He barely glances at it.
I’m beginning to wonder if this job is something he actually needs done or simply a chore he thrust upon me to keep me occupied.
But the numbers…The numbers tell a story, one darker than the castle itself.
The farms of Brunemar are drowning in debt.Payment after payment overdue.Family after family slipping behind, and more than half the men in the Aurevault aren’t criminals at all. They’re farmers who couldn’t pay Luceran what was owed. Fathers. Brothers. Sons. Soon, at this rate, there will be more humans swinging pickaxes in the mines than tending the land they once called home.
I shouldn’t interfere.
I know that.
But sometimes, when the tower is quiet, when fog coils against the windows and no footsteps echo in the halls, I let my quill wander.
A number adjusted by the smallest fraction.A date shifted forward by a week.A few more days for a struggling family.A little mercy slipped between the lines.
So far, Luceran has noticed nothing. Or if he has, he hasn’t cared enough to mention it.
He takes the evening reports with a distracted nod, as if they are incidental, just ink on a page rather than lives hanging in the balance.
It makes me wonder if he has truly abandoned his people, just as Atilia said.
Or if he is simply no longer capable of seeing anything beyond the cold that owns him.
I’ve only been to the mines once since that horrible day, and the moment I arrived the first thing I asked was whether Rollin survived the night.
Pax shook his head.
Luceran sent me alone that day, except for the sprites, who argued the entire carriage ride. I handled my duties quickly and thoroughly. Weights. Shipments. Ledgers. The never-ending tide of paperwork that ensures the Aurevault is the most efficient and profitable Elarium mine in Thyros.
Pax tried to distract me more than once with that infuriating smile of his. I will not deny that it was a challenge to ignore him. On the farm, apart from my father, the only men I ever spoke to were the farmhands or merchants passing through. Not one of them had ever caught my eye in the slightest.
Pax, on the other hand.
Handsome in a rugged, effortless way, warm in a world that offers so little of it. His teasing carries an edge of excitement, a fondness he seems determined to keep hidden.
But no matter how charming he is, no matter how blush-worthy some of his glances become, I cannot let myself fall into whatever game he’s playing, however hopeful his intentions might be.
My father weighs on my mind every waking hour. My duties follow close behind, endless and exhausting, threaded with the quiet fear that one misstep will make me another casualty of Frostwyn’s curse.
I don’t have the luxury of knowing Pax as anything more than the foreman he is.
Besides, secretly, quietly, shamefully, when I close my eyes at night, it is not Pax I see.
It is someone else entirely.
Someone I should fear. Someone I should despise. Someone whose power presses against my skin even in memory.
And even in my imagination, that vision pools low and warm in my stomach as I lie in bed, breath catching, heart thudding, heat flushing through me.
Luceran Frostwyn.
The Winter Lord.
The last man in all the realms I should ever think about and the one I can’t seem to stop imagining.
When the day ends, I bid Pax farewell and return to the carriage. I can feel his eyes on me all the way.
The sprites lower the steps, but this time they don’t screech at me in their sharp, unintelligible tongue or yank at my braid. They simply wait… patiently, and when I settle onto the velvet seat, they close the door… gently.
