Vows Written In Blood

Chapter 4 

 I never told anyone about the figure across the street.

 Not my father, who wasn't allowed visitors that close to a wedding. Not Sophia, who would've shown up at my door with a baseball bat and a hundred questions I didn't have answers to. I just folded it up small and carried it with me into the one day I didn't have room to carry anything extra, and by the time the stylist was pinning my hair back, I'd half convinced myself I'd imagined the whole thing.

 Half.

 ---

 The wedding wasn't a wedding. It was a production.

 Three hundred chairs. A string quartet that never seemed to stop playing even during the parts where nobody was supposed to be listening to music. Senators. A woman I recognized from the cover of a business magazine standing near the bar with a smile that didn't move past her mouth. Every guest dressed like they were auditioning for something, and me in the middle of it in white, feeling less like a bride and more like something set out on a table for people to look at.

 I noticed the whispering almost immediately.

 Small clusters of guests, heads tilted close, voices dropped low enough that I couldn't catch the words — but the second I got close, the conversation would just stop. Not trail off. Stop, like someone had hit a switch. Eyes would slide to me and then away, quick, like looking too long might cost them something.

 "They're not happy about this," I said quietly, to no one in particular, standing near a pillar with a glass of champagne I hadn't touched yet.

 "Not everyone here wants to see me married." Caius appeared beside me like he'd been listening for that exact sentence. He didn't look at me when he said it. He was watching the room the way you'd watch a door you didn't trust.

 "That's comforting."

 "I didn't say it to comfort you."

 I almost laughed. Almost. Instead I lifted the champagne glass toward my mouth, and his hand closed around my wrist before the glass got anywhere close.

 Not hard. Not rough. Just fast, and absolute, like he'd been waiting for the exact moment to do it.

 "Don't drink that," he said, low enough that only I could hear it.

 "Excuse me?"

 "That glass. Don't drink it." He was already lifting a different one off a passing tray, pressing it into my free hand, taking the first glass out of my grip like it was something contaminated. "Drink this one instead."

 "You can't just—" I stared at him, my wrist still warm where his fingers had been. "You can't just take a drink out of my hand and hand me a different one and not explain why."

 "I can, actually." He set the first glass down on a passing tray without a second glance at it, like it had never existed. "I just did."

 "That's not an answer."

 "It's the only one you're getting right now."

 Something cold moved through me that had nothing to do with the champagne. I looked at him — really looked, past the composed jaw and the expensive suit — and for one second I thought I saw something underneath it. Not cruelty. Something closer to calculation, like he was doing math I didn't have the numbers for.

 "You like controlling things," I said. "Is that it? You don't even know me and you're already deciding what I drink."

 Something flickered behind his eyes. He didn't correct me. He just turned back toward the room, jaw tight, like arguing his own innocence cost more than he was willing to spend on it.

 I didn't understand, not then, that he'd just taken something out of my hand that might have killed me.

 ---

 By the time the reception thinned out, my feet ached inside shoes that had never once been comfortable, and the mansion had gone quiet in that particular way big houses go quiet — not peaceful, just empty of noise, which isn't the same thing.

 Caius walked me to the hallway outside what I'd assumed, foolishly, was going to be our room.

 "I'll be down the hall," he said, already moving a step away from the door like he'd rehearsed this exact distance.

 "Down the hall." I stared at him. "We're married four hours and you're already—"

 "This marriage is contractual." He said it the way he'd said everything else all night, flat, final, like a door closing somewhere behind his voice. "I told you that already. Nothing about tonight changes it."

 "I wasn't asking you to change it."

 "Good." He almost — almost — softened, just barely, around the edges of it. Then it was gone, replaced by whatever wall he kept between himself and everyone else in that house. "Goodnight, Seraphine."

 He didn't wait for me to answer. He just walked, unhurried, toward a door at the far end of the hall, and I stood there in a wedding dress I hadn't chosen, in a house I didn't belong in, married to a man who'd just spent an entire evening either protecting me or controlling me, and I genuinely couldn't tell which.

 ---

 I couldn't sleep. I never seemed to be able to, in that house.

 I got up sometime past midnight for water, moving quiet through unfamiliar hallways, my bare feet cold against marble that never seemed to hold warmth no matter how many fires burned somewhere in that place. I heard the voice before I saw who it belonged to — low, clipped, coming from an alcove near the back stairs where the household staff weren't supposed to be making personal calls.

 I slowed. Pressed myself close to the wall without deciding to.

 "...yes. Confirmed." A man's voice, careful, glancing over one shoulder without seeing me tucked into the shadow of the doorway. A pause, listening to whoever was on the other end. Then, quieter, like the words themselves were dangerous to say out loud:

 "The wedding is over. She's inside the mansion now.”