Chapter 27 Emotional Shutdown
Three days after the incident, the entire ducal estate had arrived at the same unspoken conclusion: Their lord was no longer functioning correctly. This realization was not reached casually. It had been earned through observation, comparison, and several deeply stressful encounters in which veteran soldiers, hardened servants, and one elderly accountant all found themselves standing before the Duke of the North wondering whether they should flee, faint, or begin drafting wills.
Aric Solheim had always been a difficult man to serve. He was not cruel, not needlessly. He did not shout without cause, nor punish without evidence. He paid fairly, rewarded competence, and despised waste in all forms—time, coin, sentiment, and words. But he was severe. Cold. Precise in the way only men forged by war and betrayal ever became. His staff respected him. His enemies feared him. His political rivals avoided direct confrontation unless they had arranged their funerals first. That was normal. This was not.
At breakfast, he stared into tea until it went cold. At lunch, he picked up a fork, held it motionless in the air for an entire minute, then set it back down without taking a bite. At dinner, he was physically present but spiritually absent, as if the concept of food had become too distant and abstract to deserve engagement.
By the second day, the kitchen staff were whispering. By the third, the whispers had become terrified consensus.
“The Grand Duke is haunted.”
“No,” hissed a footman, glancing over his shoulder as though Aric might materialize from shadow and hear disloyalty from a mile away. “Haunted men blink. His Grace has not blinked properly since yesterday.”
“That is not possible.”
“I served the luncheon tray.”
“And?”
“And I stood there for thirty seconds waiting for instructions and he did not move once. Not once. I thought he had died standing up.”
The cook, who feared no noble, no general, and no fire, crossed herself with a wooden spoon. “Was it poison?”
“If it was, it gave him paperwork first.”
At the far end of the servants’ hall, Haldren rubbed at his temples. This was becoming untenable. He had just come from Aric’s study, where the duke had spent two hours reading the same page of a military report without turning it. Not because the report was difficult. Not because the strategy required re-evaluation. But because every few minutes his gaze would unfocus slightly, drift somewhere invisible, and remain there with all the terrible stillness of a man internally reliving a calamity he could neither classify nor counterattack.
Haldren had seen Aric after battlefield massacres. After court betrayals. After funerals. After the attempted poisoning of a treaty delegation. Never like this. Never as if he had been struck by something he did not know how to fight.
In the training yard, it was worse. Aric stepped onto the field in the morning as he always did, dressed in plain black, sword at his side, gloves immaculate. The knights straightened immediately. Sparring halted. Conversation died. Their commander, Sir Leon Varric, gave a crisp bow. “Your Grace.”
Aric nodded once. “Continue.”
They obeyed. Or tried to. For approximately ten minutes, the Duke watched in silence, expression unreadable. Then, in the middle of a clean drill formation, he said, “A few months.”
The knights froze. Sir Leon blinked. “Your Grace?”
Aric appeared not to hear him. His gaze remained on the field, but it was fixed on something none of them could see. “A few months,” he repeated, quieter this time, as if testing the words for structural weakness. “Why a few months?”
No one answered. No one on the training field had any idea what this meant, but every man present instantly understood two things: First, it was catastrophic. Second, they did not want to know.
Aric walked forward without warning. He drew a practice sword from the rack. Pointed at Sir Leon. “Again.”
The commander swallowed. “Again, Your Grace?”
“Attack me.”
The next ten minutes were educational in the worst possible way. Aric fought like a man trying to murder a concept. Sir Leon lasted eight seconds on the first pass, twelve on the second, and a humiliating five on the third because he had become too frightened to think strategically. On the fourth round, Aric disarmed him so violently the wooden blade flew across the yard and smacked into a post with enough force to crack it.
The training field fell silent. Aric stood there breathing evenly, not winded in the slightest, eyes cold and distant. Then he lowered the sword and asked, with the detached tone of a man inquiring about rainfall, “Was I distracted?”
Sir Leon, flat on his back and reconsidering his career choices, croaked, “Only by divine standards, Your Grace.”
Aric stared at him for several long seconds. Then turned and walked away. By afternoon, the entire guard had collectively agreed never to ask questions again.
The real problem, however, was the study. Aric had paperwork. Governance did not pause because a mysterious woman had detonated his internal composure and vanished. Petitions arrived. Border reports arrived. Trade ledgers arrived. Tax disputes arrived. Two lesser lords had apparently chosen this week to begin a deeply annoying feud over rights to a strip of riverbank that was, by all evidence, barely wide enough to drown in.
Normally, Aric would have resolved the matter in twelve minutes and two signatures. Today, he stared at the complaint for so long that Haldren eventually—very gently—said, “My lord?”
Aric did not look up. “Hmm.”
“This is the third time you have written her name in the margin.”
Silence. Then Aric looked down. There, in crisp dark ink beside the words fishing access and shared toll obligations, he had written: Ulrika. Below it, without apparent awareness: A few months? Below that: Explain yourself.
Aric went utterly still. Haldren, sensing imminent atmospheric collapse, considered faking a seizure. Instead, he stood very straight and looked at a point on the wall with profound commitment.
After a long pause, Aric folded the complaint shut. “Burn that.”
“My lord?”
“The document.”
Haldren took it carefully. “The river dispute?”
“Yes.”
“Should I request another copy from the archive?”
“Yes.”
A beat. “My lord,” Haldren said with extraordinary tact, “is there perhaps something you would like to discuss?”
Aric looked at him. Haldren immediately regretted being born. “No,” said Aric.
Another long pause. Then, because apparently his own mind had betrayed him and he hated that more than vulnerability, he added, very flatly: “A woman entered my chambers.”
Haldren’s soul nearly left his body. “I see.”
“She claims I am going to die.”
“I see.”
“She left a note.”
“I see.”
“She thanked me.”
Haldren blinked. Then made the fatal error of asking, “For what, my lord?”
Aric’s expression turned murderous. “I do not know.”
Haldren decided, with the clarity of an old man who enjoyed continuing to live, that this conversation had reached its natural end. “I shall… see to the archive.”
He took one step back. Aric said, “Haldren.”
He froze. “Yes, my lord?”
Aric’s gaze shifted away again, distant and unreadable. “Has anyone ever blackmailed fate before?”
Haldren thought very carefully. “Not successfully, my lord.”
Aric leaned back in his chair. For the first time in days, he almost looked tired instead of furious. “Hmm.”
That sound, from most men, meant nothing. From Aric Solheim, it meant an entire internal war.
The capital noticed next. Because of course it did. The Duke of the North did not vanish from public obligations without consequence, and when he did appear, he was… off. At a council session, Lord Beremont attempted a smug little jab regarding northern grain tariffs. Under ordinary circumstances Aric would have dismantled him, his argument, and his family’s fiscal reputation in under sixty seconds.
Instead, Aric looked at him and said, “Do you think a person capable of bypassing seven layered wards would use the eastern walls or the roofline?”
The chamber went silent. Lord Beremont stared. “Your Grace?”
Aric blinked, as if he too had just realized those words had been spoken aloud. Then he straightened, expression icing over. “The tariffs are denied.”
Beremont, who had not expected to survive whatever that had been, sat down at once.
By evening, rumors had spread through three salons, five tea rooms, and half the palace. The duke was cursed. The duke was in love. The duke had been hexed. The duke had seen a prophecy. The duke had murdered someone important and been visited by their ghost. The duke was secretly ill. The duke had finally lost patience with the kingdom and was deciding who to execute first. Only one of those was even partially close.
That night, Aric stood at the window of his chamber, staring out over the dark grounds of the estate. Everything was secure. Everything was watched. Everything was exactly as it should be. And yet for the first time in years, his room did not feel inviolable. He could still picture her there. Could still hear that maddeningly composed voice. Could still feel the note in his hand. Thanks. See you in a few months. Months. Not days. Not a threat of immediate leverage. Not a demand. A timeline. A certainty. As if whatever had happened between them was not concluded, but merely… pending.
Aric exhaled slowly. He had fought wars with clearer rules than this.
Behind him, the fire cracked softly. Before him, the estate slept. And somewhere in the distance, in a city full of liars, flatterers, opportunists, and fools, there was a woman named Ulrika who had managed to do what no enemy in years had achieved. She had breached his defenses. And left him with no battlefield on which to retaliate.
His hand tightened slightly against the windowsill. “A few months,” he said to the darkness. Then, with cold quiet conviction: “I will find you before then.”
The darkness, like everything else connected to Ulrika, declined to answer.