The study had been empty when he’d found it; one of a dozen rooms in Ashfall Hold with no clear purpose, a desk gathering dust, shelves half-stocked with ledgers no one had opened in years. Rivelius had claimed it without asking anyone’s permission, because it hadn’t occurred to him that permission was something he’d need.
He’d spent the better part of two days there, buried in whatever books the estate’s meager library could offer: trade routes, beast markets, the economics of maintaining an armed household, the going rate for hiring mercenary companies out of the capital.
The last one had occupied him longest. A private army was, on paper, the fastest solution; coin in, soldiers out, no need to build anything from raw recruits. He’d turned the idea over for the better part of an evening before setting it aside.
Anything that can be bought, he thought, can be bought out from under you.
A hired company’s loyalty ran exactly as deep as the next offer. He’d broken armies like that before, using good coin and better promises, rather than force when required. He wasn’t about to build his own foundation out of the same weakness he’d once exploited in others.
A knock at the door interrupted the thought.
"Lord Kane." Reyna, not waiting for an answer before opening it. "Minister Voss has arrived from the capital."
He set the ledger down. "The money."
"The money," she confirmed.
He found Voss out in the courtyard, standing beside a line of reinforced carts, watching a procession of guards haul chest after chest — iron-banded, heavy enough that it took two men to a chest — into the estate’s treasury room. Voss himself was an older man, precise in his movements, dressed in the plain, functional colors of someone whose job had never required him to impress anyone.
Rivelius came to stand beside him, and watched the chests move in silence for a moment before either of them spoke.
"Young Lord Kane." Marcus inclined his head, brief and correct, without taking his eyes off the chests being carried past.
"Marcus."
Something in Marcus’s expression shifted; not quite surprise, more the flicker of a man recalculating a fact he’d been certain of a moment ago. Rivelius Kane the Second had never, in Marcus’s considerable memory of the man, addressed him by first name. Not once. Not even the handful of times he’d needed something badly enough to bother being polite.
If Rivelius noticed the reaction, he gave no sign of caring.
Marcus ignored it. "I trust the estate suits you."
"Yes." A beat. "Do I have to give account of every penny I spend?"
Marcus paused, something careful entering his expression. "Well. Usually, yes."
"Then write one up. As soon as you’re back at the capital." Rivelius kept watching the chests, unbothered. "Write that I’ve spent it all already."
"I— very well, young lord." Marcus hesitated, clearly unused to instructions this strange arriving with this little explanation. "May I ask what I should record it as having been spent on?"
"Drinks," Rivelius said, without looking at him. "Gambling. An absurdly overpriced carriage I absolutely would never use. One of those expensive dogs rich nobles carry around."
A pause.
"Ah, and women," he added, almost as an afterthought. "Obviously."
Marcus wrote something in his ledger without comment, the particular blankness of a man who had clearly decided, several years into this job, that questioning House Kane’s heirs was rarely worth the effort.
"That will be all," Rivelius said. "You may leave."
"Young lord." Marcus inclined his head once more, gathered his ledger, and made his way back toward the waiting carriage without a backward glance at the chests still being carried past him.
Rivelius watched the carriage roll out through the gate before turning his attention to the treasury room itself, and to the second vault set into the wall beside his own, sealed behind its own lock.
"That one," he said, to Reyna. "It’s hers. Cordelia’s."
"It is, my lord."
He nodded, filing that away with everything else he’d learned in the last two hours.
At the edge of his vision, the marker blinked, quiet and patient as ever.
[Warden: Active.]
That was all it needed to say. He understood exactly what came next.
The land stretched out past the east wall; wide, flat, entirely unused, the kind of empty that wasn’t neglect so much as untapped potential. He found Cordelia there, in her wheelchair at the edge of it, two guards stationed a respectful distance behind her, and a third man beside her he didn’t recognize at all; not staff nor guard, dressed plainly, a rolled parchment tucked under one arm.
The stranger noticed him first, and inclined his head. "Lord Kane."
"I’ll be back to discuss the irrigation lines," the man said to Cordelia, already gathering his things. "Once you’ve had time to consider the boundaries."
He took his leave without waiting for a reply, nodding once to Rivelius on his way past.
Rivelius watched him go, then glanced at the two guards. A small motion of his head was all it took. They fell back, out of earshot, leaving the two of them alone at the edge of the empty field.
At the corner of his vision, the marker flickered.
[Marital Instinct — Lv. 2]
[175/500 EXP to Lv. 3]
[You are currently standing near your wife with nothing productive happening. This is, statistically, when you tend to underperform. Do not disappoint me.]
He ignored it, as always.
He opened his mouth to speak, and she beat him to it.
"I’m thinking of building a farm," Cordelia said, still facing the empty field, not him. "Here. On this land."
She gestured, faintly, toward the stretch of it; flat, untouched, running further than either of them could see clearly from where they sat. "It’s good soil, and it’s just sitting empty like this. A working farm would mean less reliance on grain shipped in from the capital, income of our own that doesn’t depend on House Kane’s stipend or my family’s mood, and enough surplus, eventually, to sell." A pause. "That man who just left is Tomas Aldwin. Land Surveyor for the county. I asked him to walk the boundaries and give me an honest read on the soil before I said anything to you about it."
She finally turned to look at him.
"What do you think?"
Rivelius said nothing for a moment.
In all his years of conquest, he had commanded generals who couldn’t produce a plan half this complete without a week’s notice and three advisors. She had done it alone, quietly, without asking him for permission or resources, and brought him a finished proposal instead of a request.
[...Huh.]
Even Warden, apparently, hadn’t seen that coming.
He looked at her — really looked, the way he hadn’t quite let himself since the wedding — and found, for perhaps the first time since arriving in this world, that he had nothing immediately clever to say.
"I think—" He stopped, started again. "What did you study?"
Cordelia’s mouth curved, wry, not quite a smile. "Why? Did you think your crippled wife was just going to sit here and be crippled?" She tapped a finger lightly against her temple. "This part of me still works perfectly fine."
He stared at her for a moment, then looked back out at the land.
"How much would it cost. To build one. A farm."
She glanced up at him — he was still watching the field, not her — and something in her expression eased into a fuller smile, the kind that hadn’t quite made it to her face all week.
"I’ve already worked it out." She sat up a little straighter, something eager slipping into her voice now that he was actually listening. "Fencing and clearing for the fields, first. Then work beasts — Mudhorns, or something suited to heavier soil, depending on what Tomas recommends once he’s finished the boundary survey. Farmhands, seasonal and permanent both, and a few skilled overseers who actually know grain yields and rotation, not just field labor." She paused, thinking it through as she spoke. "Their wages could be reduced, some of it, if a portion of them are housed here directly rather than paid to travel in from the county each day. We have more empty rooms in this house than anyone’s using."
She glanced at him, checking, then kept going, laying the whole thing out with the ease of someone who’d clearly turned it over in her head a dozen times before ever saying a word of it aloud.
"All together — to start it up properly, not just scrape by — I’d estimate around seven hundred and eighty-nine thousand gold coins."
Rivelius did the math instantly, and didn’t bother hiding what he thought of it. "That’s an enormous amount of gold."
"It is," she agreed, unbothered. "Good thing I’ve been saving a great deal of it, then."
He looked at her again.
"I don’t go out much," she said, by way of explanation, gesturing faintly toward her own legs. "And even when I could, I was never much for spending it on anything worth mentioning. A royal stipend adds up quickly when no one’s touching it."
Rivelius said nothing for a moment, turning the whole of it over; the plan, the number, the years of quiet saving behind it, all of it handed to him without a single request attached.
[New Task: Say something. Anything. This is your window.]
"I’ll... speak to Reyna," he said. "See how much of the treasury I can put toward this as well."
Cordelia’s face broke into something wider than the wry almost-smile from before, unguarded in a way he hadn’t seen from her yet, not once, not even at breakfast.
Rivelius let himself look at it a moment longer than the moment required, before turning his gaze back to the empty field.
[Task fulfilled. Reward: +50 Strength.]
[220 EXP received — meaningful conversation with your wife.]
[Marital Instinct — Lv. 2 — EXP: 395/500 to Lv. 3]
[Strength (STR): 861 → 911 ↑]
Something shifted low in his chest, small and immediate, the same faint tightening he’d felt after lifting her from the carriage. He didn’t react outwardly. He rarely did. But he felt it, distinctly, and filed the sensation away with everything else he was slowly starting to understand about what this marriage was actually doing to him.