The words settled over me one by one, each carrying its own weight, until the full cruelty of them finally reached me.
I had not married for love. I had known that. Accepted it, even.
But hearing him say it here—surrounded by the dead, with the wind moving through the cemetery and his grief standing between us like a living thing—was different.
Humiliatingly different.
My fingers curled into my palms.
I suddenly understood why he had brought me here before taking me home.
This was a boundary being carved into stone.
A declaration that no matter what name I carried now, no matter whose ring sat on my finger, there would always be three people in this marriage.
Him.
Me.
And the ghost of the woman he had never stopped loving.
A painful tightness climbed into my throat.
I swallowed against it, refusing to let him hear it.
Refusing to give him the satisfaction.
Yet the ache remained, deep and relentless, because some foolish part of me had not expected this.
Some foolish part of me had hoped that a husband taking a wife meant the possibility of kindness.
Of belonging.
Of being wanted.
Instead, I had been brought to a grave and asked to swear that I would spend the rest of my life competing with the dead.
And somehow, I already knew I would lose.
I exhaled slowly, forcing my voice to steady even as my pulse surged.
“I won’t participate in this... ritual,” I said.
A beat of silence followed.
Then I continued, words trembling but firm enough not to collapse.
“I didn’t ask for this marriage. You chose it. You forced it. And now you bring me to a grave to demand obedience as if grief gives you ownership over me.”
My chin lifted slightly, though I could not see him.
“Zara is dead,” I said, softer now but no less cutting. “She cannot hear me. And even if she could, I doubt she would want this spectacle performed over her resting place.”
I stepped back.
Gravel shifted under my heel.
“I expect nothing from you,” I added, voice colder now. “No love. No kindness. Nothing. Because men are always the same—possessive, cruel, and blind to everything except their own pain.”
