CHAPTER 5: Vows I Don’t Mean

ARIA POV

“Hold still,” the woman behind me said with her mouth full of pins as she tugged on the corset laces so hard that I gasped for air.

“Could you loosen it a bit?” I managed to squeak out.

“You’ll thank me later,” she replied, not bothering to look up.

So I did as I was told and held still. Honestly, I had gotten pretty good at that over the last three days.

It all started with Silas standing in the hallway that faithful morning with his arms crossed, and his voice so calm it felt worse than if he’d shouted at me. I didn’t have a response ready because I had never needed one before.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

“Out,” I said, sounding ridiculous and useless, even to myself.

“Out where?”

“Just… walking. I couldn’t sleep. And I needed some fresh air…” I trailed off, hoping it would suffice.

“You’ve never needed air at four in the morning in twenty-four years, Aria.” He pointedly replied to me without raising his voice. He never raised his voice. “So try again.”

The truth was, I actually didn’t have a better excuse. Even now, I’m not sure why I didn’t just come up with something believable at least. I was literally just standing there in the dress I wore the night before, feeling exposed beneath his gaze, and trying not to think about how easily one wrong question could pull the whole truth out of me. I kept waiting for him to look closer, to notice something on my face, in my clothes, in the way I couldn’t quite meet his eyes. I had no idea how he could possibly know, but standing there, it felt as though he could see right through me to the mistake I had made.

“I want the truth,” he had said. “And I’ll wait as long as I need to for you to give it to me.”

And he did wait for two whole days.

He locked my door from the outside, instructing Mrs. Halloway to bring me meals on a tray but no conversation or explanations. For two days straight, I sat in my room, slowly losing my mind. And all I could hear was the sound of the lock clicking whenever someone came in or went out. Every time it clicked, my body would tense before I could stop it. I began to listen for footsteps outside the door, waiting for them, counting the hours between my meals, staring at the same walls until I thought I would lose my mind if I had to look at them for one more minute. My skin felt so unbearable against me, and I couldn’t get comfortable no matter how I sat or lay down.

“It won’t happen again,” I’d finally told him through the door on the second night, because I didn’t think I could endure another hour of silence. “I promise. It won’t happen again.”

He unlocked the door himself and looked at me as if weighing whether or not to believe the words lazily tumbling out of my mouth l.

“It had better not,” he said. “You have a wedding in three days. I won’t let you risk it all for a selfish little outing.”

Selfish. Like wanting a single night just for myself was a flaw that needed fixing before I got handed off to someone else.

“Chin up,” the woman said again, snapping me back to reality. I realized that I’d drifted off, also realizing that my face probably mirrored whatever turmoil was going on inside me.

“Sorry,” I muttered.

“I’m almost done,” she said, concentrating on her work.

Silas stepped in briefly as they finished with my veil. He didn’t ask how I was feeling. He just simply reached out to adjust it, checking that it lined up perfectly against my shoulders as if he were inspecting the seams of a suit.

“You look appropriate,” he said.

I internally felt my organs flinch, knowing that after two days of feeling like a prisoner, that was the best he could come up with.

“Silas…”

“Don’t,” he said firmly. Not in a harsh way, just final. It was the same tone he used in his study a week before, signaling to me that the conversation was over. “Today isn’t about your feelings. It’s about getting through it properly. Can you do just that?”

“Yes,” I replied, not wanting to admit that I really wasn’t sure what the day would bring me.

After we arrived at the chapel he left my side, and not long after that, the doors to the chapel opened up. The bridal entrance music spilled into the air, loud and overwhelming. Someone handed me a bouquet, and all they said to me was to start walking.

I started walking. At the moment, I didn’t even think I realized I was making the choice. My feet just moved, carrying me down an aisle lined with unfamiliar faces, all looking at me as if I were a piece of art on display in a gallery. I kept my gaze straight ahead, knowing that’s what one was supposed to do, to stay focused and composed. I locked my eyes on the man waiting at the altar because, frankly, looking at him felt more comfortable than scanning the faces in this room.

Dorian Moretti didn’t smile when I reached him.

He looked at me with the detached focus of someone inspecting a contract right before signing it, his cold green eyes scrutinizing my face as though he was searching for imperfections before finally sealing the deal. He was strikingly beautiful, but there was something about him that made an awful amount of caution that I’ve never felt before rise inside me. Nothing in his face seemed inviting enough for me to relax.

“You’re shaking,” he said quietly, just for me to hear, taking my hand in his.

“I’m fine,” I replied quickly, feeling my breath start to get heavy.

“I didn’t ask if you were fine.” He said, tightening his grip on my hand enough for me to feel the strength in his hand. “You’re shaking. So stop it.”

I tried. Or at least I attempted to stop my body from betraying me. Standing next to him suddenly made me feel so much smaller. I realized in that moment, with a clarity I didn’t want, that whatever kind of control Silas had exerted over my life, Dorian was probably going to take it to a whole new level.

“Dearly beloved,” the officiant began, his voice fading almost immediately into a distant echo.

I nodded along when I was supposed to, but honestly, I didn’t even remember what I was even agreeing to. My fingers remained cold inside Dorian’s hand, and I could feel my pulse jumping beneath my skin. Then, out of sheer habit, my gaze drifted toward the front row on the groom’s side.

And everything in my heart dropped all at once as I started to feel myself hyperventilate.

A man sat there with dark hair, and his jaw slightly turned away in the dim lighting. For a second, my mind refused to understand what my eyes were showing me. It was nothing. It had to be nothing omg. A stranger who happened to look familiar. That was all. I held onto that explanation immediately because I didn’t want to consider the other possibility. I couldn’t.

But then the moment he shifted to straighten his jacket, and the colorful light from the stained glass touched his face and I saw the jawline and eyes clearly, my stomach plummeted so suddenly that my fingers went numb.

No. No way. It was him. The same man from that night. My body remained perfectly still, yet something inside me had already begun to panic. My chest tightened, and I struggled to take a full breath without anyone noticing. This couldn’t be happening. Not here, God, please. Not now. Not while I was standing at the altar getting married to a man who I'm so aware hates my guts.

“Aria,” the officiant said gently, pulling me back to reality. “The ring.”

I was completely frozen. The man in the front row was staring directly at me now, his expression unreadable for a brief moment before he wiped it clean, returning to a calm stillness, and I understood with a disgusting horror that swallowed every other sound in this room that he knew That he would have known since the moment I walked through those doors. He had been sitting there the entire time, watching me get married to the Man I assumed might be his brother without uttering a single word to stop it. Oh my god please I hope it was not actually his brother. But the striking resemblance was making my entire body itch me and I suddenly felt the need to strip out of this wedding dress.

“Aria.” Dorian’s voice that was closer now, broke through my haze, and I could hear an edge of impatience, or maybe even a hint of concern, in his tone, and that might have been the first real attention he had given me all day, and somehow, that made everything worse. “The ring.”

My hand was shaking so much that I nearly dropped the ring before Dorian caught it. He took it from my trembling fingers and slid it onto my hand himself. It felt suffocatingly cold and tight, a finality I couldn’t ignore no matter how badly I wanted to. I couldn’t stop staring past him and at the man sitting three rows back.

His hands. Those were the same hands I had memorized how they felt holding me only two nights ago.

“Who is that?” I found myself whispering, not meaning to let it slip out loud.

Dorian seemed to follow my gaze as he turned his head back and then to me, his demeanor completely unbothered and almost amused. Then he leaned closer to me, his voice warm and casual, as if we were simply chatting about something insignificant.

“Don’t look so pale, Aria,” he said with a faint smile playing at his lips. “That’s just my brother, Damian.”