Pretending to Be the Bride He Lost

CHAPTER FOUR

He doesn't stop walking until he's close enough that I have to tilt my head back slightly to hold his eyes, and up close, whatever composure I was clinging to in that gilded mirror down the hall evaporates completely.

He's taller than I expected, broad through the shoulders in a way the tailored suit doesn't bother hiding, and there's a stillness to him that feels less like calm and more like restraint, the kind of quiet you'd find in a predator deciding whether a situation calls for patience or violence. His eyes are a dark, unreadable brown, and they're moving over my face with a precision that makes my skin prickle, cataloging something, comparing it against a memory I have no access to.

"You look pale," he says. Not a question. Not concerned, exactly, though the words could pass for it to anyone standing close enough to overhear. "Nervous?"

"A little," I manage, and it isn't even a lie.

"Walk with me."

It isn't a request. He offers his arm the way a man does when he already knows the answer will be yes, and I take it because the alternative is making a scene in a room full of cameras and strangers who all believe, without question, that I am exactly who I'm supposed to be. His arm is solid under my hand, warm through the fabric of his jacket, and I hate how steadying it feels when every rational part of me knows I should be running in the opposite direction.

He leads me away from the main hall, through a set of double doors into a smaller room, a library maybe, shelves rising to the ceiling and the noise of the party fading to a low, distant hum behind us. The air here smells like old paper and leather and something faintly like cedar, the same scent that clung to the car earlier, and for one disoriented moment I think of my father's old study, the one they emptied out and sold along with everything else once the debt collectors finished cataloging what we owed. The doors click shut. The sudden quiet is almost louder than the party was.

"You have thirty seconds," he says, releasing my arm, turning to face me fully, "to tell me who you actually are."

The floor tilts slightly under my feet. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Aria has a chipped incisor," he says, voice even, clinical, like he's reciting facts from a file rather than accusing a stranger in his own home. "Bottom left, from a bicycle accident when she was twelve. She mentions it every single time she smiles for a photograph because she's self-conscious about it. You've smiled at four different people since you walked through that door, and your teeth are perfect."

I stare at him. Somewhere behind my ribs, my heart is beating so hard I'm certain he must be able to hear it in the silence between us.

"Twenty seconds," he says.

"I'm her sister," I say, because there's no version of this conversation where the lie survives another exchange, and something about the flat certainty in his voice tells me he already knows enough that pretending further would be its own kind of dangerous. "Her twin. Selene."

Something shifts behind his eyes, not surprise exactly, more like a piece sliding into a place he'd already left open for it. "Selene Vance," he repeats, testing the name like he's checking it against something he already suspected. "The one who disappeared two years ago."

"You know about me."

"I know your father owed a significant amount of money to a man named Marcus Draycott," he says, and the sound of that name in his mouth sends a fresh wave of cold through my chest. "I know the debt didn't die when your father did. And I know Aria has spent the last two years refusing to tell me where you went, which, given everything else I've learned tonight, now makes considerably more sense than it did an hour ago."

"Where is she?" My voice cracks on the question, all the composure I've been holding together for the last hour finally splintering. "Where's my sister? Please, if you know anything if she's in danger, you have to tell me." My hands are trembling now, the raw skin on my palms stinging where I've curled them into fists without noticing, and for a moment I forget entirely to be afraid of him, because the fear for Aria has crowded out every other feeling I own.

For the first time since he crossed that crowded room toward me, something in his expression flickers, uncertain, and it's the first genuinely human thing I've seen from him all night. "I don't know," he says, and it sounds like the truth costs him something to admit. "She was here yesterday. She left a note this morning saying she needed space before the ceremony, which I assumed meant nerves. I haven't been able to reach her since eight o'clock."

The room tilts again, worse this time. "That's not nerves. Aria doesn't get nervous, she never has, not once in her entire life."

"I'm aware," he says, quietly. "Which is precisely why, when the woman claiming to be my fiancée walked through that door two hours later with different teeth and a stranger's flinch every time someone touched her shoulder, I decided not to raise the alarm immediately." His eyes narrow slightly, sharpening back into the calculation I saw across the room. "I wanted to know why first."

Somewhere beyond the closed doors, I hear the string quartet shift into a new arrangement, something slower, more ceremonial, and my stomach drops with the realization of exactly what that change in music means.

"They're calling for the ceremony," I say.

"They are."

"You have to tell them. Tell them I'm not her, tell them something's wrong, tell them we need to find Aria before whatever's happening to her gets worse." The words tumble out faster than I can control them, panic finally breaking through the thin composure I've been holding onto since the fire escape. "I can't do this. I can't stand up there and pretend to be my sister in front of a room full of people who actually know her."

Damian studies me for a long moment, something calculating and unreadable moving behind his expression, and when he finally speaks, his voice has dropped low enough that I have to lean in slightly to catch it.

"Here's what's going to happen instead," he says. "You're going to walk back out there. You're going to stand beside me. And you're going to let this ceremony happen exactly the way everyone in that room expects it to."

"Are you insane? I just told you I'm not your fiancée."

"I heard you." His jaw tightens, the first real crack of tension I've seen in him since he crossed that room. "And if you disappear right now, so does every advantage I have left to find out what actually happened to Aria, and so does whatever protection standing beside me might offer a woman with Marcus Draycott's men presumably still looking for her tonight."

The room is very quiet. He's right, and worse, he knows he's right, and the calm, deliberate way he's laying this out in front of me makes it clear this isn't a spur-of-the-moment decision. This is a man already three steps ahead of a conversation I only just started having. I search his face for some sign of doubt, some crack in the certainty, and find nothing there but the same patient stillness he wore the moment he first crossed that crowded room toward me, like he'd already war-gamed every version of this conversation before I ever set foot in his house.

"Why would you do this?" I ask. "Why would you marry a complete stranger instead of stopping this the second you realized something was wrong?"

The doors behind us open before he can answer, and a woman I don't recognize pokes her head through, smiling with the particular brightness of someone completely unaware of what she's interrupting.

"They're ready for you both," she says. "Everyone's seated."

Damian doesn't look away from me, not even for a second, and the last thing he says before he offers his arm again is quiet enough that only I can hear it, low and certain, carrying a weight I don't yet understand.

"Because your sister isn't the only Vance woman I need standing in that room today. Now smile, Selene. It's time to walk down the aisle."