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The Clan Lord’s Forgotten Fiancée
The Clan Lord’s Forgotten Fiancée
Auteur: Eternity

Chapter 1

Auteur: Eternity
"Seren, the lord needs these survey records completed before we leave for the south. Could you have them done by the end of the day?" Vera Saine, Raven's personal aide, placed a thick stack of patrol notes on my desk.

I took them. "Sure."

She lingered. "We're heading out shortly, so you'll need to drop the finished records in his study before we go. Also, his lamp oil is running low. Would you mind topping it up while you're there?"

The hall went quiet. A few clan members glanced my way, then quickly looked elsewhere, faces caught between sympathy and the desire to pretend they had seen nothing.

Everyone knew Raven Ashford was my betrothed. Everyone also knew how openly he favored Vera. He had recruited her personally from a border clan and never missed a chance to call her a rare talent who deserved every opportunity. It was his script, repeated so often he seemed to believe it himself.

I had spent two months traveling the border, mapping every stretch of frozen ground with my own hands. He transferred the completed survey to Vera's name, explaining that she was more familiar with border affairs. When I objected, he called a meeting of the elders, confident they would see it his way.

They didn't. Every elder recognized my handwriting on the maps. Vera received only one vote. His.

Afterward, he pulled me aside. He said I should not have embarrassed him in front of the council. He said it undermined clan unity. He said Vera was already struggling to find her footing in Ashford, and my objections would only make others ostracize her further.

I used to think he was genuinely caught between difficult choices. Now I just feel tired.

Vera had never even seen the border.

Undermining clan unity. I almost laughed. He was the one doing that.

Footsteps on the staircase. I looked up. Raven was coming down from the upper floor in traveling clothes. At his collar, a brooch I had never seen before, with an engraved vine.

His old brooch had been the Ashford clan crest, cast in black iron, simple and worn. He had worn it for as long as I had known him. I had chosen it myself, commissioned a smith to make it.

Vera had mentioned recently that a lord's accessories should vary with the occasion. She said it like an offhand suggestion. The next day, the black iron was gone.

He took her advice on everything now. The brooch. The reshuffling of the inner hall staff. The redrawing of territorial jurisdictions. Each decision made sense on its own, each one justifiable as something done for the good of the clan.

This had been going on for a year. It started with the late-night messages I discovered between them. I had confronted him that night.
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  • The Clan Lord’s Forgotten Fiancée   Chapter 13

    Six months passed. Then eight. Then a year.The Institute became familiar in ways I had not expected. The corridors stopped feeling like borrowed space. The coffee machine on the third floor developed a rhythm I could predict, a low hum that started at exactly eight forty five every morning. My desk accumulated the usual clutter of notes and reference materials and empty cups. I found a grocery store I liked two blocks from my apartment. The cashier learned my name.My project took shape slowly. The first few months were all groundwork, reading, cross-referencing, building a foundation I had not needed to build in a long time. By the sixth month, I had something presentable. By the ninth, I presented it to the department. By the end of the first year, I was leading a small team of my own.I was not the most senior researcher in the building. I was not the most famous. But I was getting there. The progress was mine. No one had given it to me. No one could take it away.I heard things ab

  • The Clan Lord’s Forgotten Fiancée   Chapter 12

    The call came on a Wednesday afternoon. I was reviewing a draft when my phone buzzed on the desk. Elder Vane's name appeared on the screen. I picked it up, expecting a question about the project timeline."Seren," he said. "You have a visitor."I looked out the window, scanning the courtyard below. "Who is it?""Raven Ashford."I walked down the stairs slowly. He was standing in the front hall near the entrance. He looked thinner than I remembered, his face drawn in a way that told me he had not been sleeping well. His clothes were neat but his posture was wrong, slightly hunched."Thank you for seeing me," he said. "Elder Vane said you were busy. I told him I could wait.""You are here now. Come up."I led him to the meeting room on the second floor, the one Elder Vane used for official visitors. I did not want him in my space.He sat across from me at the table. His hands were clasped in front of him, fingers interlaced, knuckles pale."I came to tell you what happened," he said. "Ve

  • The Clan Lord’s Forgotten Fiancée   Chapter 11

    The tipping point came on a Tuesday.Raven had called Vera to his study to discuss the border treaty discrepancies. He had the original terms on his desk, her submitted copy on his left, and the vassal clan's inquiry on his right.Vera walked in with her usual composure and sat down without being invited."You wanted to see me, Lord Raven?"He slid the three documents toward her. "Explain the differences."She glanced at them, expression unchanged. "Which differences are you referring to?"Raven pointed to a clause on the original. "The vassal clan confirmed the terms as drafted. Your version removed the shared patrol rights along the eastern corridor. They did not agree to that removal.""The shared patrol rights were redundant. Seren included them as a goodwill gesture, but the vassal clan never utilized them."Raven pointed to the second clause. "The resource access provision was expanded. The original gave them limited access to Ashford's northern timber reserves. Your version gran

  • The Clan Lord’s Forgotten Fiancée   Chapter 10

    The elders started asking questions in the fifth week."We have not seen Seren in some time," one of them said during a closed session. Raven said she was on leave. Another elder spoke. "She has been on leave for over a month. Do we know when she plans to return?""I expect it will be soon."No one pressed further, but the looks exchanged across the table told him everything. They did not believe him. He was not sure he believed himself anymore.He spent the next few days reviewing the files Vera had handled. He had not noticed it before, but there was a pattern. Some documents were missing attachments. Others had dates that did not match the correspondence. A few appeared to have been modified, with small but significant changes to clauses Seren had originally drafted.He called Vera in to clarify.She explained each discrepancy smoothly, as if she had expected the questions. The missing attachments had been sent separately. The dates reflected final approval, not initial drafting. Th

  • The Clan Lord’s Forgotten Fiancée   Chapter 9

    The third week was worse.A routine council meeting turned into an argument. One of the elders asked about the border treaty again. Raven said Vera was handling the follow-up. The elder said the envoy had reached out directly to the council with questions. Raven asked what questions. The elder handed him a written request for clarification on terms that had been agreed weeks ago.Raven read it. The terms were not the ones Seren had negotiated. They were different.He called Vera after the meeting. He kept his voice level. He asked her to explain the discrepancy.Vera told him the changes had been necessary. She said the original terms were too favorable to the other clan. She said Seren had not considered certain strategic factors. She said she had acted in the best interest of Ashford.Raven looked at her. He had heard her use those words many times before. For the best interest of Ashford. It had never sounded wrong to him until now.He took the document back to his study and spent t

  • The Clan Lord’s Forgotten Fiancée   Chapter 8

    Raven called her name out of habit. The words left his mouth before he realized what he was doing."Seren, I need the quarterly figures from the—"The study was empty. The door was open because he had left it open. Her desk was still there, but the chair was pushed in, exactly as she had left it before she walked out. He stopped at the threshold, his hand still reaching toward the space where she used to sit.He told himself it was fine. She would come back. She always came back.That had been the pattern for months, maybe longer. She would withdraw, he would give her space, she would return. The longest she had stayed away was six days. He remembered that time clearly, because by the seventh day she was back in the study, reading through documents at her usual pace, and he had thought to himself: She needed the break.Vera came in shortly after, a stack of papers in her hands and a plan in her voice. She had already taken over the territorial affairs Seren had left behind. She assured

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