Location: Oslo County Seat (Past & Present)
Time: Day 335
The Cold Wedding
Elira was eighteen when they tied the silk cord around her wrist, binding it to Lord Alrik of House Brenven — heir to the county, warrior-knight of Edenia, favored of son of Lord Stravos Breven II, Count of Oslo.
Her family, lesser noble house of Valthorne had thought them a great match but she knew better.I was just another step up the ladder of nobility.
The day was cold, even for spring. Her hands trembled in the ceremony not from nerves, but from frost. No one offered her a glove.
He kissed her hand, not her lips. He did not smile.
And she knew then: this marriage was a fortress, not a home.
Alrik was not cruel.
But he was absent.
Duty-bound. Honorable. Reserved to the point of ghostliness. He spent more time inspecting border fortifications and corresponding with military tacticians than speaking to her directly.
When she bled from her womb for the first time after their union, she did not tell him.
When she missed the next cycle, she sent word through a scribe.
Their daughter, Annarella, was born in the same chamber where Elira had taken her wedding vows.
Alrik held the child once.
Then rode to the northern garrison,leaving her the manage the county and did not return for nearly a month.
Elira learned early: her husband was not her enemy.
But he was not her ally either.
The Burden of Rule
The court whispered.
She was too young. Too beautiful. Too clever. Her curves drew attention, her gowns carefully tailored by her own hand to walk the narrow line between modesty and dominance.
She knew they stared. She let them.
But none of them helped when harvest records were forged. When two barons tried to bribe her to redirect canal rights. When bandits struck the mining caravans, and no one rode out to intercept.
She ruled alone.
And when Alrik returned home at winter's end and commended her in public, she smiled.
Then went to bed that night and wept into the silence beside her.
The Other Brother
Lord Dain was not like Alrik.
He was younger by six years, louder by ten, and bitter from birth. Where Alrik was clean and composed, Dain was restless, half-drunk by noon, his words too slick for comfort.
He flirted often.
With maids. With merchants' daughters. Once even with a foreign envoy's wife — a scandal they buried under coin.
But it wasn't until the fifth year of her marriage, when Elira was twenty-three, that he stopped pretending to flirt…
…and began trying to provoke.
It started with glances.
Then layered compliments—offered in public, phrased with just enough ambiguity to be dismissed as courtesy.
She ignored them.
He persisted.
Then came the bath incident.
She had dismissed her handmaid early that morning. Her daughter was sleeping. She'd just stepped out of the water when the door opened — too quickly, too quietly — and Dain's voice froze on the threshold.
He saw everything.
Her back. Her thighs. The arch of her hip. The soft swell of her breasts before she could draw the towel.
And he did not look away.
He stammered an apology and left.
But the next time he looked at her, it was different.
He wasn't just coveting.
He was hungry.
The Death and the Rise
Lord Alrik fell to a sudden fever the following spring.
A military exposure, they said.
He burned for two days and died in the same room his daughter had been born in.
Elira sat beside him until the end.
He never once called her name.
The council wanted to name a steward.
The court assumed she would retreat, remarry, resign.
Regency confirmed.
Alrik has prepared a written will before his death.
Annarella was named heir.
Elira was to rule in her name.
Three was outrage.
She didn't know what to do.
Alrik had left his daughter his father legacy and throne and that meant he cared even if it was a little.
The noble begin pressuring her. Remarriage. Appointing the late count brother as regent.
Instead, Elira appeared at the Ducal Court of Midgard in mourning black and petitioned Duchess Vaelora directly.
And here she was ruling in her daughter's stead.
And Dain?
He watched the moment unfold from the back of the hall, hands clenched so tightly the blood drained from his knuckles.
Present Day – Oslo's Edge
Now, three years later, Elira stood on the high balcony of the Oslo keep, watching the snowline retreat from the forest edge.
Her daughter played in the lower garden.
And Lord Dain — her late husband's brother — smiled too much these days.
Offered too many "helpful suggestions."
And stared far too long at her back when she turned.
She knew what he wanted.
She also knew what he hated.
That she was stronger.
That her name still held the county.
That even now, with letters whispering of Midgard's reformation and the foreigner in Vaelora's shadow, she still remained untouched.
Unclaimed.
And rising.
The Weight of Ink and Ash
The reports had come in folded, waxed in three colors — red for urgent, grey for infrastructure, black for anything flagged "unexplained."
Today, all three lay open across her desk.
Elira sat still as a statue, only her fingers moving — flipping pages, marking margins. Her daughter's laughter echoed faintly from the garden outside the high chamber window, but she didn't hear it.
She was reading the language of dismantling.
The first red scroll came from the Sundhill outpost:
"Three grain wagons were intercepted en route to the central storehouse. Guard post found burned. No deaths. Cargo stolen. Burn scars suggest oil accelerant."
The second was worse.
A grey scroll, written in a trembling hand:
"I regret to inform the Countess that the northern irrigation channel has been found compromised. Water tainted with an unknown contaminant. Fish floating. Livestock refusing to drink."
She'd ordered the water tested. Not for disease, but poison.
The steward returned pale-faced.
"Boiled pitch. Mixed with lime and pig blood. Deliberate."
The black-wax missive was the most troubling.
Not because of its content — but because of the messenger.
It had arrived via a merchant's courier, not the normal chain. And it wasn't addressed to her by title. Just "Elira, Widow Regent."
It read:
"The next fire will be closer to the manor. Take that how you will."
Unsigned.
She stared at the parchment now, unblinking.
The harvest had failed in three minor baronies. Unexplained blight. And the outlying roads leading into Oslo had become so pocked with traps and sabotaged bridges that caravans now rerouted entirely — or turned back.
And yet Dain had offered, just this morning, to "assist with restructured patrol coverage."
He'd smiled when he said it.
He always smiled now.
Elira leaned back in her chair, exhaling slowly. Not out of fear.
But strategy.
This wasn't banditry. Not at its core.
This was calculated erosion.
Someone was bleeding the county's systems in increments — a road here, a well there, a shipment lost on a map no one remembered approving.
And the only one who stood to gain from her fall was the man who looked at her not as a leader… but as a possession unclaimed.
She didn't speak the thought aloud.
She didn't write it down.
But as she turned her gaze out toward the snow-kissed trees, where her daughter chased ribbons in the wind, she made a quiet decision.
She could manage nobles.
She could manage hunger.
But not with Dain at her back.
And not without a higher shield
The Letter
That night, Elira retrieved a fresh sheet of parchment, and began drafting a letter to Duchess Vaelora of Midgard.
To Her Grace, Duchess Vaelora.
There are matters in Oslo requiring the attention of the ducal crown. I believe it is time I returned to Armathane. A personal invitation would provide discretion. And protection.
— Countess Elira of Oslo, Regent of House Brenven
She sealed it with black wax.