Chapter 11
“What did you do with Dione… on the day of the wedding, Ramberta Coronis?”
Salvard Tan’s voice rolled through the quiet hall like a serpent — smooth, deliberate, cruel.
A faint smile curved his lips, the kind that belonged to men who found pleasure in watching others unravel.
The question tore open a wound Ramberta had buried beneath years of silence.
The color drained from her lips. Her hands stiffened at her sides.
“Why do you ask that?” she said, her tone thin as glass. “What good would it do you to know?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he replied. “It isn’t strange for a man to wonder about his dead brother’s final moments.”
“You might at least pretend to have another motive. Your deception is far too transparent.”
Salvard lifted the teacup before him and tasted it — cold now, bitter on his tongue.
The chill suited him; warmth was something he had long unlearned.
“I rather liked your earlier answer,” he murmured. “I thought the lady of Coronis would be one of those tedious women — a burden to claim along with the house.”
“W-what did you just say?”
“I said, I see now why Dione might have taken an interest in you. You’re exactly his kind of trouble.”
He rose from his chair. The sound of it scraping against marble echoed sharply.
Ramberta followed, driven by rage she could barely contain, her fists trembling at her sides.
Ah, he thought, watching her face twist in fury. So that’s what anger looks like on her. Worth the risk of getting close.
Her beauty, even contorted by humiliation, was something dangerous — a sight that tempted ruin.
“So don’t posture behind that fragile pride,” he said, stepping closer. “You know as well as I do — Coronis needs me. Isn’t that right… sister-in-law?”
He spat the last word like venom, heavy and deliberate.
The light that had rested on her refined features vanished beneath his shadow.
Dione never cared for beauty, Salvard mused. So he must have only known half of her.
For a heartbeat, he simply looked at her — and that stillness became her chance.
Clack.
Ramberta’s hand moved — swift, desperate — but he caught her wrist midair, his reflexes honed to cruelty.
“Next time you strike someone,” he said softly, “wait until they’re not looking.”
She struggled to free herself, but his grip was iron.
Her body strained like a trapped bird’s — defiant, useless.
“Speak.”
With no way to lash out, her voice finally broke.
“I swore eternity to Dione!”
The words came like a blade through her own throat.
“We vowed our love would never change! That we’d share everything — happiness, pain, everything — for each other’s sake! Even if he’s—”
Her breath faltered. The rest spilled out like confession and curse alike.
“Yes, he’s dead. And I… I became a widow overnight! The most infamous woman in the kingdom — mocked, pitied, despised!”
Her clenched fist struck his chest — weakly, again and again.
“Is that what you wanted, Salvard? A woman everyone scorns? Is that your taste?”
He looked down at her, swaying, pale, trembling.
Her pride was the only thing keeping her upright — pride that refused to let her lean on the man she hated most.
Foolish woman, he thought. She sets herself on a silver platter.
If she hoped to disgust him, she failed. Her fire only deepened his interest.
“The lady of Coronis,” he said with a slow, amused breath, “either delights in her own suffering… or still lives in a fairy tale.”
With that, he cupped her face in one large hand and forced her to meet his gaze.
“Do you think self-pity changes anything? That the world will shift because you speak prettily of pain? There’s nothing more pathetic than hoping for sympathy… don’t you agree, sister-in-law?”
The word sister-in-law hissed against her ears, twisted and poisoned.
His crooked smile filled her vision.
“Let me go!” she cried. “Every time you call me that, you prove just how mad you are!”
“Oh, I know,” he said, voice dropping low. “That’s how I know I’m right.”
Before she could recoil, his arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her sharply toward him.
The air left her lungs in a gasp.
“…!”
A foreign warmth, dark and uninvited, filled her senses — the scent of smoke and iron.
Then his lips were on hers.
The kiss wasn’t gentle.
It was invasion — claiming, devouring — the language of a man who believed in taking what the gods denied him.
His tongue pressed through her parted lips; his hand at her back held her fast when her knees gave way.
Even the freedom to turn her face aside was stolen and remade into something slow, inevitable.
Her body trembled, betraying her fury with confusion.
Her lungs burned, but the only breath she could draw came through him.
And the arm that had stolen her freedom now kept her from collapsing completely.
The world blurred — the marble beneath her feet, the trembling air, the cold reality of the kiss that should never have been.
By the time he pulled back, her lips were trembling, her breath ragged.
“Twice already,” he said. “You have terrible manners. But I don’t dislike a bold woman.”
Her shame burned hotter than anger.
Disgust, humiliation, and a faint trace of something she refused to name — all tangled within her chest.
She struck at him again, but he caught her wrist, laughing softly.
“Why fight it? Dione never kissed you, did he? That makes me the closer husband now.”
He held her hand tightly, mocking her struggle.
“You should be thanking me. I’ve given you a perfect excuse to forget the dead.”
“You’re insane,” she spat. “Don’t justify your filth with the logic of beasts!”
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. A smear of red marked her skin.
Her lipstick had smudged, not vanished — like the stain of something she could never erase.
“Steal a kiss if you wish,” she said coldly. “That doesn’t make me yours.
I swore eternity to Dione — not to you, Salvard Tan.”
The name Dione cut him like a blade.
He stared at her, jaw tight, then whispered,
“Yes… you swore eternity to Dione. Not to Salvard. And certainly not to Tan.”
Tan.
That word — a name only the North would know.
Not a title, not a family name — a curse.
Among the northern tribes, Tan was what they called those born without the blessing of Hathia, god of hearth and kin.
It meant outcast wolf — one denied the right to return home.
The unblessed, the unloved, the child of silence.
A Tan was granted only one right:
“To take.”
And the first thing Salvard Tan had ever taken from his perfect brother —
was her.
“So be it,” he said, voice low and final. “You are already a woman of the North.
By our custom, I’ll take my brother’s widow as my wife.”
“You cannot—”
“I can. And I will.”
He was a man who never released what he seized —
and this time, it was the widow of his brother, trembling before him in the dim light of Coronis Hall.
