Duke Yorian dismissed his attendants with a sharp, impatient gesture. The oak doors slammed shut, the echo rolling through the chamber like thunder announcing judgment. He positioned himself behind his desk, prepared to initiate the ritual of dominance: commands, expectations, boundaries.

He had arranged the meeting with military precision. He expected panic. He expected tears. He expected anything normal from a Southern noble forced into a Northern fortress.

But instead—

There you were.

Calmly turning a silver letter opener over in your hands, studying the engraving like an art critique rather than a newly transplanted political hostage.

His speech began with icy discipline.

“Marchioness. Let us dispense with pleasantries. You are aware of the terms of our union. Your duty is to the continuity of the pact, which—”

The soft click of metal on marble cut through his words cleanly.

You set the letter opener down, smoothed your sleeve, and answered with the emotional energy of someone confirming a dinner reservation.

“The heir? Yes, Your Grace. Within a year. I read the treaty.”

Yorian’s entire train of thought derailed.

Your tone was flat. Unimpressed. Nearly bored.

He blinked once—slow, controlled, but unmistakably thrown.

“I… beg your pardon?” he asked, his voice crackling with confusion. This reaction—this serene indifference—was utterly foreign to him. It was wrong. Southerners were supposed to wilt in the cold, not stand in it as if it were a pleasant breeze.

You continued, offering him the sort of empty, polite smile one gives a misbehaving child.

“The arrangement is ideal for me, Duke Yorian. Your fortress is quiet. Your people are disciplined. My family is far away and legally unable to summon me back. In exchange for my duty, I gain solitude.”

Solitude. As if his frigid, militaristic dominion was a spa resort.

But what disturbed him most was the quiet gleam in your eyes—relief. Actual, genuine relief.

“Frankly, Your Grace,” you added, “I consider this less of a marriage and more of a delightful retirement.”

Retirement. In Rimefall. Among soldiers, ice storms, and dragons.

Yorian stared, mind blanking.

He had prepared for a fragile, emotional Southerner. Instead, he received a cold-blooded mystery with the emotional volatility of a brick.

And worse—he couldn’t predict you. At all.

When you politely requested, “If there is nothing else, I prefer the east wing,” he felt something inside him stutter.

His iron composure cracked—not visibly, but enough for him to feel the jagged edge of it.

Why were you unfazed? Why were you calm in a place meant to intimidate you? Why—gods help him—did your apathy feel more threatening than any rebellion he’d crushed?

For the first time in years, Duke Yorian Yronwood did not know what to say.

His dragon, sensing his inner turbulence through their bond, stirred somewhere in the castle depths—an echo of shared confusion.

Yorian remained still, rigid as the glaciers outside, staring at the woman who should have been trembling but instead looked ready to renovate his fortress for personal comfort.

You unsettled him.

You intrigued him.

You irritated him.

And for the first time since he was fourteen, Duke Yorian Yronwood felt something dangerously close to… curiosity.

“Very well,” he said, his voice lower now, studying you like a riddle he hadn’t expected to receive today. “You are… aware of the nature of this temporary marriage.”

Temporary. He emphasized it just to see how you’d react.

You didn’t. Not at all.

Your calm was absolute.

Yorian’s jaw tightened imperceptibly. He hated the way it made him feel off-balance, as though the room had shifted a fraction to the left without warning.

He waved toward the door with a controlled flick of his wrist. His hand was steady. His mind was not.

“My personal guard will escort you to the East Wing. Do not leave your quarters without permission. You wanted freedom. I expect you not to test its limits.”