"What is spoken sweetly is often laced with poison. And poison, after all, works best when served warm."
The hearthfire crackled in the center of the great hall, its flames dancing like warring spirits across the long timber beams. Smoke coiled upward into the rafters, mingling with the murmurs of cautious laughter and clinking goblets. Meat roasted on iron spits, the scent of boar and herbs thick in the air—but beneath it all, an undercurrent of something colder lingered. Something quieter. Sharper.
Tanya sat enthroned at the high seat, a carved beast's head arching protectively over her shoulders. She wore no crown, but the room bent to her gravity all the same. Gold light shimmered off her silver-trimmed uniform, and in her lap, her gloved fingers steepled like a spider watching her own web glisten with dew.
Tonight's banquet was not a celebration. It was a crucible.
To her left sat Jarl Sigmund, a weathered mountain of a man, his beard shot through with frost, his knuckles scarred and cracked. To her right, Jarl Arnar, younger, leaner, with eyes like the tips of icicles—sharp and ready to fall.
Both men had bled for her in the last battle. Both had sworn loyalty beneath banners still wet with ash. And yet, Tanya understood the truth: loyalty was not forged in blood. It was forged in fear.
She raised her cup, its rim catching firelight. "To new pacts," she said coolly, "and old memories."
Sigmund grunted. Arnar gave a tight smile. Neither drank.
The silence that followed was not uncomfortable—it was surgical. Calculated. Tanya preferred it that way.
"So," Sigmund said at last, his voice gravel dragging across iron. "You've brought us here for more than meat and mead. Out with it."
Tanya let the moment stretch. Her voice, when it came, was quiet—but precise, like a dagger sliding between ribs.
"You two have ruled the north long enough to know the truth of these lands," she said, her gaze flitting between them. "No banner lasts forever. Men smile as they shake your hand and sharpen blades behind your back."
She leaned forward, eyes gleaming.
"I simply prefer to sharpen mine in full view."
Arnar gave a dry chuckle. "A bold philosophy. Dangerous, even."
"Only to those with something to hide."
A beat passed. The fire hissed, as if protesting the chill that had fallen over the table.
"You think us traitors already?" Sigmund asked, his brows lowering.
"I think you could be," Tanya replied. "That's what makes you valuable."
She stood, slow and deliberate, and walked to the map stretched over the war table at the room's center. Her gloved finger traced the lines of mountains and fjords. "Power doesn't lie in numbers. It lies in predictability. If I know what you'll do next—even in betrayal—I can prepare for it."
Arnar rose as well, his cup forgotten. "You insult us with this game."
"No," Tanya said without looking at him. "I teach you the rules."
The fire crackled behind her, casting her silhouette across the map like a shadow over a kingdom.
"I do not need your friendship," she continued. "I need your usefulness. If that means setting you both against one another to keep you sharp, so be it. Suspicion breeds vigilance."
Sigmund's eyes narrowed. "You'd have us play watchdogs on each other's leash?"
Tanya finally turned, her smile razor-thin. "Exactly."
A tense silence followed, the kind that births bloodshed in lesser rooms. But here, among sharpened minds, it became something else—a moment of reckoning. Sigmund's jaw worked silently. Arnar's knuckles whitened on the rim of his goblet.
Then Tanya stepped back, and with the soft grace of a puppeteer, resumed her seat.
"This is the price of survival," she said, voice cooling. "You don't have to like me. You just have to be too afraid of each other to betray me."
The feast resumed, but the warmth had drained from it. Laughter sounded brittle. Toasts rang hollow. The hall filled with voices, but none carried trust.
Later, as the jarls took their leave—bowing, ever so slightly, not to her, but to the invisible blade she had dangled between them—Tanya stood at the long window overlooking the blackened forest beyond the walls.
Moonlight painted the world in silver and bone. Below, her fortress stood like a beast at rest, its ramparts glinting with quiet menace.
She whispered into the cold glass, voice barely audible.
"Let them feast on fear. Let them toast to lies. In their doubt, I am safest. In their tension, I am queen."
And behind her, the last embers of the hearth sank into ash.