Her throat works as she swallows. I can see the pulse there, hammering, betraying her despite how still she tries to be.
She laughs softly then—bitter, exhausted, threaded with disbelief. “You really expect me to spend the rest of my life tied to you? Tothis?”
I hear the words she doesn’t say: tied to this empire of blood and legacy and ghosts, to the shadow of my father.
I drag a hand over my jaw, exhaling slowly.
“I don’t expect anything from you, Harper.”
“Except obedience,” she fires back.
“No.” I step toward her, closing the distance she put between us. “I expect you to survive. That’s the only thing that matters right now.”
She shivers, the electricity that always rises between us like heat pulling through metal.
Her eyes meet mine, and something inside me lurches with painful clarity. She is not a pawn. She is not leverage. She is not just a woman in danger.
She is the one person who sees the cracks in my armor.
And the one person I cannot afford to lose.
She takes one breath, then another, each one sharp.
“You say want has nothing to do with it,” she murmurs, “but that’s a lie. You’re hiding something.”
“Of course I am.” My voice roughens. “I always am.”
Her gaze softens in understanding. And that is somehow worse.
She looks away, staring at the window behind me, at the massive panes of glass that overlook Moscow’s winter. The empire now pressing itself between us like a wedge.
I step beside her, not touching her, but close enough that I feel the heat of her body reach toward mine like a magnetic pull neither of us want to acknowledge.
Her reflection stares back at the two figures standing shoulder to shoulder, tension wound so tightly around our silhouettes it looks like a noose.
They are not lovers, not enemies.
But something much, much worse in between.
She breaks the silence first, voice barely audible.
“This marriage… it won’t be romantic, will it?”
Romantic.In this world, marriage isn’t roses and vows and touches along the spine; it’s a declaration of power, a signature written in iron.
“No,” I say truthfully. “It won’t be romantic.”
A resigned hurt flickers across her face, a kind of fatalistic acceptance.
I inhale slowly, the scent of her threading into my lungs.
She whispers, “Then what is it, Damian?”
I meet her reflection in the glass, not daring to face her directly. The truth is easier to give when we aren’t breathing the same air.
“It’s protection,” I say. “It’s punishment. Power.”
Chapter 6 - Harper
