Softness, coming from him, sounded like a weapon you learned to wield instead of a feeling you were allowed to keep.
“She will learn your strength. Because it becomes hers. A husband’s power is his wife’s perimeter.” A pause followed, deliberate. “Train your pet. As the codex requires.”
The phrase should’ve repulsed me. Instead, it tightened something behind my ribs, because I knew what it meant in Crow language.
Not degradation.
Intimacy. Devotion. A private vow enforced through structure.
“The Crow dynasty is ruthless. But for our women, we kneel.”
He didn’t say it like romance.
He said it like doctrine.
“I will kneel for her as well. During the rite. Once she is Crow, she becomes sacred.”
The reverence didn’t remove the threat behind it.
“A wife isn’t a right,” Damius continued. “She is a vow. You will treat her as the husband oath demands. I won’t tolerate breaches.”
My jaw tightened. Damius watched it happen and smiled like he’d earned something.
“Do you know why the oath is strict,” he asked, “or do you think it’s ceremony.”
He didn’t wait for an answer.
“Because Crows aren’t gentle by nature. You weren’t raised for softness. You were raised to take.”
He stepped away, toward the window, and his voice dropped into something almost reflective.
“I made you a monster. Villain needed monsters. Your brothers needed monsters standing in front of them when the knives came.”
The admission didn’t come with regret.
“Monsters don’t get wives. Not unless they learn restraint.” His eyes cut back to me, warning embedded in every syllable.
“Abigail,”
Our mother’s name crossed the room like a match to gasoline.
Beside me, I felt Nikolai go still. A tiny shift, nothing visible if you didn’t know him. I did.
“She was flawless. A perfect Crow wife.”
He stared out at the skyline as if grief lived somewhere in the glass.
“Her death costed me. My wife. My six sons, their wives. Six brothers and their wives.” His jaw worked once. The loss was real. The lesson was crueler for it. “Only grandchildren left. Most not grown. Many not ready.”
He turned back, eyes cold again.
“And Tobias.”
My father’s name hit harder. Grief with hate.
I kept my face blank.
“He failed in many ways. He did not fail Abigail.” A calculated pause. “He lost his mind for her. That is what devotion does to a Crow. It unmakes him.”
