(Newsflash, sweetheart: you have now.)
She handed Persephone a curated rack of gowns, each one more elegant than the last, and gestured toward the changing room with all the hopeful energy of a woman trying not to get eaten.
“Take your time,” she chirped, clearly unaware that time was the one thing Persephone was rapidly running out of.
My little bride-to-be didn’t say a word.
Just stared down that rack like it had insulted her bloodline.
Good.
Hate looked so much better on her than helplessness ever did.
She clutched one hanger like it might bite her, then turned on her heel and stormed off toward the dressing room.
A battlefield?
Please.
She just walked into my temple.
And she was about to learn that white wasn’t the color of purity?—
It was the color of surrender.
I followed her to the dressing room like a shadow wearing a smirk.
She whipped around, arms crossed so tightly across her chest I half-expected her to implode. “I’m not trying anything on,” she snapped.
Oh, darling.
“You will,” I said, my tone smooth, casual—like a knife sliding into silk. No room for debate. No space for air.
She bristled. “I’ll rip every one of them.”
I leaned in, just enough to feel her breath stutter. “If you ruin them,” I murmured, my voice curling around her neck like smoke, “I’ll have another ten delivered. And I’ll watch you try on each one. Slowly.”
She shivered.
Not fear. No, no.
It was that delicious, dangerous tension—the kind that coiled up the spine and whispered, maybe I want to see what happens if I lose this fight.
She grabbed the most offensively bridal gown on the rack—white, laced within an inch of its life, delicate like a threat—and stormed behind the curtain like she could still win this war.
The silence that followed?
Delicious.
Tight as a violin string. Full of sharp things unsaid and even sharper things imagined.
I leaned against a nearby chaise, grinning to myself.
“Take your time,” I called out. “Make sure it fits the fantasy.”
A rustle of fabric. The sound of irritation in motion.
I pictured her inside—barefoot and fuming—glaring at that gown like it was an insult in tulle form.
