Chapter 9: The Wedding Eve

The estate was chaos.

Florists hauled towers of white peonies through the hallways. Event coordinators screamed into headsets. Staff polished silver that already gleamed.

Tomorrow was the wedding.

Tomorrow, Arwen would marry a man who was getting closer every day to figuring out she was a fraud.

She stood in her room, staring at the beautiful wedding gown hanging on the door.

A knock interrupted her spiral.

“Miss Valehart?” A staff member poked her head in. “Mr. Moreau is here to see you. He’s waiting in the east parlor.”

Silas Moreau, Caelum’s lawyer. The one who’d advised her against the marriage from the start.

Arwen’s stomach twisted. “Now?”

“He says it’s urgent.”

The east parlor felt too small despite being the size of most apartments. Silas sat in a leather chair, briefcase open on the table.

He was younger than she expected—maybe forty.

He stood when she entered. “Miss Valehart. Thank you for making time.”

“Of course. What’s this about?”

“The final marriage contract.” He gestured to the chair across from him. “Please.”

Arwen sat, hands folded to hide the shaking.

Silas pulled out a document as thick as a novel. “One hundred seven pages. This is what protects both parties.”

“Protects us from what?”

“Each other.” He slid the document toward her. “Asset distribution if there’s a divorce. Confidentiality about family business. What happens if there are children. Timeline expectations. How you’re supposed to behave in public. All of it.”

Arwen stared at the pages. This was her marriage. Not vows. Not love. One hundred seven pages of lawyers covering their asses.

“I’ve flagged where you need to sign,” Silas said. “Seventeen places. Initials here and here. Full signature at the end.”

“Can I read it first?”

He looked surprised. “Of course. Though Isolde reviewed an earlier version three weeks ago. This just has minor updates based on her requests.”

Her requests. What had Isolde wanted? What had she agreed to?

Arwen flipped through, scanning clauses about separate bedrooms and money and what happened if either of them screwed up.

Then she hit a section that made her stop cold.

Section 7.3: Progeny and Parental Rights

Children. They’d written custody arrangements into a contract that also planned for divorce.

“Something wrong?” Silas asked.

“No. Just thorough.”

“Mr. Ravencroft doesn’t gamble.” Silas leaned back. “I told him this marriage was a mistake. Too fast. But he insisted the merger needed it.”

“And now?”

“Now I’m making sure that when it falls apart, he doesn’t lose everything.” His eyes were hard behind those glasses. “You understand that breaking any part of this contract means you forfeit everything you negotiated for?”

“I understand.”

“Good.” He handed her a pen. “Sign where I’ve marked.”

Arwen took the pen. Found the first line.

Her hand hovered.

She was about to sign Isolde’s name to a legal document. Real fraud. The kind that came with prison time.

But what choice did she have? Walk away and watch her family collapse? Confess and face whatever came next?

Her hand steadied.

She signed. Isolde’s signature—loops and curves she’d practiced until they felt natural.

Seventeen times she wrote her sister’s name.

When she finished the last one, Silas collected everything and tucked it back in his briefcase.

“Congratulations, Miss Valehart. You’re bound now. Everything but the ceremony.” He stood. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Try to enjoy tonight.”

He left.

Arwen sat there staring at her hands. The hands that had just signed away her future as someone else.

Night fell. The chaos quieted as staff finished and disappeared.

Arwen couldn’t stay in her room watching the dress.

She wandered the hallways until she found herself in the west wing. Caelum’s private space. The place she wasn’t supposed to be.

Tonight she didn’t care.

A door stood open, light spilling out. His study.

Caelum stood in front of a massive portrait—an older man with his bone structure but meaner, colder eyes.

“That’s my father,” Caelum said without turning. “Augustus Ravencroft. Built empires. Destroyed competitors. Terrible parent.”

Arwen stepped inside. “I didn’t mean to bother you.”

“You’re in the west wing. Bothering me is kind of the point.” But he didn’t sound angry. Just exhausted. “Couldn’t sleep?”

“Too much in my head.”

“Tomorrow.” He finally turned from the portrait. “The wedding. The start of our mutually beneficial arrangement.”

“Is that really all it is to you?”

“What else would it be?” But he didn’t sound convinced.

Arwen moved closer to the portrait. Up close, Augustus Ravencroft looked even meaner with no warmth anywhere.

“Did he love you?” she asked.

“Love?” Caelum laughed, but it sounded wrong. “He loved power, winning and his company. I was just the heir to the next generation.”

“That’s awful.”

“That’s my world.” He walked to a bar cart with crystal bottles. “He taught me emotion makes you weak. Caring about people makes you vulnerable. The only thing that matters is not losing.”

“Do you believe that?”

He poured amber liquid into two glasses. “I used to, for years.” He held out a glass. “Lately I don’t know what I believe.”

Arwen took it. Their fingers touched. Neither pulled back.

“What are we drinking to?” she asked.

Caelum raised his glass, looking at her. “To mutually beneficial arrangements.”

The words should’ve felt clinical. But something in his voice made them sound sad instead.

“To arrangements,” Arwen said.

The whiskey burned going down.

Caelum turned back to his father’s portrait. “I used to think I’d be different. Build something better. But here I am, marrying someone I don’t love for business reasons. Just like he did. Just like every Ravencroft going back generations.”

“It doesn’t have to stay that way.”

He looked at her. “Doesn’t it? We don’t know each other. This is a deal.”

“Deals can turn into something else.”

“Can they?” He moved closer. “Or are we lying to ourselves to make tomorrow easier?”

They stood there, glasses in hand, Augustus Ravencroft staring down at them.

“I don’t know who you are,” Caelum said quietly. “The person I’m marrying tomorrow. I thought I did. Thought I had all the information. But you keep throwing me off.”

“Is that bad?”

“It’s dangerous.” He took another drink. “I built everything on control. Knowing the variables. And you’re the biggest variable I’ve ever dealt with.”

“Maybe that’s good.”

“Or maybe it’s what destroys everything.” But he didn’t sound angry. Just uncertain.

The air felt heavy with things neither could say.

Arwen should leave. Go back to her room. Keep her distance.

She didn’t move.

“What if we tried?” The words came out before she could stop them. “To make this actual. Not just business.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. Actually knowing each other. Being honest.” The word honest tasted like metal in her mouth while she stood there lying about everything.

Caelum watched her. “You want honesty?”

“Yes.”

“Then tell me why you changed. Why you’re not the person I talked to on the phone. Why you read contracts and talk about art like your life depends on it.” He stepped closer. “Tell me the truth, Isolde.”

Her heart hammered. She couldn’t tell him. But she couldn’t lie either. Not right now.

“I’m trying to be better,” she said. “Than I was. Than I thought I could be.”

He looked at her hard. “Better for me? Or for you?”

“I don’t know yet.”

Something in his face shifted. The ice cracked.

“At least that’s honest.” He lifted his glass again. “To trying to be better.”

They drank.

Tomorrow they’d get married and everything would change.

But tonight they were just two people in a study, drinking whiskey, trying to figure out who they were supposed to be.

Caelum set down his empty glass.

The air between them crackled with something that felt too real.

And Arwen knew she was in trouble.

Because she was starting to care about the man she was lying to.

Starting to want this fake marriage to mean something.

And that was the most dangerous thing of all.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​