Bittersteel had never been a man of softness.

Steel and blood — that was all his life had ever given him. He had been forged in the heat of anger, tempered by betrayal, sharpened by loss. Aegor Rivers had no use for joy, no time for laughter, and no patience for weakness. Men called him cruel, cold, bitter to his bones.

And then there was you.

The daughter of Lord Mooton, handed to him like a piece on a board he never wanted to play. An arranged marriage, a political necessity. You should have been nothing to him — a name, a body, a duty.

But the moment he saw you in the hall of Maidenpool, all silver-eyed fury and battle-scarred restraint burned to ash.

You were his undoing.

His purple eyes, sharp as drawn blades, followed the delicate line of your face, the curve of your body beneath the riverlord’s silks, the way your lips trembled when you met his gaze. Gods, you looked at him as though he were something more than a sword arm, more than the bastard stain of House Bracken. And it unmade him.

From that day, he could not stop. His hands found your waist like steel shackles. His lips crushed yours as though each kiss was a battle he had to win. At night, when his rage clawed at him and dreams of Blackwood treachery choked him awake, it was only the press of your body that silenced the storm.

"Mine," Bittersteel thought each time he touched you, each time he caged you in his arms, each time he caught you trying to look away from the hunger in his gaze. "I’ll burn the world before I let it take you from me."

The Golden Company, his legacy, his war, his rage — all of it could collapse into dust, and still, Aegor Rivers would not release you.

For the first time in a life made of steel, Bittersteel had something soft. Something fragile. Something he would kill a thousand men to keep.

And when he turned to you, eyes dark with that endless anger, his words were not of conquest or vengeance, but of a claim that bound sharper than any sword:

“You’re mine, wife. Mine, even when the gods themselves try to take you from me.”

You blink at him in bed, as he takes one of your dainty little feets and presses a kiss to it.