Luna Forsaken (Arya and James) novel Chapter 290

290 The Seat, The Blood, and The Woman I Chose

Lev’s POV

My office had never needed to be loud to feel like a place where people lost ground. That was the thing about real authority. It did not need theatrics every time it entered a room. It did not need raised voices,

pounding fists, or wolves posturing like half-trained brutes in a yard. It could sit behind a heavy desk, in a dark chair, with a file open and a pen resting between two fingers, and still make a man on the other side of the room feel as though the walls had turned against him.

The windows behind me were tall enough to let in the pale afternoon light, but the room still carried ts

usual weight. Stone. Polished wood. Leather. Old money. Old blood. The Blackbirth crest carved into the panel behind my chair. Shelves lined with records, treaties, ledgers, maps, sealed correspondence. A decanter untouched on the side cabinet because I had no interest in dulling my mind for anyone. Not

today. Especially not today.

I had spent most of the morning going through estate reports, financial summaries, seasonal

allocations, border updates, and the long, tedious work of separating what had been kept in order from

what had merely been hidden behind Radimir’s name and timing. Acting Lord. Regent. Temporary authority dressed up so long and so confidently some people had started mistaking it for inheritance.

That had always been the danger of men who borrowed seats for too long. They began confusing

access with ownership.

A quiet knock came at the door. It was measured. Too measured. Not one of my men then. They

entered like men who belonged to the machinery of this place. Quick, direct, useful. A knock like that

belonged to someone older. Someone who still believed formality could soften the fact that they were

coming to interfere.

“Come in,” I said.

The door opened. Radimir stepped inside. He did not come in hurriedly. Of course he didn’t. He still

wore his dignity like a second skin, even now, even after the banquet, even after the mistakes he had

begun making in the open. Dark suit. Silver at his temples. Face carefully composed. A man trying to

hold himself in the shape of relevance. He closed the door behind him with his own hand. That meant

this was not a casual visit. Good.

I leaned back slightly in my chair and looked at him without standing.

“Is there something urgent?”

His eyes flicked once over the papers on my desk, the open files, the correspondence, the evidence of work. Then back to my face.

“There is something important,” he said.

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<790 The Seat The Blood and The Woman I Chose

I almost smiled. Important. That word had become a bad habit around this estate lately. Every failing

ambition suddenly rebranded itself as importance when it wanted access to me.

“Then say it.”

He came forward a few steps, stopping short of the desk. Not too close. Not too far. He still knew how

to stage himself. I gave him that much.

“It concerns Mary.”

There it was. I felt irritation move through me at once, quick and sharp, not because I was surprised, but because I was tired. Tired of that name being brought into my space as though repetition could turn a dead thing into a future. Tired of people speaking around my choice as though the woman I had chosen personally, politically, openly, publicly, was still somehow temporary while their plans

remained sacred. Tired of this conversation being treated like something I had not already killed.

My voice cooled.

“No.”

He blinked once.

“I have not even,

”

“You do not need to.”

I set the pen down on the desk and folded my hands.

“You have come to speak to me about rethinking my decision.”

He held my gaze.

“I have come to ask whether you are allowing sentiment to cloud,”

“No,” I said again, cutting him off more sharply this time. “You have come to do what you have been doing for weeks. Push a dead arrangement at me in the hope that if you keep dressing it differently I will suddenly mistake it for wisdom.”

A tightness moved through his jaw.

“This is bigger than preference.”

“I know.”

“That is exactly why,”

I leaned forward slightly.

<290 The Seat The Blood, and The Woman I Chose

“Do not bring Mary to me again.”

Silence. It landed harder that way. Clean. Without heat. I did not need to shout to make him hear it if

anything, shouting would have weakened the sentence. He stayed where he was, but something in his

face shifted. He had expected resistance. Maybe impatience. Maybe dismissal. He had not expected

the finality of that tone this early.

I did not give him time to recover the direction of the meeting.

Instead I said,

“When exactly are you fully vacating the seat?”

That hit him. Not like a slap. Like a missed stair. The smallest pause. A quick stillness in the eyes. The

body taking a second longer than the mouth to catch up. It was almost subtle. Almost. But I saw it. I

saw everything now where he was concerned.

His brows drew together.

“I beg your pardon?”

I sat back again.

“You heard me.”

His mouth parted, then shut. He had not been prepared for that turn. Not today. Not so directly. He had come in expecting to reopen an old argument and steer me through it like a father correcting a child. Instead I had put a blade on the table and asked him when he intended to stop pretending he was still

the hand that held it.

“This is not the time for that conversation,” he said.

“It is exactly the time.”

He let out a slow breath, the kind men use when they are trying not to show that they need more time

than the room is willing to give them.

“I am not fully stepping down at present.”

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