THE ASSASSIN BRIDE OF VALE COPORATION

2. ABSENCE

I walked to her, steps slow and hesitant. She didn't even spare me another glance before walking away.

We got to another room, and my eyes moved around — a girl my age, Mr. Bennett, or rather my father, and finally my mother, Mrs. Liriel.

"Sit," she ordered, and I scrambled to sit on one of the couches, far from the three of them. After a few minutes of watching me in silence, she finally spoke.

"You're to marry Adrian Vale."

I froze. Not the fake kind. My chest actually went tight, my mind tearing backward to a file I shouldn't have had, a name circled in red ink, the man who had what I needed to save Mina.

Adrian Vale.

I knew that name. My whole body knew it before my head caught up — heart slamming, palms damp under the sleeves of a dress that wasn't mine.

"M-marry?" My voice cracked, and for once I didn't have to fake the crack all the way. "But I don't even know him, I—"

"You'll know him soon enough." She wasn't even looking at me. She looked through me, the way you look at a chair you've already decided where to put. "The Vale family requested it. This isn't a discussion."

I dropped my eyes and let my shoulders curl in, and underneath the curling something else moved — quick, cold, almost giddy with it, the way relief and dread can feel exactly the same in the chest.

Vale name. Vale house. Vale secrets. If I married in, I walked straight to what I needed.

Thank you, I thought, bowing my head like I was ashamed, my throat aching with how close I was, how far Mina still felt from all of it. *You have no idea what you just handed me.*

"Yes, ma'am." My whisper shook — that part wasn't acting either. "Whatever you think is best."

She stood and walked away without another word. I followed, my legs heavier than they should've been, back to the room I'd been given, my mind still stuck on that one name and everything it might cost me.

Seraphina didn't wait to be invited in. She barged into my room without knocking, heels cracking the floor like gunfire, and my whole body flinched before my brain told it not to.

"This was supposed to be mine." Her voice wasn't sad. It was furious, shaking with it, and something in me — something I hated — almost understood her. "I have known Adrian since we were twelve. Years I have put into this family... and they hand him to some..." her eyes raked down the dress hanging off my frame, "...some stray from an orphanage."

"I didn't ask for this." I looked at the floor, and my voice came out smaller than I meant it to. "I never meant..."

"Save it." She was gone before I finished.

I sat there a second longer than I needed to, staring at the door she'd slammed. I almost smiled — an angry ex-bride was one more set of eyes on Adrian and not on me — but the smile didn't quite come. Something about the way she'd said years I have put into this family sat wrong in my chest, and I didn't have time to ask myself why.

Mrs. Liriel came in right after, like she'd been standing outside waiting for the yelling to stop. "You have no say in this." Flat. Final. "Sit still and let them work."

I sat still. It was easier than arguing with a woman who'd already decided I didn't matter enough to argue with.

By evening I was laced into white, pins stabbing into my scalp while hands I hadn't asked for twisted my hair up around my head. I stared at the girl in the mirror. Pale. Wide-eyed. Hands folded like she'd shatter if you raised your voice at her. For one long second I didn't recognize her, and something cold slid down my spine.

Good, I told her anyway, because I didn't have room to feel whatever that was. *Stay right there. Don't slip, not even once.*

A ring isn't a vow. It's a door. I kept telling myself that on the way down the stairs, in the car, at every red light … a door, not a vow … because if I let it be anything else I was going to start shaking and not be able to stop. I buried that part of myself a long time ago, the part that might've wanted a real one someday, and I wasn't digging it up for a stranger I'd never even seen.

I never saw his face. Not once. Just a name in a file, a ring in a box, and then a car door shutting behind me on the way to the church, my hands cold in my lap the whole ride.

The church was cold too, even packed to the walls with people. I stood at the altar with my bouquet shaking in my hands, and the shake was real …. not for the reason they all thought. I was counting exits, doors, the guard by the third pew who kept touching his jacket like there was something under it, and underneath all that counting, quieter than I wanted to admit, I was scared. Just scared. Of a man I'd never met, standing me up at my own wedding to him.

Minutes crawled by.

Whispers started at the back and crept forward, row by row, like something spreading, and I felt each one land on my skin.

Where is he.

A man like Adrian Vale doesn't just — not show up. Men like that show up to everything. That's the whole point of being him. So where the hell was he, and why did some small, stupid part of me feel almost hurt about it, like this was supposed to matter and it didn't, not to him.

Then the doors opened.

A man in gray walked up the aisle instead, unhurried, like he hadn't just made an entire church wait on him. He stopped a few feet off and gave the priest a small nod.

"Mr. Vale can't make it." Loud enough for the back pews. "Business. He sent me."

The room stirred. I let my lip wobble, pressed a hand flat over my chest like I might come apart right there in front of everyone — and for one strange breath I wasn't sure how much of that was performance at all.

Curious, I told myself, because curious was safer than whatever else this was. But what's more important than this?

The priest kept going anyway, because of course he did. I answered when I was meant to answer, my voice small and cracked in all the right places, my hands cold around the flowers. And when he got to *you may kiss the bride,* the whole church leaned forward at once, holding its breath, and so did I.

My earpiece crackled under the veil. "Boss, want us to take out the assistant? Say the word."

I nearly choked on air. Absolutely not …. I bit down on the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste copper, hard enough to keep my face from doing anything at all. Killing the man standing in for my own husband, at my own wedding, would end this before it even started, and some part of me, quieter and less proud of itself, just didn't want anyone else bleeding today.

[Stand down.] I mouthed it at my collar, praying no one caught my lips moving. [Stand down. Now.]

He wasn't going to kiss me anyway. Small nod. "We'll skip that part." Something almost amused flickered across his face. "You'll meet your husband properly once you're home."

Then he turned and walked back down the aisle, and just like that I was married to a man I had never once laid eyes on. I stood there a moment in my white dress, ring cold on my finger, feeling stupidly, embarrassingly alone in a church full of people.

When I got to the Vale estate, it was quiet. Too quiet. I walked in still in the dress, heels silent against marble so clean it looked like no one had ever dared touch it, and the silence pressed in on me more than I wanted to admit.

Shoulders small. Steps slow. In case anyone was watching.

But I took it all in anyway — the stairs, the hallways, the doors that led where, the guards who weren't standing where guards were supposed to stand — and somewhere under the noticing, my chest was still tight from the church, from the whole long day, from missing Mina so much it felt like a hand around my throat.

He skipped his own wedding for work, I told myself. He's probably not even here.

Then I saw the light.

It spilled out of a room at the end of the hall, low and gold, pooling onto the floor. I slowed my steps. Quieted my breath. Moved closer, my heart doing something strange and fast for no reason I could name yet.

The bar.

He was there.

One man, alone, a glass loose in his hand, jacket thrown over the back of his chair like the whole day had cost him nothing. Calm. Completely calm. Like missing his own wedding was something that happened to other people, not something he'd done.

I stopped in the doorway. This is him.

He looked up. Slow, like everything about him was slow, deliberate, like he had all the time in the world and knew it.

And then his eyes found mine.

For the first time, I saw my husband's face …… and every careful, cold thing I'd built myself into over the last few hours cracked, just slightly, just enough for something warm and unwanted to slip through.

My heart clenched.