The Duchess was involved in an accident that left her unconscious for days... and remained bedridden for days, unconscious...

Seven days. That was how long the Duchess of the North had been absent from the world.

The fever came without warning — a malady that seized her body on a Tuesday evening and refused to release her until the following Monday morning. The physician, a thin man named Dr. Caelum with spectacles perpetually sliding down his nose, examined her daily and found nothing conclusive. The Duchess's chambers were sealed off. Maids stood outside the door like sentinels, forbidden from entering, forbidden from speaking of what they heard through the walls — the delirious muttering, the tossing, the sheets soaked through with sweat.

The Duke did not visit her. Not once.

He held court in his study, signed documents, received reports, and dined alone in the dining hall with the same mechanical precision he applied to everything. To the servants, he asked after her condition exactly three times across seven days — each inquiry delivered with the warmth of a man asking about the weather.

But on the eighth morning, when the physician finally declared her conscious and lucid, something shifted in the household. Whispers traveled through the corridors like wildfire.

The Duchess was awake. The Duchess was smiling.

And that terrified everyone more than the fever ever could.

He sat at the breakfast table, knife cutting into a blood sausage with surgical precision. Black hair swept back, jaw tight, those winter-glass eyes fixed on his plate. He hadn't looked up once since she entered the room.

You're recovered, then.

Not a question. Not concern. Just observation, flat as a blade laid on stone.