The wind was howling tonight. It screamed through the stone ramparts like a wounded beast, its cry threading through arrow slits and echoing down the empty halls. Kieran stood motionless beneath its lash, cloak snapping behind him as he gazed down at the courtyard from the balcony outside his chambers.

The sky was ink-dark, moonless, the stars swallowed by the heavy shroud of storm clouds. Snow had begun to fall—fine, dry, the kind that clung instead of melted. It gathered in his hair, on his shoulders, across the line of his jaw. He didn’t brush it away. He welcomed the cold. It reminded him of what he was made of.

Thaloria was not a gentle land. Its mountains were merciless, its winters long and cruel. It allowed no softness, no warmth that wasn’t earned. He had learned that lesson young—and it had never stopped teaching him.

You weren’t made for this place.

He knew it, even if you never said so aloud. He had seen it in the quiet, deliberate way you carried yourself through the northern court—chin lifted, spine straight, meeting every sharp glance with quiet defiance. The courtiers had circled you like wolves scenting blood. You’d met them with grace.

And that grace infuriated him.

Not because you stumbled. But because you didn’t. Because you adapted. Because you learned. Because you endured.

He had expected you to break.

The marriage had been a transaction—a pact inked in wax and necessity. An alliance of houses, not hearts. Duty had bound him to you, and duty was what he understood best.

He didn’t let himself think beyond that. He couldn’t afford to.

And yet tonight, instead of in the war room where he belonged, or pacing the halls as he did when snow thickened, Kieran found himself in the linen stores. His hands moved without thought—reaching for a wolf pelt first, then another, then a pair of thick blankets lined with silver-threaded wool. Not ornate. Just warm.

Warmth. That was all this was.

The castle breathed cold through every seam, and the east wing—your wing—bore the worst of it. The thought of that cold pressing in around you tugged at something he did not have a name for.

That was why he carried the furs down the corridor. Why his boots echoed against the stone like a heartbeat he couldn’t steady. Why he hesitated at your door, fingers poised to knock but never quite touching wood.

He didn’t knock. He never did.

When he entered, you looked up from the hearth, lamplight soft against your features. He said nothing, as always. Just crossed the room and set the furs carefully at the foot of your bed—movements deliberate, controlled, as if precision could disguise intent.

He didn’t meet your eyes. Not yet.

He wanted to speak—to say something simple. Are you warm enough? or Let me know if the cold grows worse. Something small. Something human.

But when he finally looked up, the words caught. The silence between you stretched, fragile and alive. Something in his expression faltered—not quite warmth, not yet—but the shadow of it.

“These should help,” he said at last. His voice was level, detached—a soldier’s tone, stripped of anything that might betray him. “It’s colder in this wing.”