I keep my gaze on the table.
The official asks, “Do you understand the terms as presented?”
“Yes,” I say.
Kaiven answers after me.
“Yes.”
Then comes the part that matters more than the rest.
“Do you enter this marriage of your own will?”
My throat goes dry. This is the question I have been circling since Mars. Since the line outside the match office. Since the moment I pressed my thumb to the acceptance screen in my room with the red rent warning glowing beside my bed.
Of my own will. What a strange phrase.
No one dragged me here. No one pinned me down and forced me to sign. But hunger pushed. Fear pushed. Poverty pushed. Mars pushed until every other path began collapsing inward.
“Yes,” I say, and this time my voice is steadier.
Kaiven answers the same.
The official nods and turns the record file toward us.
“Then the contract may be signed.”
The screen brightens, displaying the marriage record in formal lines. My name. His name. Our worlds. Our classifications. Human female. Horde King. Permanent status.
I stare at the place where I am supposed to sign.
This is it. Not the shuttle. Not the money. Not the matching. This. A line waiting for my hand.
My fingers feel cold when I reach for the stylus. For one second I hesitate, and in that second I become aware of everything at once. The clean office. The officials watching politely without seeming to watch at all. Marat across from me, calm as stone. Kaiven beside me, huge and silent and absolutely real. The fact that once my name goes there, it will be law. I will belong to his household. His territory. His future. My future.
I sign.
The movement is almost insultingly simple. A few strokes. My own name in my own hand. That is all it takes to divide my life into before and after. The screen accepts the signature with a soft pulse of light. My stomach drops anyway.
Kaiven takes the stylus next. His hand is enormous around it. Dark copper skin. Thick fingers. The back of his hand marked by faint old scars and darker shapes beneath the skin that might be veins or the edges of ink I cannot fully see from here. He signs much faster than I did, as if there was never any question inside him at all.
Maybe there wasn’t. That unsettles me more than it should.
The second his signature seals, the contract flashes complete. A tone sounds from the table.
The official says, “The legal union is now recognized.”
Recognized. Just like that.
I sit very still while the words move around me, attaching themselves to my body and my name whether I am ready for them or not.
Marat speaks next, formal and exact.
“Under the law, Keandra Valein is acknowledged as the legal wife of King Kaiven of Vek Talan. Under territorial transfer terms, she now passes into the protection and authority of his household.”
Protection and authority. The pair of words lands hard. Protection I understand. Want. Need. Authority is harder.
I keep my face blank.
