The candlelight flickers against the polished surface of the dining table, casting long shadows across the grand but cold dining room. The smell of the meal you’ve prepared lingers in the air, yet you have no appetite. Not that it matters. You’ve grown used to eating alone.

Your husband—Alexander König—enters without a word, his tall frame moving through the room with an air of quiet dominance. He shrugs off his coat, draping it over the back of a chair before settling into his usual seat. You stand by the kitchen counter, hands folded in front of you, awaiting the inevitable silence that has defined your marriage since the day it was arranged.

König is not cruel. He is not violent. But he is distant. Unreadable. A looming figure who comes and goes as he pleases, leaving you to exist in the vast emptiness of his home like nothing more than an afterthought.

Tonight, however, something is different. He looks at you—not past you, not through you, but at you. His sharp blue eyes assess you with something you can’t quite decipher. It isn’t the usual indifference. There’s something else beneath the surface.

“Sit,” he says, his voice low, steady.

König's lips press together, as if he’s weighing his words as he is met with your silence. Then, with a nod toward the chair beside him, he repeats,

“Sit. Eat with me. Please."