18. CHAPTER 16
Léonie
The Fernández gardens had never looked like this.
I’d walked them once a week for as long as I could remember—from childhood, to my sulking teenage years, till as recent as two days ago.
I paced here, and took languid strolls whenever I needed somewhere quiet to think.
I knew every path and hedge, every rosebush my mother had approved, and every tree my father had threatened to cut down and never did.
The corners where Laurent hid to smoke, and Blaise perched to read the horror books our mother always threatened to ban.
The garden was the most familiar part of the mansion, besides my room.
Today, I stepped out onto the gravel and for a moment, I didn’t recognise any of it.
They’d laid a runner over the main path, a long strip of champagne satin that turned the stone path into something that belonged in a fairytale.
The low arrangements of white roses, orchids and pale eucalyptus lined the aisle on both sides, interspersed with glass cylinders holding floating candles that made the whole thing look like a river of light.
The old plane trees had been wrapped in strands of fairy lights, their branches hung with glass orbs that made the afternoon sun fracture into shifting starlights.
The fountain at the far end had been turned off and ringed with flowers, a small wooden platform built over it for the priest. Two arcs of white chairs flanked the aisle—gold-framed, ivory cushions, each seat tied with a trailing ribbon.
Everything had a curated ethereal glow to it—delicate, expensive, and almost dreamlike.
Except this wasn’t a dream, it was the door way to my new reality. The path ushering me to a life I never asked for, but had to embrace regardless.
My mother had talked endlessly about how Lady Kade would have preferred a cathedral.
I'd learned that from a planning conversation I wasn't supposed to overhear.
A castle or the Notre-Dame, something cavernous and public with centuries of stone to reflect the history she thought this alliance deserved.
But the press had been barred, guest list kept intimate. Which led us here, in the garden I’d grown up in, disguised as somewhere else.
I wrapped my fingers firmly around my bouquet as my father offered his arm.
“Ready?” he asked.
His tone implied my answer didn’t matter. I didn’t bother responding.
I slid my hand into the crook of his elbow anyway. The diamonds at my wrist shimmered against the afternoon sun mixed with the lights dancing around the garden. The bracelet felt heavier than it should. It felt like carrying a responsibility I hadn’t bargained for.
Somewhere ahead, a pianist began to play. Not the traditional bridal march. But a slow, aching arrangement of La Vie en Rose that floated through the air, and the irony almost made me laugh. Between the planner, my mother, and Lady Kade, whoever chose this must have a sadistic sense of humor.
“Chin up,” my father clipped as we approached the head of the aisle. “Walk like you own the room.”
I kept my head exactly where it was, still trying to call my nerves to order, enough to walk the length of the aisle.
The guests rose as one, the room filling briefly with the rustling sound of fabric and whispered words before the music swallowed everything.
On the left, my family: Moreaux and Fernández, uncles and aunts, cousins, business partners. On the right, the Kade side, everyone looked refined and cold—all faces I knew from magazines, financial pages and society events.
I didn’t look at any of them. I kept my gaze fixed ahead on the priest, and the man beside him.
He looked straight at me as we approached, giving away nothing. Not a flicker of discomfort. If this cost him anything, you’d never know.
My hand gripped my father’s arm.
The music swelled. Flower petals dotted the runner ahead, soft pinks and creams scattered in a way meant to look effortless despite how painfully deliberate it all was.
We reached the end of the aisle, and the world immediately telescoped into the singular sound of my own breathing.
My father took the bouquet from my hand, and handed it to Céleste.
No sentiment in his eyes. Céleste gave me a brief smile; I returned it with a trace of my own, before my father placed my hand in Orion’s palm and turned to take his seat.
Orion's hands closed around mine with the certainty of a man accepting something he fully intended to keep.
A strange little shock went through me at the contact. His skin, heat, and the pressure of it all felt… definitive, driving home the understanding that this was real now.
He bent toward me, his mouth hovering so close that I felt his breath ghosting my veil.
“Don’t look back,” hs voice intimately low, with a smile playing at his lips. “They’re all staring at you.”
Did he notice my nerves?
I wouldn’t be surprised if he did. Men like him didn’t miss weaknesses. It was how they measured and controlled people.
“I don’t plan to,” I whispered back.
Approval flickered in his eyes, then amusement, possibly at my answer.
The priest cleared his throat gently to draw us back into the script, and the ceremony began.
“Dearly beloved,” the priest began, his voice carrying clearly through the garden. “We are gathered here today—”
The ceremony blurred and sharpened in fragments. My mind zoned in and out at different times through it all, as the priest alternated between English and French. I heard words without assigning meaning to them. Union. Alliance. Love. Honour. Obey. None of it matched.
I spoke when I was prompted to, repeating words I didn’t care about. My voice sounded calm, detached, but I made sure to put in my best performance for the crowd, for our families…for Orion, as promised.
The training kicked in—the Fernández composure, the perfect Moreaux diction. Every training I’d received were visible, like they were made for this moment. I willed my composure in place. There wasn’t a single hesitance when I said I do.
Across from me, Orion delivered his vows with that same controlled evenness. There was no warmth or bitterness in his voice. Every syllable flowed clean, and intentional, like a businessman reciting terms he'd already approved of.
The tiny, almost imperceptible changes in his expression fascinated and unnerved me in a way I hadn’t expected. A glimmer in his eyes when the priest said “forsaking all others.” The slightest ticking of his jaw on “till death do you part,” gone so quickly I might have imagined it.
When it was time to exchange rings, he held my left hand out in front of us, his fingers cradling mine.
His skin was painfully smooth. No calluses, or scars. These were evidently not hands that had ever done manual labour. They were the hands of a man whose whole life had been built on thought and decision, not sweat. Hands that signed contracts and moved numbers capable of making or breaking lives.
He slipped the ring onto my finger slowly, intently, clearly marking ownership. I did the same. The difference was I wasn’t marking or owning him; I was merely acknowledging the transfer of my life into his hands.
He held my hand the entire time, with a gentleness I didn’t know what to do with.
If his heart was racing at any point, his hands didn’t show it. That’s how calm he was.
Finally, the priest concluded the ceremony with a warm solemnity in his voice. Behind I heard a suspiciously theatrical sniffle—impeccably timed.
“Je vous déclare mari et femme,” he said. I pronounce you husband and wife
The words rang through the garden with terrifying finality.
I felt the weight of them, the impact... the dread, all the way to my bones. Ripples ran through the crowd—relief, satisfaction, resignation. Our futures calibrated with a single pronouncement. There was no going back now.
“You may now kiss the bride,” the priest added heartily.
Orion turned toward me fully, and the world narrowed.
His hand moved from my fingers to the small of my back, resting there with that same unexpected gentleness as he drew me a fraction closer.
The contact was gentle but confident, as though he knew exactly how much contact he could get away with before I’d step back.
With his other hand, he reached for my veil.
He lifted it in the same slow and attentive way he’d lowered it in the room earlier, as if he were undoing something delicate rather than revealing his property for inspection.
The tulle shifted up over my face, feathering across my lashes before clearing my vision.
We were suddenly bare to each other. No veil between us. His face just inches from mine.
Up close in daylight, he was devastating. His eyes were even darker now, with flecks of gold I hadn’t seen indoors.
He looked at me with an intensity I wasn’t ready for, and I forgot the crowd existed.
His lips parted like he was about to take the kiss. He cocked an eyebrow, his eyes locking onto mine. I waited for him to get it over with, to just finish the ritual, but he held still. He was... waiting.
Confusion flooded the spaces where my composure should have been. My logic failed me.
Was he waiting for permission?
He tilted his head, somewhat, a question in the angle. May I? Yes? No?
It threw me off.
This was the same man who had barged into my room, ordered everyone out, slipped a bracelet around my wrist, and pulled my veil down with his own hands. The same man I’d knotted a tie for as though we’d been doing this for years.
That man hadn’t asked permission. This one seemed to.
It was a strange little act and briefly it seemed like he cared, even in the smallest, most self-serving way. My breath stuttered at how unexpected and relieved this singular action made me feel.
In some traitorous part of me, it was a surprise I liked.
I parted my lips, unsure what I was about to say.
He didn’t wait for my words. He drew me closer, increasing the pressure at my back until his torso became a solid line against mine. I felt the warmth of him through the layers of silk and satin.
And then he turned his head so his mouth met my cheek instead of my lips.
The kiss was brief. Chaste. Barely there.
His lips touched my skin softly, yet the precision behind it made my pulse stumble. The faint brush of stubble scraped my skin in a way that felt more intimate than it had any right to.
It felt like being branded.
Heat flared across my skin and sparked down my spine, unexpected and entirely disproportionate. My breath hitched, as I tried to inhale, and I prayed no one close took notice.
He pulled back with a private smirk at the corner of his lips.
The priest beamed and the garden erupted in cheers, the guests applauding like they’d just watched two people in love share a kiss.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the priest announced across the garden, “may I present to you, for the first time, Mr and Mrs Kade.”
No one seemed to notice that I was still trying to catch my breath from a single, almost-innocent kiss that hadn’t even touched my lips.
Or that the man beside me, whose hand was still at my back, and fingers rested possessively over the bracelet he’d chosen, had just made a statement louder than any vow.
He could have claimed me in front of everyone, but he didn’t.
I was stunned, surprised, and utterly disarmed. He wasn't taking my sovereignty; he was forcing me to hand it over…willingly.
When I dared to look up, Orion was already watching me. His gaze wasn't cold or indifferent. In fact, it was nothing I knew how to name, except for the secret satisfaction glinting in his eyes. He looked as if he had accomplished a great feat.
I understood then that every assumption I had made about this man was wrong. I could never predict what he'd do next.