Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Ayanna
The moment we step into the house, Aric shifts.
I watch it happen like a door closing in slow motion.
Shoulders squaring. Expression smoothing into that impenetrable calm.
Phone already in his hand, instructions going out in low, clipped tones—reminding me, in case I let myself forget over the past two days, that he isn’t just my husband.
He’s the heir of the Vold dynasty. The Viking.
The Second of a society that rules half the world’s sins.
The man who held me together in my childhood bedroom last night, who told me I didn’t have to pretend, is gone. Folded away the instant his boots hit Norwegian stone. In his place stands the version of him this country demands.
I knew he’d come back. I just didn’t think I’d miss the other one this fast.
Elske reaches me before anyone else, a streak of white fur pressing her whole weight into my legs, and I sink my fingers into her scruff and let myself have one honest second of being glad to be somewhere.
“Mrs. Vold.” Ingrid bustles in from the corridor, already beaming, already reaching for my coat.
“Oh, you look frozen through, kjaere. And you—” She rounds on Aric with the fearless fondness only she gets away with, nodding at the phone glued to his hand.
“Not even through the door and already barking orders. The world will keep turning if you take five minutes to breathe, Mr. Vold. Sit. Have tea. Be a person.”
Aric doesn’t smile, but the cold in him thaws half a degree, which from him is practically laughter. “The world keeps turning because I don’t take five minutes.”
“Mm.” Ingrid is unbothered. “And one day it’ll turn right over you, and I’ll say I told you so at the funeral.”
I huff a laugh despite everything. Bless this woman.
But Aric’s already heading toward his office, the cold efficiency clicking back into place.
“I have meetings.” He pauses by the door, and for a moment his gaze lingers on me. “Make her something warm. She’s not used to the cold yet,” he instructs Ingrid without looking away from me.
Such a small thing. A throwaway instruction tossed over his shoulder on his way to something more important. Yet it lodges somewhere under my ribs and refuses to leave.
Ingrid disappears toward the kitchen, and then it’s just us. For a moment, his eyes flick between mine as if he’s contemplating something before he takes two steps closer.
“There’s something I need to tell you.”
My heart lurches. Those words rarely come before good news.
“I didn’t bring it up before. Given… everything.” A hesitation I’ve rarely heard from him. “And I hate putting it on you this soon. But Hyun-seok called while we were in Monsera. He’s invited us to the wedding.”
The wedding.
Chiara’s wedding.
The woman I replaced, marrying the man Aric handed her to in order to save her life. A celebration built entirely out of other people’s wreckage—and I’m expected to stand in the middle of it, smile, play the wife.
“When?” My voice comes out steadier than I feel.
“This weekend.”
Of course. Because grief in this world doesn’t come with a recovery period. You bury one ghost on Monday and dress for someone else’s wedding by Saturday.
I nod. There’s nothing else to do. “Okay.”
He studies me a moment longer, like there’s something else behind his teeth, but Tassilo’s voice cuts in from the doorway.
“Boss. We need to move.”
Aric gives me one last unreadable look, then vanishes behind his office door.
Whatever softened between us in Monsera, it doesn’t live here.
Ingrid returns and presses a steaming cup into my hands. I thank her and carry the tea upstairs.
I enter the bedroom and before I realize what I’m doing, I’m opening the tracker on my phone. Lately, it’s become a habit.
The dates stare back at me like a sentence.
Fertile. Now. This window, and maybe one more.
Twelve months from the day I signed the contract means I should conceive this month, or next, if I want any hope of delivering before the clock runs out. And that’s assuming everything goes perfectly.
Which, in my experience, nothing ever does.
So that leaves me with two months to get pregnant by a man who barely touches me. In a marriage built not out of love but to produce something—someone—as though my body is a factory floor and Vidar is the quality-control manager pacing the line, waiting for output.
I set the phone face down. As if not seeing the dates makes them any less true.
The bath helps to drown the steady tick-tick-tick of a deadline I never agreed to but signed anyway, because what choice was I ever given?
I sink until the water reaches my chin and let the heat swallow me. I close my eyes, hoping to quiet my thoughts, but they refuse to settle. They keep drifting back to the only man who could keep me alive… and I have no idea how to ask him.