He did not let the words out.
The thumb at my jaw pressed, just enough to change the channel of my voice.
“Dove. If you err, I will correct. The bond has methods for this. But you are not here to mimic. You are here to be looked at, to be recognized as mine, to show them that I have bonded to a singular thing. You are to speak, and when you speak, to speak asyourself.No-one else.”
“A singular thing,” I echoed.
The shimmer along his cheekbone went a shade closer to gold.
“What do I wear?” I said.
He reached behind his own body, a motion so smooth it might have been telekinetic, and produced from the air a length of soft, heavy fabric. It was the color of graphite, but not a color that existed anywhere in the human world, a darkness so full it ate light.
He drew it across my shoulders.
“A dress,” he said, “in the colors of my house. High at the neck, long at the sleeves, the sigils hidden except at the wrists. No jewelry. No ornament. Your hair loose, as it was the night you crossed.”
He brought the fall of my hair forward, spread it with his fingers over the fabric.
I said, “So it’s like an office job. No makeup, no accessories, wear black and pretend to be invisible.”
He made a small amused sound.
“You wear yourself. You will never be invisible.”
He drew a line with his finger under the point of my chin.
“Wear yourself, baby. That’s all I ask.”
The dress was on me before I could ask how. The fabric fell along my body in a single clean motion, the sleeves drawing themselves down to the base of my hands, the skirt pooling at my knees. When I looked down, I saw that the sigils at my wrists, the ones that had flared last night, glowed very faintly through the fabric—visible only when the light hit them just so, just enough to make the eye question whether it had seen anything at all.
He reached behind again, produced a comb, and drew it through the length of my hair.
The motion was so practiced, so tender, that I had to close my eyes. I remembered the feeling from childhood—the rare evenings when my mother, hairbrush in hand, would untangle the knots from my hair and hum a line of melody she would never have sung in daylight. I let him comb my hair to smooth, let him arrange it over the collar of the dress, let him tuck the smallest stray behind my ear with the gentlest of corrections.
He fastened a button at the base of my throat.
He stood.
The bed was high, and with him standing, the angle of my vision put my face nearly level with the middle of his chest.
He looked at me for a long time.
Then: “You will be tested. Not by me. By the room.”
It did not feel like a threat.
It felt like what it was: a warning.
“I’ll try,” I said.
His hand came to my chin again, slow, the way he always did when he wanted me to feel the weight of the word.
“Say, Yes, Daddy.”
I felt the color rise in my face.
I said it.
