I follow where I'm directed. I stand where I'm placed. I say the words I'm given and sign the documents I'm handed and accept the ring that slides onto my finger cold and foreign and permanent.
Throughout all of it, he never takes his eyes off me.
Killian
Three weeks ago, my brother sat across from me in his study and told me I was getting married.
He didn't ask. Liam doesn't ask. He calculates, decides, and delivers the outcome like it's already been carved into stone. It's what makes him effective. It's also what makes him insufferable.
"The council has issued a directive." He'd said it the way he says everything, measured and unhurried, like the words had been weighed on a scale before he let them leave his mouth. "All unmarried Orlov men are to take wives within the year. Formal alliances. Heirs expected."
I'd been standing at the window, watching the groundskeeper cut lines into the south lawn with mechanical precision. I didn't turn around.
"No."
"It's not a request, Killian."
"I'm aware of what it is." I kept my voice level. I always keep my voice level. Raised voices are for men who've lost control of the conversation, and I don't lose control of conversations. "I'm declining."
Liam leaned back in his chair. I could hear the leather creak even without looking. "You can't decline a council directive."
"Then I'm ignoring it."
"That's the same thing."
"It isn't. Declining is formal. Ignoring is strategic."
A beat of silence. Then: "Sit down."
I didn't sit. But I did turn. My brother was watching me with the expression he reserves for problems that require patience rather than force. His brow slightly furrowed, mouth flat, fingers steepled in front of his chin.
"The council isn't making suggestions," he said. "After what happened with the defection, and the expansion into our northern corridor, they want consolidation. Stability. Bloodlines secured. Every family head received the same mandate."
I understood the politics. It’s what I do. Sit in rooms and listen and map the currents beneath the words until I know exactly where power flows and where it stagnates. I've been doing it since I was sixteen, sitting in the back of our father's meetings, learning that the man who speaks last controls the room.
Understanding the politics doesn’t mean I accept them.
"I won't take a wife I don't choose," I said.
Liam's expression didn't change, but his fingers shifted against each other, a tell so slight that only someone who'd watched him across a thousand meetings would catch it.
"She has already been selected."
The silence that followed was mine. Not his. He waited, because Liam knows when to speak and when to let the silence do the work.
"Who?" I asked.
"Katya Lazovski."
The name landed like a grenade with a delayed fuse.
"Lazovski," I repeated.
"Yes."
"The family whose son stole from the Petrov Bratva, assaulted the Pakhan's sister, and was executed in his own home."
Liam swallows. "Yes."
