He leaves, and the house exhales.
The staff clear the remaining glasses and plates with quiet efficiency. Saoirse touches my arm as she passes, a brief, firm squeeze that might be welcome or might be warning, I can't tell yet. Iris smiles at me with genuine warmth that I don't know what to do with.
“See you at breakfast,” she says with a mischievous wink.
Then it's just us.
Killian and I, standing in a room that's too large for two people, the silence between us expanding until it fills every corner.
"I'll show you to the room," he says.
I nod, then follow him up a staircase that curves like a spine, down a corridor lined with paintings I don't look at because I'm too focused on the back of his head, the set of his shoulders, the way he walks without hurry or hesitation.
He opens a door and steps aside to let me enter first.
The room is large. A bed dominates the centre, huge and dressed in dark linen, impossible to ignore. There are nightstands, a wardrobe, an en-suite visible through a half-open door. My suitcase has already been placed at the foot of the bed.
One suitcase. My father allowed me one.
I walk to the centre of the room and stop. Turn to face him.
This is the moment.
I've prepared for it the way I prepare for everything; by stripping away feeling until only function remains. I know what's expected. I know what the contract demands. My father would want it done tonight. Killian's family would expect efficiency.
I straighten my spine. Lift my chin.
"If you want me," I say, and my voice is perfectly empty, "you'll have to take me."
The words land in the silence between us. Not a challenge. Not a threat. A transaction. I'm telling him the terms of my compliance: I won't fight you, but I won't pretend either. Take what you were promised and let's both get on with whatever this marriage is supposed to be.
Killian stands in the doorway, one hand on the frame. He doesn't move.
His eyes hold mine, and for the first time tonight I see something flicker behind the composure that I can’t quite figure out.
I watch him take in my posture, the set of my jaw, the way my hands are still at my sides instead of reaching for him.
The silence stretches until it hums.
Then he speaks. Quietly. Without inflection.
"I don't take what isn't given."
Six words.
Six words that land somewhere inside me I didn't know was still soft. Somewhere beneath the training and the composure and the careful architecture of indifference I've spent years constructing.
I blink.
He straightens from the doorframe, his expression unreadable.
"Goodnight, Katya," he says.
And then he leaves.
The door closes behind him with a soft click, and I'm standing alone in the middle of a bedroom in a house that isn't mine, wearing a wedding dress that was chosen by a man I can't escape, with a ring on my finger from a man I don't understand.
I sit on the edge of the bed, my hands shaking.
