Left at the alter, married the enemy
Then he turned back to me, and for one second, just one, the practiced calm cracked enough to show me something underneath that I hadn’t seen once in four years.
“Selene and I were never broken up,” he said. “Not really. Our families arranged the split publicly so I could marry into yours, because the Voss name carried weight with the council that the Brandt name didn’t anymore. The plan was simple: marry you, secure the seat, and quietly return to her once the politics settled.”
The words landed somewhere past anger, into a cold, clear stillness.
“You proposed to me,” I said, “as a council strategy.”