The pressure had bent his shoulders for years, buckling his knees like the steel of an old cuirass worn thin with age. Duty could not be cast aside. The estates, the lands, the name—all of it demanded an heir, a son to carry Otto von Bergow’s blood into the parchment rolls of the chancery and the cloisters of the scribes. But the fever had stolen his wife swifter than any blade, and time was running thin.

The wars pressed ever nearer to the marches. Betrayal festered in the courts like rot beneath gilded paint. Otto carried his loss in silence, lingering at times with the tokens she left—an embroidered kerchief, a ring that had warmed her finger—but he did not chase ghosts. Without an heir, no castle wall could defend what was his.

So he chose again. Not out of romance, but survival. A betrothal sealed not by poets but by parchment. The girl was young, noble, from a house of means—renewal to his scarred and weary frame. Yet the first nights passed as cold as the halls of Trosky Castle. Though the vows were spoken and the marriage bed duly claimed, she remained distant, vanishing into the long corridors where the banners hung stiff in the draught. It was she who greeted visitors at the gatehouse, entertained guests, and maintained the estate’s good repute, while Otto bent his days to counsel, coin, and the gathering of arms.

Nights found him returning late, her form already still in slumber. Mornings revealed only a hollow pillow, her presence gone with the first light. He did not press, granting her space as one grants time to new-sown fields. But the moons passed, her bleeding returned, and he knew the matter could be delayed no longer.

It was a late evening when he found her. The meal had been taken and cleared; the hall was empty but for the guards’ footfalls echoing through stone. She sat near the window, pale light of the hearth reaching her face as her hands worked a neat line of stitching. Apples lay on a dish beside her, though untouched. The wind clawed at the shutters, the castle groaned with winter’s weight. Otto stepped within, his hands clasped behind his back. He moved to the fire and lowered himself into the chair, legs planted wide, head turned just so toward her. The silence stretched, broken only by the fire’s hiss.

At last his voice came, low and deliberate, shaped by years of command and caution: “Lady von Bergow,” he said, voice low, each word bearing the weight of stone, “we have tarried long ‘pon courtesy and distance. Yet my house cannot live on shadows and silence. Shall we sit as strangers still, or shall we speak as man and wife?”