Chapter Two: The Marriage Contract

(Alondra's POV)

I woke up to a world that did not make sense.

Everything was blurry at first. White ceiling. Heavy curtains. A bed so soft it felt like I was floating on a cloud instead of lying on it. My head pounded behind my eyes like someone was using my skull for a drum, and there was a sour taste at the back of my throat that I did not want to think about too hard.

For one stupid second, I thought maybe I had dreamed it.

The men in the hallway.

Then I tried to move my legs and my whole body reminded me that no, none of it had been a dream.

I pushed myself up slowly on my elbows. The room around me was enormous. Bigger than the entire ground floor of my parents' house. Cream walls trimmed with gold. A chandelier the size of a small car hanging from a ceiling that was way too high. A pair of glass doors on the far side of the room leading out to a balcony where I could see the tops of palm trees swaying.

Palm trees.

We did not have palm trees in our part of Madrid.

That was when I saw him.

An old man was sitting in a tall leather chair across from the bed, watching me the way a hawk watches something small and bleeding. He had to be in his eighties. White hair combed back so neatly it looked painted on. A black suit that sat quite nicely on him despite how thin he was. 

His hands rested on a silver-tipped cane balanced between his knees.

His eyes did not blink.

I sat up the rest of the way, dragging the blanket up with me even though I was still fully dressed in the same white shirt and jeans I had been wearing. My hands were shaking. I did not want him to see that, so I tucked them under the blanket.

I looked him up and down once. Twice. Then the words came out of my mouth before I could stop them.

"No way. There is no way I am marrying such an old man."

He did not flinch. He just stood up from his chair with the help of his cane, slow and steady, and walked toward the bed.

"Right on time," he said.

His voice was lower than I expected. Calm in a way that made my skin go cold.

He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a thin stack of papers. He slid them across the white sheets toward me, then placed a heavy gold pen on top.

"Your parents have already signed. Yours is the last signature required."

I stared at the papers. There was my father's signature, small and neat the way he always wrote it. And underneath it, in my mother's looping handwriting, her name. Remedios Reyes-Salamanca. Written by the woman who had kissed my cheek and told me she would be right there beside me. Always.

The tears came before I could stop them.

"What?" I whispered. "My mom and dad already agreed? Do they even know what kind of man they are handing me over to?"

I could not breathe properly. My chest was rising too fast. My fingers gripped the blanket so hard my knuckles went white.

"Do they know?" I said again, louder this time. "Do they know what kind of person I am being married off to?"

The old man tilted his head. Just slightly. Like a scientist watching a bug behave in an interesting way.

"I rather kill myself than marry you," I said. My voice cracked in the middle of the sentence and I hated myself for it. "Just kill me. It would be kinder."

"Alondra."

The way he said my name made me go still.

He had not raised his voice. But the single word landed in the room like a stone dropped into a deep well.

"Do not utter such curse words again," he said. "And who told you that you were marrying me?"

I blinked at him.

"What?"

"I am not your groom, foolish girl. You are marrying my son. I suggest you start behaving yourself before you meet him."

The air left my lungs in one long shaky breath. Relief and confusion crashed into each other so hard I felt dizzy. His son. Not him. I did not know if that was supposed to make me feel better or worse, but for the moment I clung to it like a piece of driftwood in open water.

I wiped my face with the back of my wrist and reached for the pen with trembling fingers. The gold was cold against my skin.

I held it above the line where my name was supposed to go. Then I stopped.

"How," I said quietly. "How am I already here. I never agreed. I was not told anything. My parents would never have agreed to me being taken like this."

He raised one white eyebrow.

"Your father did."

"You are lying."

"Your father knew you would never come willingly. So he arranged for you to be brought here as soon as the papers were ready. A courtesy, really. We could have done it much more roughly."

I felt the floor drop out from under me even though I was sitting down.

My father.

My own father had told them to drug me. To carry his only daughter out of her childhood home like a sack of flour. To strip me of even the dignity of saying goodbye.

I pressed the pen to the paper before I could think too hard about it.

My signature came out crooked. The letters too sharp, the curve at the end of my surname slanting downward like the word itself was falling. Alondra Reyes-Salamanca.

That girl was already dead, in a way. I just had not buried her yet.

"The wedding is at dawn tomorrow," the old man said, lifting the file from my lap. "Make yourself comfortable. Eat. Sleep. And stop the crocodile tears. We are actually doing your family a great favor."

A favor.

He called it a favor.

I opened my mouth to say something back, but he had already turned. His cane tapped against the marble floor in a sharp rhythm as he walked toward the door. He did not look back at me, not even once.

The door slammed shut behind him so hard the chandelier above me trembled. The crystals shook against each other with a high musical sound that did not belong in a moment this ugly.

I sat there in the silence afterward, frozen, the pen still warm in my hand.

I do not know how long I cried. Long enough that my throat started to ache and the white pillow under my cheek went damp in a wide circle. 

Eventually I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling, hollow.

That was when I heard it.

A soft click.

A door I had not noticed before, hidden in the panel of the wall to my left, opened just an inch. A young woman slipped in, dressed in a black maid's uniform with a small white apron. She could not have been older than me. Her dark hair was pulled into a tight braid and her hands were trembling so badly she could barely hold the silver tray of food she was carrying.

She set the tray down on the small table near the bed without looking at me. She glanced once at the main door. Then twice. Like she was making sure no one else was coming.

Then she leaned in so close I could feel her breath against my ear.

"Señora," she whispered. Her voice shook on every syllable. "Please. Listen to me. Tomorrow at dawn, you cannot marry him. You have to run tonight. Whatever you have to do."

I sat up sharply. "What are you talking about? Who is he? What is his name?"

Her eyes flicked back to the main door. Wide. Terrified.

"His name is Iker Vidal-Montenegro," she breathed. "And the last three brides who were brought into this house..."

She swallowed hard.

"None of them ever walked out alive."