Chapter 6

The estate was full of people who had known me my entire life.

Cecilia moved through them on Nico's arm like she'd always belonged there—which, in every way that had actually mattered these past five years, she had. Her friends formed a loose orbit around the two of them, voices bright, champagne flutes raised.

"Cecilia, this is incredible. He thought of everything."

"Honestly, like something out of a magazine—"

Someone's gaze snagged on me near the pillar. I watched the recognition move through their face, slow and uncomfortable.

"Wait—isn't that the one from the briefing? The one who—"

Cecilia turned at precisely the right moment. Her voice was soft, warm, calibrated perfectly to carry without appearing to try.

"Oh, that's all been settled. Elara addressed everything publicly—she's here as my bridesmaid today. I asked her personally." A small, gracious pause. "Having her here means a great deal to me."

Murmurs of approval rippled through the group. So magnanimous. So composed.

I stood in my position and kept my face exactly where I'd put it.

Midway through the reception Cecilia appeared beside me near the service corridor, her weight shifted awkwardly to one side.

"My heels," she said, with a soft, apologetic smile. "They're awful. I don't suppose—"

I looked at her for one moment. Then I reached down, stepped out of my own shoes—flat satin, part of the ensemble they'd dressed me in that morning—and set them on the floor in front of her without a word.

She hesitated. Something moved through her expression that I didn't try to read.

She stepped into them and walked back toward the guests.

I stood on cold stone in bare feet and watched her go.

Later, it was my hands that carried the velvet ring box to the altar. My hands that held it steady while the officiant spoke. I stood at the precise distance required, at the correct angle, and I did not let my eyes go to Nico's face while he lifted the ring from the box I was holding.

The break between ceremony and dinner found me in the shadow of the colonnade—the quiet stretch of the estate the guests hadn't reached yet. I had my eyes closed and my back against the stone when I heard his footsteps.

I always knew his footsteps.

"Elara." His hand closed around my arm, just above the elbow—firm, the way he reached for things he intended to keep. "Listen to me. This doesn't change what's between us. What I told you about Cecilia being relocated—that's still—"

A sharp cry from the direction of the bridal suite cut straight through the sentence.

He let go of my arm and moved before I could register it.

Cecilia was in the makeup room, one hand pressed to her cheek, fingertips pulling away with a thin thread of red. The makeup artist stood rigid against the wall, holding an open powder compact—and inside it, visible against the white padding, a single dressmaker's needle, fine as a hair.

"Nico—" Cecilia's voice fractured on his name. She reached for his lapel and held it. "My face—"

He turned.

I had watched Nico Ferrante look at men who'd moved against the family—across tribunal tables, across the hoods of cars in parking structures at three in the morning—with more pause than he gave me in that moment.

"I told you." Quiet. The kind of quiet that meant he'd already decided. "I told you exactly what this day was. I told you she'd be taken care of, that the arrangement was temporary. And you still couldn't give her one afternoon."

He hadn't examined the room. Hadn't looked at the compact, the needle, the makeup artist's terrified face. He had looked only at mine, and he had made up his mind in under a second.

I held his gaze and felt the last thing I might have said dissolve before it reached my mouth.

He turned back to Cecilia. Checked her face with both hands—careful, thorough. Then his eyes moved to the soldier posted at the door, and his voice dropped into that particular register: low, precise, the tone that meant the instruction would be followed without repetition.

"Whatever she did to Cecilia's face," he said, "comes back tenfold."

Two soldiers took my arms. A third worked with the quiet efficiency of someone following a clear directive—fingertip to fingertip, the thin metal pressing in, withdrawing, moving on. Ten fingers. Each one a clean, white-hot point of pain that radiated straight up my arms and behind my eyes.

I kept my mouth closed.

I had decided—somewhere between the warehouse floor and this cold, elegant room—that I was finished giving this household my sounds.

My vision contracted at the edges. Sweat broke cold across my hairline. I felt the floor tilting and corrected for it through pure will, through the same mechanism that had kept me standing at the podium two days ago with a fever and a back full of unhealed damage.

When they released my arms I was still upright.

Nico looked at me—at the color gone from my face, at my hands still trembling fine and fast at my sides—and something moved through his expression. Not regret. Something adjacent to it that he didn't let develop.

"Get yourself together," he said. "We're resuming."

He put his hand at Cecilia's back and walked her toward the light.

I was still against the wall when my phone vibrated.

I looked down at the screen. My fingertips left faint marks on the glass.

Z: Where are you. Said City Hall. I'm here.

Twenty minutes ago. Then, a minute later:

Z: Changed your mind?

From the main hall—clearly, carrying through the stone—Nico's voice.

"I do."

Then applause. Generous, warm, the sound of two hundred people who had eaten at my father's table ratifying something with their palms.

I looked at the screen. At my own fingertips, dotted with small, dark points of red.

I typed without rushing:

Coming now. Don't move.

I pocketed the phone. Looked once toward the arch, the crystals catching light, the music I had described to him on a sofa at nineteen—Nico sliding the ring onto Cecilia's finger while the room held its breath.

Then I turned and walked the other direction.

Barefoot. The stone was cold and gritty and I didn't slow down for it. The side path along the estate wall—the one the catering staff used, the one no one was watching—opened up in front of me and I took it.

I gathered the pink dress in one fist so it wouldn't catch under my feet.

And I didn't look back once.