Chapter 4: Vows Without Love

The dress didn’t fit right, and nobody in that room cared enough to notice but me.

It pulled tight across my shoulders where the seamstress had rushed the alterations, a hem an inch too short. Adrian would have noticed, would have catalogued every flaw before I’d even looked in the mirror. Damian just stood at the altar and watched me walk toward him like the dress was the last thing on his mind.

The chapel was small, smaller than I expected for a family with Blackwood money, just a private room with a dozen folding chairs and a scattering of people who looked like they’d rather be elsewhere. My mother sat in the front row with her chin lifted, already composing the version of this story she’d tell her friends. My father hadn’t looked at me once since I walked in. Eleanor sat beside my empty seat, her cane resting against her knee, watching me with an expression I couldn’t quite read, something between pride and grief.

Isabella Blackwood sat across the aisle, elegant in pale blue, and when our eyes met she gave me a small, warm nod, like she was welcoming me into something instead of witnessing a transaction. Lucas stood beside Damian as his best man, and even now, even at his brother’s wedding, there was a restless energy in him, like he wanted to say something and knew better than to say it here.

I reached the altar. Damian’s hand found mine, warmer than I expected, warm enough that I almost flinched at the contrast with the coldness everyone had warned me about. His fingers closed around mine, steady, like he’d done this before, though I doubted much about him was what it seemed.

The officiant’s words blurred. I caught fragments, *lawfully wedded*, *in sickness and in health*, phrases that felt like they belonged to some other couple, not two strangers tied together with legal ink instead of love. I kept my eyes on Damian’s collar because I couldn’t manage his face yet.

“The rings,” the officiant said.

Lucas passed one to Damian. I felt the weight of it settle in my palm a moment later, cold metal, heavier than it looked. My hand shook as I slid it onto Damian’s finger, and if he noticed, he didn’t show it.

Then it was his turn.

He took my hand the way you’d take something fragile you weren’t sure you were allowed to hold. The ring hovered at my fingertip, and he paused. Half a second, maybe less, but I felt it, his thumb pressing briefly against my knuckle like he was bracing for something.

I looked up at him then. I couldn’t help it.

Something raw moved behind his eyes. Not cruelty. Not indifference. Something closer to grief, buried the way a man buries a memory that ambushes him in a room full of witnesses. Gone almost as fast as it came, except I knew I hadn’t imagined it, because his jaw tightened after, the same way it had in Oliver’s office.

He slid the ring onto my finger. His hand lingered a beat too long before he let go, and I felt the absence of his touch more than I wanted to admit, a strange, hollow chill where warmth had just been.

“I now pronounce you husband and wife.”

There was no kiss. Damian only inclined his head, formal, like we’d closed a deal instead of exchanged vows. The small crowd applauded politely. My mother dabbed dry eyes with a handkerchief for effect. Eleanor didn’t clap. She just watched him, taking his measure, deciding something about him I wasn’t privy to yet.

The reception lasted less than an hour. Champagne nobody drank with real joy, small talk circling business deals instead of anything resembling happiness. I stood beside my husband, a stranger in a suit that fit him too well, smiling when I was supposed to, saying thank you to congratulations that sounded more like condolences.

By the time the last guest left, I felt hollowed out, like the day had scraped something loose inside me and hadn’t bothered to fill the space back in. I stood in the empty chapel a moment after, just breathing, trying to remember who I’d been that morning before all of this settled onto my shoulders like a second dress I hadn’t chosen.

Damian found me in the hallway outside the chapel, alone, unlacing myself from the polite mask I’d worn all evening.

“You did well today,” he said.

“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

“It’s supposed to be true.” He studied me for a moment, hands in his pockets, none of the formality from the ceremony left in his voice now that it was just us. “I know this isn’t what you wanted. Any of it.”

“Does it matter what I wanted?”

Something flickered across his face, and for a second I thought he might apologize, but that wasn’t who Damian Blackwood was, I was already learning that much. He didn’t apologize. He corrected course instead.

“It matters more than you think,” he said. “Come with me.”

He led me down a hallway I hadn’t seen, dark wood and quiet, expensive silence, until we reached a set of double doors he pushed open without knocking, because of course he didn’t need to, in his own house.

Inside was a suite, my suite apparently, soft light and clean lines, a drafting table set up near the window that I hadn’t asked for and hadn’t expected, sketchpads and fabric swatches already arranged like someone had thought carefully about what I might need before I knew I needed it myself. I ran my fingers along the edge of the table, and my throat tightened at the sight of it, at the strange, quiet kindness hiding inside a man everyone had warned me had none.

“This is yours,” he said. “The whole wing. No one enters without your permission. Not staff, not family. Not me.”

I turned to look at him, something tightening in my throat that I refused to name.

“Why.”

He held my gaze, steady, unreadable in that particular way that was starting to feel less like coldness and more like a door he kept locked out of habit rather than cruelty.

“Rebuild whatever they took from you,” he said quietly. “I’ll make sure no one takes it again.”

He left before I could answer, the door clicking shut behind him, and I stood alone in a room built for a woman he barely knew, holding a promise I didn’t understand yet, wondering exactly what kind of man I’d just married.