Chapter 6
Keandra
The liaison office is quieter than it was yesterday.
There are fewer women in the waiting area now.
Only a handful of seats are filled. A child sleeps stretched across two chairs while his mother watches the entry doors like she expects someone to change their mind and throw them both back out.
Two girls who look like sisters sit with their hands locked together too tightly.
Another woman sits very straight with a small case in her lap and a face that says she has already decided she will not cry in public, no matter what happens next.
The air smells cold and filtered. Clean in the way Mars rarely is unless money is involved.
I check in at the front desk and get directed to a private terminal where they verify my identity again. A guard scans my bag. A clerk checks the time, then my face, then the contract file tied to my wrist tag.
“Your transport departs within the hour,” the clerk says. “You’ll receive a final legal review on board.”
On board. The words move through my stomach like a cold hand. Leaving the district felt real. Paying the rent felt real. Buying food felt real. But this is different. This is the point where the city itself starts falling away behind me.
They give me a temporary pass card and escort me through a secured corridor to a smaller departure platform attached to the upper side of the complex.
I have never been on this level before. The walls are smooth and dark.
The lighting comes from narrow white strips instead of the flickering yellow utility bulbs in the lower districts. The floor hums faintly under my boots.
By the time the corridor opens onto the dock, I already feel like I am starting to turn into what this contract says I am. Not a poor girl from the lower blocks anymore. A transferred asset. A wife under contract. Something moved cleanly and quietly from one system to another.
The shuttle waiting at the dock is not huge, but it is polished in a way that makes everything around it look shabby.
Black hull. Silver markings. No patched plating.
No freight dents like the haulers I sometimes saw over the market lanes.
This one is sleek. Official. Expensive. Wealth in the shape of machinery.
A man stands at the base of the ramp speaking to two attendants. He turns when I approach.
He is older than I expected. Not frail. Not soft. Just past the age where males still look eager to prove their strength every second. Silver threads mark his temples. His coat is fitted and formal. His posture is straight. Everything about him says authority without effort.
His gaze lands on me, steady and assessing, then drops to the pass card clipped to my coat.
“Keandra Vale,” he says.
“Yes.”
“I am Marat Veylor.”
The name clicks at once. Matchmaker. The title has been all over the documents I signed without me ever stopping to picture the man behind it.
Standing in front of me now, he does not look like someone who wanders poor sectors handing out dreams. He looks like someone who manages transactions that change lives and does not pretend they are anything softer than that.
“You are punctual,” he says.
I cannot tell whether it is approval.
“I didn’t want to miss it.”
“No,” he says, and one corner of his mouth shifts very slightly. “I imagine you did not.”
He gestures toward the ramp.
“Come. We will speak on the shuttle.”
Inside, the air is warmer than the dock.
The main cabin holds only a few seats, each one enclosed enough to feel private without being comfortable.
This is not a passenger shuttle full of noise and movement.
It feels more like a transfer vehicle. Something built to carry important people or important contracts. Maybe both.
They show me to a seat near a small table. An attendant stows my bag overhead before I can insist on keeping it with me. Marat sits opposite me and activates a privacy field around our section. A low hum starts up. The rest of the cabin blurs slightly at the edges. Still there, but distant.
I fold my hands together to stop myself from touching everything.
The seat beneath me is softer than the bed in my room ever was.
The buckle fits properly. The walls are clean enough to catch the light.
Even the water on the table beside me looks different from ordinary water.
Clearer. Colder. Condensation beads silver along the cup. I almost laugh at myself for noticing.
Marat studies a tablet for a moment, then sets it down.
“Before departure, I am required to review the marriage terms again and confirm that you accept them with full understanding.”
I give a small nod.
“This is your final opportunity to refuse before transport.”
My fingers tighten. The words hang in the warm little space between us. I could still say no. The thought comes and goes in one beat. Not because I want to refuse. Because I need to feel, just once more, that the choice is mine before I hand it over.
“I understand,” I say.
Marat inclines his head.
“Then listen carefully.”
The shuttle shifts under us as the systems begin to power. Somewhere forward, machinery hums deeper. I brace my boots against the floor without meaning to.
Marat opens the contract and begins in that same calm, exact voice that makes every word feel weighted.
“The marriage you are entering is permanent. It is not seasonal, temporary, or trial-based. Under Tigris law and the interplanetary treaty governing these unions, you will be the legal wife of King Kaiven of Vek Talan for the duration of your lives, unless death or extraordinary legal dissolution occurs.”
Duration of your lives. The phrase takes a second to settle. Lifetime. Not a contract with an end point. Not something I survive long enough to walk away from after saving enough money. Life.
I swallow.
“So if I go, that is it.”
“If you go, you go as wife.”
The shuttle lifts. The motion presses through the seat back. My stomach drops, then steadies. Through the narrow window beside me, the dock falls away. Then the building. Then the platform. Mars already sliding down beneath me. I make myself look forward again before the sight hits too hard.
Marat continues. “As part of the marriage, you will be housed, clothed, fed, and protected according to the status of your husband’s household.
Because you are entering a king’s household, these obligations are significant and enforceable.
You will not be left without shelter. You will not be denied food.
You will not be denied basic medical treatment.
You will not be traded, leased, or subjected to non-consensual public use. ”
I stare at him. The words are clinical. Meant to reassure. But I am too used to the ugliness under the world not to hear what must have happened to other women, somewhere, for those protections to need saying out loud.
“You keep saying obligations,” I say carefully. “That means they’re required.”
“Yes.”
“And if he doesn’t care?”
Marat’s expression does not change.
“He will care.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
A pause.
“He is bound,” Marat says. “And so is his territory.”
I look down at my hands. My nails are short and clean now. Cleaner than yesterday. Soap and warm water and one decent meal, and already my hands look a little less like survival. A little more like someone who belongs in clean rooms and contracts. It feels like a lie.
“What are the hard customs?” I ask.
This time he pauses longer.
“Many.”
“That helps.”
A faint breath leaves him. Not quite a laugh.
“You are joining a horde territory, not a city household. The customs are more rigid in some ways and more physically lived in others. Life is harsher. Less private. More communal. More demanding.”
“Communal how?”
“You will be seen. Watched. Judged by the women and by the household around you. You will be expected to learn. Expected to adapt. You will not be left to starve or be beaten, but that does not mean you will be coddled.”
I lift my chin.
“I’m not asking to be coddled.”
“No,” Marat says. “I do not think you are.”
Something in the way he says it sends heat up my neck. Not embarrassment exactly. More the discomfort of being seen too clearly by someone who has spent years reading women’s desperation and fear.
He returns to the file.
“Children are expected.”
There it is. The words drop into the cabin and change the air. My heart gives one hard beat. I knew this already. I read it. Heard it. Signed toward it. But hearing it now, plain and unavoidable, while Mars drops farther behind us, makes it feel different. Final. Bodily. Real.
I keep my face blank.
“Expected how?”
Marat folds his hands over the tablet.
“Marriage on Tigris is family-centered. Particularly among the hordes, and particularly among ruling households. The female shortage is severe. Children matter. Heirs matter. Daughters matter. Continuity matters.”
“Heirs.”
“Yes.”
The shuttle moves so smoothly it almost doesn’t feel like motion. Only the low vibration in the floor and the changing light through the window remind me we are still climbing away from everything I knew. I stare at the table for a moment, then force myself to meet his eyes again.
“You tested my blood. My body. My fertility.”
“We did.”
“So that was part of this.”
“Yes.”
There is no apology in him. No embarrassment. Only truth. It would be easier if he softened it. Dressed it up. Lied a little. He doesn’t. That makes the ache in my chest sharper.
“How much of the match is me,” I ask, “and how much is what I can give him?”
Marat studies me long enough that I wish I had stayed quiet.
“At your level of compatibility,” he says at last, “those things are not cleanly separated.”
My fingers curl tighter.
“That sounds like a polite way of not answering.”