creates with nothing but sheer willpower.
And I am on the outside.
Thomas finds me before I can turn away. He’s wrapped in a coat far too thin for this weather, his tie crooked under the scarf he probably pulled from a discount rack, and he looks at me with the nervous energy of a man who’s waiting for instructions that could ruin lives.
“You’re difficult to pin down,” he says, falling into step beside me. “The board’s restless. They want updates. They want dates. They want closure.”
“The board always wants something,” I reply, my voice flat as stone.
“Yes, well, this time they’re serious. Investors are asking why you’re wasting time on a lodge in the mountains when you could be breaking ground in the city. They think you’ve gone soft.”
I stop walking, let the words hang. Thomas shifts under my stare, pulling his scarf tighter.
“You have the paperwork?” I ask.
“Of course. Drafted and ready. You only need to sign. Eviction papers. Once filed, she’ll have thirty days to vacate. No loopholes, no delays. Clean. Efficient.” He pats his satchel like it’s a treasure chest.
Clara’s laugh rings across the square again, bright and warm and cutting. She’s leaning against a table while Pippa hovers overhead, mistletoe bobbing mischievously above them both. I catch the way Clara bats it away, pretending annoyance, but she’s smiling the whole time.
“File them,” Thomas says quietly, like he can feel my hesitation. “End this now, before it complicates itself further.”
I look back at him. “Complicates itself?”
He swallows, lips pressing tight before he answers. “You’re distracted. Everyone can see it. The way you look at her. The way you don’t move against her the way you should. She’s not a business partner, Dralgor. She’s a liability. And liabilities don’t get to decide the future of your empire.”
My hand flexes, the leather of my glove creaking. I should agree. I should let Thomas do what he does best and cut the cord clean. It’s what I’ve done before, what I’ll do again. But something in me resists, like muscle memory rebelling against a motion it knows will hurt.
“She isn’t a liability,” I say finally. My voice is low, almost lost to the wind.
Thomas blinks, startled. “She’s standing in your way.”
“She’s standing for something.”
He doesn’t understand. He never will. He sees numbers, contracts, exit clauses.
He doesn’t see the fire that burned in her eyes when she defied me at the council meeting, the way she braced her shoulders in the snow while I hung lanterns beside her, the quiet determination when she refused to let me have the couch.
He doesn’t know the sound of her breath steadying as she slept inches from me, or the way her lips tasted of heat and defiance all tangled together.
He doesn’t feel the weight of silence after.
Thomas clears his throat. “If you won’t let me file them, then tell me why. Give me something I can use. Because right now, Dralgor, you’re risking the reputation you’ve built over one woman.”
I stare across the square, watch Clara bend to help a child knot ribbons at the base of a pole.
Her hair falls forward, and she brushes it back absently, still smiling at whatever the little boy says.
She belongs here in a way I never will. The town has claimed her, and she has claimed it back, and for the very first time in longer than I can remember, I don’t know if I want to tear something down or keep it standing just to see her proud.
“Not yet,” I say at last. “Hold the papers.”
Thomas stiffens. “That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’ll get.”
His lips thin, but he doesn’t argue further. He knows when my word is final, even if he hates it.
Later, when the square is lit with lanterns and the vendors start pouring cider, I keep to the edges.
People nod to me politely but don’t invite me in, and I don’t ask to be included.
I watch instead. I watch Clara move from stall to stall, stubborn and glowing, hands always busy, voice always carrying.
I watch her brush snow from her hair, laugh at Dee’s dramatic complaints, swat at Pippa’s enchanted mistletoe.
I watch her, and I wonder how long I can keep pretending the kiss meant nothing when everything in me knows it was the first true thing in years.
The cold presses closer, sharp against my skin, but the deeper freeze is inside me. Because I know what I should do. And I know what I want to do. Those two paths are no longer the same.