Rivelius woke before the sun had fully committed to the idea, out of habit rather than necessity.
Beside him, Cordelia slept on, undisturbed, her breathing slow and even in the grey half-light. He looked at her for a moment longer than the moment required, then:
[Warden: Active.]
[Good morning, Lord Rivelius Kane.]
He stared flatly at the notification, gave it exactly the attention it deserved, which was none, and got out of bed.
The room was unfamiliar in the particular way that only mattered for the first few seconds. He catalogued it anyway, the same reflex as always: two windows, one door, a wardrobe large enough to hide a man if it came to that. Old instincts didn’t know yet that they weren’t needed here.
He crossed to the washbasin, and caught himself for just a moment in the mirror above it.
The face looking back was his. Unmistakably his; the same jaw, the same flat, unimpressed eyes he’d worn for the better part of a decade of conquest. But younger. Years younger, the lines a hard-won campaign carves into a man’s face all smoothed away, as though someone had taken the version of him the world had finally stopped underestimating and rewound it back to before any of it had happened.
He didn’t linger on it. There was, historically, very little use in resenting a mirror.
Dressed, he let himself out into a corridor still quiet with early morning, and followed instinct rather than memory toward the sound he’d been listening for since he opened his eyes: steel, striking steel, somewhere out past the east wing.
The training yard opened up ahead of him, and stopped him mid-step for reasons that had nothing to do with what was actually happening in it.
It was enormous. Built, unmistakably, to hold a real army. Sparring rings laid out in neat rows stretching toward a distant wall, archery lanes long enough to matter, space enough for cavalry drills and formation work and everything else a house like Kane would need to train men by the thousand.
Occupying it, currently, were a dozen guards. Running drills in the pale light, sparring in pairs, their voices and footfalls swallowed up by all the empty space around them.
Captain Reyna Volgard called the halt the moment she spotted him.
"Lord Kane." She stepped forward, unbothered by the hour. "Didn’t expect you out this early."
He didn’t answer her. His eyes moved instead over the yard around them to the vast, empty stretch of it, the dozen guards standing at attention in a space clearly built for a hundred times their number.
"This is all of it?"
"Yes, my lord," Reyna confirmed, no defensiveness in it, just fact.
Rivelius looked out over the training yard for a long moment, turning that over the way he might once have turned over a battlefield report.
Fine, he thought. I’ll build one.
"Lord Kane?" A woman’s voice, brisk and unbothered by formality. "Forgive the intrusion. I’m Mireille, I keep the house here at Ashfall Hold. Princess Cordelia is waiting for you at breakfast."
Rivelius glanced toward her. "She could have started without me."
"She could have," Mireille agreed, in the tone of someone who had clearly already had this exact thought and decided not to comment on it further. "But she didn’t."
"Lead the way," Rivelius said.
Mireille did.
The breakfast hall was smaller than the previous night’s banquet hall, warmer too, sunlight already spilling across a long table set for two. The food had been laid out but not yet plated; trays of it, steam still rising, waiting for hands to serve it.
Cordelia was already seated, composed as ever, though something in her posture eased, just slightly, the moment he walked in.
"Good morning," she said.
"Morning," he said, flat.
She glanced past him to Mireille and gave a small nod. Mireille, in turn, gave a quieter one to the servants stationed along the wall, who began moving toward the trays.
[New Objective: Serve your wife her food yourself.]
Rivelius went very still.
You cannot possibly mean this.
[She would be very happy if you did. I mean, look at her. She already looks like she hasn’t been fed properly in years.]
He looked at her, despite himself. Cordelia sat with her hands folded, patient, unassuming, entirely unaware she was currently being used as evidence in an argument she hadn’t agreed to participate in.
Warden wasn’t wrong.
I’m still not doing that.
[Reward if completed: +50 Strength, 150 EXP toward Marital Instinct — Lv. 2.]
I hate you.
[Noted. Now feed your wife.]
Rivelius exhaled through his nose, the closest thing to a sigh he allowed himself in front of an audience, and moved.
The servant reaching for Cordelia’s tray had barely closed a hand around it before Rivelius was there, taking it from her with the same unbothered finality he’d used on the guard back at the palace steps.
"I’ll do it."
The servant froze, then stepped back, exchanging a glance with Mireille that neither of them bothered to hide. Along the wall, the rest of the staff had stopped moving entirely, eyes flicking between Rivelius and the tray in his hands like they were watching something that shouldn’t be happening and couldn’t look away from it anyway.
Rivelius set the tray down in front of Cordelia and began serving without ceremony; efficient, unhesitating, a man handling a task the way he handled everything, which happened, in this specific, and deeply inconvenient context, to look exactly like devotion.
Cordelia’s composure cracked for the first time all morning. Color rose in her cheeks, quick and involuntary, and she looked down at her plate as though it had suddenly become the most interesting object in the room.
Mireille, watching from the doorway, pressed her lips together to keep from smiling and largely failed.
Rivelius finished serving, sat, and looked at Cordelia across the table. She was still staring, and still faintly pink around the ears.
"Eat," he said, flat.
She nodded, quick, and looked back down at her plate. "Thank you."
[Task fulfilled.]
[Reward: +50 Strength. EXP: 175/100 → Marital Instinct Lv. 2.]
[Marital Instinct Lv. 2 Achieved.]
[Status Sheet Unlocked.]
[You may now view your current standing at will.]
Rivelius read it twice, filing the capability away with the same flat, deliberate attention he gave anything worth remembering, and said nothing.
He exhaled slowly, and glanced toward the wall.
"The rest of you can serve me now," he said. "I’ve done my part for the morning."
The servants moved at last, trays passing hand to hand, plates filling in around him with the quiet efficiency of people relieved to have something to do besides watch. Rivelius let them work, and let his eyes drift, once more, across the table.
Cordelia was eating now, unhurried, something loose in her shoulders that hadn’t been there when he’d walked in. She looked, to him, happier than she had all morning.
He looked away before she could notice, and let the servants finish their work in silence.