Mila didn't dare linger. She slipped out of the study and pulled the door shut behind her.
The moment it clicked closed, her eyes went red.
And that was exactly what Rohan wanted to see. If you want someone to be unable to let go of you, make them invest as much thought and feeling into you as possible.
That night, Rohan went back to his room and lay down without calling for Mila. His mind was on the war he knew was coming.
The original owner's memories held nothing about any war, which gave Rohan a headache.
The guy had never once considered that his beloved might be working to destroy everything he had.
For now, Rohan's best hope was whatever reward was waiting behind Mila's hundred-percent obedience.
Come on. Hit a hundred already.
Meanwhile, Mila was alone in her room, sinking into a quiet kind of sadness. She couldn't figure out why her lord had gone cold on her so suddenly.
The next morning, Rohan stood in front of the mirror getting himself put together. Mila could only watch from the side, he acted like she wasn't in the room at all.
The dramatic change in his personality had gotten deep under her skin. He was focused now, actively building the territory up, laying groundwork for a war that could arrive any day. There were so many pieces of him she couldn't make sense of, and she was supposed to be his closest attendant. But all she could think about was what she might have done wrong to make him pull away like this.
That same day, Rohan took out another four hundred gold coins to start recruiting, putting together a small standing force from scratch.
His moves hadn't gone unnoticed. Galecrest Territory next door was watching.
…
Selina sat in her lavishly decorated sitting room, red wine in hand, brow furrowed, listening to her subordinate's report.
"My lady, Lord Rohan of Argentmere has been making a lot of moves lately. He's cut taxes, started recruiting soldiers, and has his people fishing the lake in large numbers. It looks like he's getting ready for war on every front." The subordinate bowed respectfully.
Selina took a slow sip of wine. A flash of anger crossed her eyes. "That Rohan, he used to hang on my every word like a lapdog. Didn't he say he was going to sell off his warhorses? Why is he suddenly raising an army?!"
And on top of everything, that lying snake had written her out of her own money.
The thought of that letter made her slam her wine glass down onto the floor. The sound of it shattering cut through the silence of the room like a knife.
"My lady, please calm down!" The subordinate kept their head low, not daring to look at her.
It was starting to dawn on her that she might have been played.
She wanted nothing more than to march over there and confront him directly. But a part of her was still holding out hope that she'd misread the situation, so she decided to keep playing her role.
The noble daughter under her father's thumb, desperate to be with the man she loved.
She sat down and wrote him a letter, something to probe him with and see what he'd give away.
Rohan… are you giving up on me? Are you really just throwing away everything we had?
…
When Rohan read the letter with its accusatory undertone, a cold smirk crossed his face.
He sat down and wrote back right away, smooth, reassuring, the kind of thing that would keep her settled.
The story he spun: he had planned to sell the warhorses, but that stubborn military commander of his had flat-out refused. So he'd been forced to cast a wider net, flooding the market with silver fish to scrape together the dowry. And the new recruits? Those were to deal with the commander, who was showing signs of open defiance. He even suggested that Selina convince her father to send troops, so they could work from both sides and crush the rebellion together.
Whether she believed it was beside the point. The whole goal was to buy time.
The mass fishing was going to do real damage to the lake's ecosystem, Rohan knew that. But he didn't have the luxury of worrying about it. He was ready for war whenever it came.
And the daily fish sales were already pulling in around seventy-five gold coins, far faster than squeezing it out of his people had ever been.
The original owner had always treated the lake as the foundation of his comfortable life. As long as it was managed carefully, it would keep him set. The wellbeing of his people? Nobles didn't lose sleep over that.
Right now, all Rohan cared about was pushing Mila's obedience to a hundred and unlocking whatever the system had waiting for him.
…
Back in Galecrest Territory, Selina hesitated again when she read his reply.
She hated to admit it, but the excuse was actually pretty reasonable. And the idea of him inviting outside forces into his own territory to put down a rebellion? That was exactly the kind of dimwitted thing the old Rohan would have come up with.
"Is this Rohan… still the same lapdog he always was?" Selina murmured to herself, tapping her fingers against the table and turning it over in her mind.
She read through the letter again, all those "my darlings" and "my sweethearts," and her skin crawled.
She forced herself through it a few more times, looking for the real angle between the lines.
Eventually, she gave up and went to find her father. Swallowing Argentmere Territory was something he'd been quietly planning for a long time. If it worked, one more push in the right places could get the family elevated to viscount, and Selina would finally climb out of the bottom rung of the imperial nobility.
She hurried into her father's study. Loren was sitting behind his large desk, going through the territory's account books.
"Father, Rohan from Argentmere has been acting suspicious lately." She skipped the pleasantries entirely.
Loren set the books down and looked up at his daughter, his expression steady and sharp. "Oh? Tell me."
Selina laid out everything Rohan had been doing, one thing after another.
"So what you're saying is…" Loren drummed his fingers on the desk. He'd already found the key point. "He's handed us a reason to attack?"
Loren could hardly believe it. Someone was actually inviting them to march on his own territory?
Selina's brow stayed furrowed, her expression caught between confusion and suspicion. "That's what it looks like. But honestly… this is exactly the kind of thing that idiot might actually do."
Loren was quiet for a moment. He got up and started pacing the study.
Was this Rohan genuinely that stupid? Or had he been hiding something this whole time?
"Father…" Seeing him hesitate, Selina tried a different angle. "Based on everything he's done up until now, I'm confident he really does have feelings for me."
Loren stopped and studied her. "Selina. You have to understand, feelings don't hold up when real interests are on the line."
True. But if he was inviting Galecrest to come attack him, what interest could he possibly be serving? Did he actually think he could win? That made no sense.
"Unless…" Selina started to work through it herself. "He's gotten some kind of guidance from someone?"
But Argentmere Territory had nobody worth mentioning. No advisors, no strategists, nothing.
Father and daughter launched into a full back-and-forth brainstorm right there in the study.
When a fool actually slides a piece of cake across the table toward you, somehow that's the moment you find yourself too nervous to take a bite.
It was a situation neither of them had ever expected to be in.
Back in Argentmere Territory, Rohan was already working out his next move, figuring out how to keep playing hot and cold with Mila, pulling her deeper in until she had no choice but to orbit around him.