Her mother smiles for the cameras. Liam scans the crowd like he smells blood.
And Aoife? She’s drowning in beauty.
Milo leans in. “She looks ready to scream.”
“She won’t,” I mutter. “They trained her too well.”
I can’t look anywhere else but the girl dressed like an innocent ghost.
We move through the room like it’s smoke. Rosa appears at my side with a drink.
Every heir waits. Cameras flash. Council members circle. Every major family along the coast sent someone.
This isn’t a celebration, it’s a show of ownership.
I should look away. Let her be.
We take our seats, watching the room fill.
She slips away from her circle of captors, vanishing through a curtain toward the side gallery.
“Smoke break,” I mutter to whoever’s listening.
The side hall’s empty, with only columns, candlelight, and a silence thin enough to break on a breath.
She stands in the middle, hands clenched, shoulders tense, pulse screaming beneath her collarbone.
“Hello, little lamb,” I say softly. She doesn’t turn.
“Careful,” she whispers. “If someone sees us?—”
“I don’t care,” I lie. “You look like you want to disappear.”
“I do.”
“Tell me where. I’ll take you.”
She turns. Rage, fear, heartbreak, all of it burns through the silk she wears. Something inside me splits, and she owns the part that breaks.
“They moved the wedding,” she whispers.
My jaw tightens.
She won’t meet my eyes. The girl I kissed in the storm, the one who begged for freedom is gone, buried under chain and duty.
“You’re not surprised,” she says.
“I’m not,” I answer. “Doesn’t mean I accept it.”
Silence hangs between us, thick with everything unsaid.
I reach for her. My fingers graze the skin beneath her ear, too soft for a world like this.
Her lips part. Her body leans.
The curtain moves. Footsteps.
We both freeze.
