Chapter Four

Xavier hadn’t planned on asking.

He had spent the entire evening telling himself not to. Reminding himself it would raise suspicion, stir tension, open doors best left shut. But by morning, the thought still hadn’t left him, and that was enough to make him act.

It wasn’t about curiosity.

It was about certainty.

He wanted to know if she—Elara—was all right. He didn’t expect her to be happy, or prepared, or even willing. He just needed to know if there was anything left in her. If the silence he’d seen in her eyes was something real… or something reversible.

But asking for contact details? That was a line no Valtoris heir had crossed before.

He found his father in the east study, as always—early, rigid, already dressed in one of his immaculate three-piece suits despite the hour. The fireplace was lit. The curtains were drawn. The bookshelves loomed like stone around them.

“Speak,” Theron said without looking up from the morning reports.

Xavier hesitated, then stepped forward. “I’d like to request her contact information.”

His father paused, pen poised in midair.

“She’s not property yet,” Xavier continued, trying to keep his tone level. “But she will be. I think it would be practical to begin communication. Smoother integration.”

A long silence followed.

Then—“No.”

Xavier kept his face blank. “May I ask why not?”

His father looked up slowly, like a man being forced to entertain a question from beneath him.

“Because we do not court. We do not flirt. We do not waste time playing at softness, Xavier.”

“I wasn’t—”

“You were.” Theron’s voice dropped an octave. “You were thinking like one of them. The modern ones. The weak ones. The ones who let their women walk beside them instead of behind.”

Xavier didn’t flinch. But inside, something coiled tighter.

“She is your wife by arrangement,” Theron said. “Not affection. Not interest. You will take her when the moon turns and do what is required. Until then, she is none of your concern.”

He turned back to the reports, clearly finished with the discussion.

But Xavier didn’t move.

That earned him a look.

“Are you questioning me?”

“No,” Xavier said smoothly. “Only trying to understand.”

“Understanding is not required of an heir. Obedience is.”

The words hit harder than they should have. Maybe because he’d heard them so many times that they had become scripture.

Xavier stood still for another second, the silence thick with unspoken defiance. Then he nodded once and turned to leave.

But Theron’s voice followed him to the door.

“You are not to contact her. Not directly, not indirectly. If I hear so much as a whisper of softness, you’ll be reassigned.”

Xavier paused, hand on the doorknob.

“Reassigned to what?”

“To command the females’ wing.”

He stiffened.

Everyone in the family knew what that meant. Oversight of the women—their punishments, their silence, their labor. It was a job for men who had failed elsewhere. For the bitter and broken.

Xavier turned his head slightly. “Understood.”

He left without another word.

The hall was colder than the study, but not by much. Valtoris stone didn’t hold heat, not even in spring.

He walked slowly, deliberately, through the maze of corridors. Past the dining room where the men ate. Past the staircase the women weren’t allowed to use. Past the windows with the blackout curtains that never opened.

His mind circled the same image over and over: her face, pale and expressionless. Her eyes fixed on the floor. That quiet nod when her father told her to kneel.

She didn’t want this. That much was obvious.

But what haunted him more was the possibility that she didn’t know she didn’t want it.

That no one had ever told her she had the right to.

And now she was his.

His to command. His to touch. His to claim on a wedding night she didn’t even know to dread.

He sat on the edge of the windowsill in the empty west corridor, where no one ever came. The stones were cold beneath him. The light from outside filtered in weakly through the heavy curtains.

He didn’t want her.

Not like this.

He wasn’t even sure if he could touch her without feeling sick.

But it didn’t matter. Because in less than a month, she would arrive. Walk through the doors of this tomb dressed like a housewife and trained to lie beneath him with a smile. And if he didn’t take her, his father would know. And if he refused her, she would be punished—for not pleasing him well enough.

There was no winning.

Only pretending to win.

And Elara—so quiet, so perfectly trained—would suffer either way.

His jaw tightened. He stared at the crack in the floor just beneath his boot. The stone there was split slightly, as if something long ago had pressed too hard.

Fault lines.

That’s what she was. A walking, breathing fault line in his carefully controlled world. One tremor away from shattering everything.

He could already feel it.

That strange pressure in his chest.

It wasn’t affection. It wasn’t desire. It was something colder. Something sharper.

Responsibility.

And maybe—just maybe—guilt.