vows written in BLOOD

Selene's POV The church doors were open. And yet I could not breathe. The air pressed against my chest like something heavy had been placed on it, and no one thought to remove it. I stood at the altar, my hands folded in front of me, fingers locked so tight the knuckles had gone pale. White lace covered my arms, my shoulders, and the length of my body. It was the most beautiful dress I had ever worn. I hated it. Not because it was wrong. Because it was perfect for a girl who had chosen this. I hadn't. The candles along the aisle burned low and steady, their light too soft for what this day really was. White flowers dressed every pew, every corner, and every surface that could hold them. They smelled sweet, almost too sweet, the kind of sweetness that sits at the back of your throat and won't go away. Beneath it was incense, thick and ancient, the kind that belongs in old churches and old rituals. This had all the trappings of something holy. Nothing about it was. I kept my eyes forward. I didn't look at the guests filling the rows behind me. I didn't need to. I could feel them. The weight of their attention on the back of my neck, on my bare shoulders, on the veil that fell between my shoulder blades like a curtain I couldn't close. Some of them were curious. Some were sorry for me. None of them would help. The murmurs were low, controlled. Nobody spoke above a whisper. Nobody laughed. This was not the kind of wedding where people laughed freely. This was the kind where they watched. And waited. My heart struck hard against my ribs. Once. Twice. The doors creaked. One sound. That was all it took. Every whisper died at the same moment, cut off so completely it felt like the room itself had stopped breathing. I felt the change before I turned, a pressure shift, like the air had suddenly decided to step aside. I turned anyway. He walked in. Not fast. Not slow. As if time existed to accommodate him, not the other way around. He was tall. Broader than I remembered from the night he had caught me in the dark. He wore a black jacket, shirt, everything black, and against it the stain on his chest was unmistakable. Dark red, dried and spreading at the edges, soaked into the fabric as if it had always been there. His hands were marked too. I could see it from here. Red on his knuckles. Under his nails. Blood. He walked down the aisle of a church, bleeding, and not one person flinched. Not the priest at the front. Not the guests filling the pews. Not the men flanking the walls, their faces blank as stone. Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. The only sound in the entire church was the steady fall of his footsteps on marble. Each one hit like a countdown. Closer. I wanted to run. My legs knew it before my mind did a tight, electric impulse that moved from my knees upward and stopped somewhere in my chest, trapped behind all the reasons I couldn't. Genevieve. Her name was enough. I stayed where I was. My nails pressed into my palms until the pain became something to hold onto. I kept my chin level. I kept my breathing measured. I did not let the tears that had been sitting behind my eyes since this morning find a way out. Not here. Not in front of all of them. Not in front of him. He reached the altar. He stopped. And then he looked at me. His eyes were dark. So dark they seemed to have no edge, no end, just depth, going back further than I could follow. They moved over my face the way someone reads something important. Not a glance. A study. Like he was looking for something specific and taking his time about whether he'd found it. I could not look away. I didn't know if I was afraid or something else entirely. I didn't know what the something else would even be called. A muscle twitched in his jaw. He said nothing. Neither did I. The world narrowed until it was only this two people standing at an altar, separated by a foot of marble and about a thousand things neither of us would say out loud. This is the man who is about to become my husband, I thought. It didn't feel real. None of it felt real until he moved, until he reached out without asking and took my hand, his fingers closing around mine like he had done this a hundred times, like my hand had always been something he picked up and held. The warmth of his grip was the worst part. I had expected cold. --- Two weeks earlier, I had woken up smiling. That was the detail I kept returning to, even now. The particular cruelty of it. Sunlight through the curtains, gold and warm. My body, loose in the sheets, rested in a way it hadn't in months. A slow, quiet happiness was sitting in my chest before I was even fully awake. Twenty-two. I was twenty-two years old that morning, and for the first time in longer than I could remember, the number felt like a beginning. I had plans. Small ones, the kind I kept to myself because saying them out loud might break them. A job I was finally good at. A friendship I was slowly rebuilding. A future that was still unwritten but pointed somewhere better than where I'd come from. I got out of bed humming. I should have known. Happiness that easy is always borrowed. By evening, the house was transformed. Music drifted from the living room. Lights strung up. The sound of voices and the clink of glasses. My chest rose as I came down the stairs. I was already smiling, expecting cake. Expecting my sister's arms around me. Expecting the one good thing in that house to be waiting at the bottom of the steps. I saw the banner before anything else. WILL YOU MARRY ME? Gold letters. Ribbon border. My smile stayed on my face for three full seconds before my brain caught up with my eyes. I stood very still on the last step, one hand on the railing, staring at it. Who is this for? The music was too loud now. The light is too bright. Something cold was already moving through me before Lenora appeared from the center of the room. She moved the way she always did when she had won something, a particular quality of stillness in her heels, and a smile that never quite reached the right places on her face. "You," she said. Not congratulations. Not happy birthday. Just you. "You're getting engaged." The words landed wrong, like a sound played in the wrong key. My brain rejected them, turned them over, and tried to make them fit. "That's not possible," I said. My voice came out smaller than I meant. "I'm twenty-two." My hand tightened on the railing. "I haven't; I just started. I have a life. I have" "This is bigger than you." She didn't raise her voice. She never had to. "This marriage is necessary." "For whom?" The anger came fast, hot at the edges. "For your connections? For a deal you made? What am I to you, a gift you're wrapping up and sending out?" Her expression didn't change. She tilted her head, just slightly, and lowered her voice. "If you won't do it," she said, "then maybe your younger sister will." The room disappeared. Not literally. The lights were still there, the music still playing, and the guests still standing with their glasses. But everything went silent inside me. A complete, devastating quiet. Genevieve. Eighteen years old. Still soft in the ways I had tried so hard to protect. Still sleeping with the lights on some nights. Still the only good thing my father left in this world before he left it. My grip on the railing was the only thing I could feel. "You wouldn't," I said. Lenora only smiled. That was her answer. I didn't decide to leave. My body made the decision without me. One moment I was on the step, the next I was through the back hallway, then outside, the night air cold and sharp against my face. My heels hit the path too fast. My thoughts were louder than my footsteps. I can't do this. I won't do this. I can't do this to her. I turned the corner…. And ran straight into something solid. The impact knocked the breath out of me. Strong hands caught my arms before I hit the ground, gripping with a certainty that had nothing to do with reflex. I gasped and looked up. Dark eyes. Still. Watchful. Looking at me the way a person looks at something they've been waiting to confirm. Everything in my body stopped. I knew who this was before my brain formed his name. Tristan. He held me without strain, like my weight was nothing, like catching women who ran into him was simply something that happened. His presence was enormous, not just his height, not just the width of him, but the quality of the air around him. Dense. Pressurized. The kind of presence that made rooms rearrange themselves quietly, that made people step back without knowing why. His gaze moved over my face. Not my dress, not my body. My face. Like he was reading something there. "Running away from your own party?" he said. His voice was low. Even. Not a question, really. More like a note he was making. I said nothing. I couldn't. He looked at me for a long moment, a moment that felt longer than it had any right to be. Then he reached into his jacket. I didn't understand what he was doing until I felt it. Cold metal against my finger. Sliding on. I looked down. A ring sat on my hand, heavy and foreign, like a lock that had just clicked shut. "That's not" I started. "You're mine now," he said quietly. Not cruelty. Not warmth. Just a fact. The certainty in it was the most terrifying thing I had ever heard. I looked up at him. At the darkness of his eyes. At the stillness of his face. At the man who had just claimed me in the space between one second and the next, without asking, without waiting, without any doubt at all that I would simply become what he had decided. This is not a proposal. The thought arrived clearly, cutting through the panic. This is a sentence. Behind me, somewhere through the walls of the house, the music played on. And somewhere in the city, a church was already waiting for us. The vow written in blood, I just didn't know it yet. ---