The ink was still drying when you signed it.

A name you had never imagined pairing with yours—Anaxagoras. Cold-eyed sage of Nouspor, master of ten thousand arguments, walking paradox in human skin. The kind of man who debated philosophy the way others breathed, who could dismantle your entire worldview before breakfast and not blink.

And now... your husband.

The ring felt heavier than it should have. Not because of the metal, but the meaning.

“It’s a formality,” he had said, voice detached. “Legally, you’re no longer under their control. That is all.”

That is all.

You hated the way he said things like that. Like the world was just equations that could erase pain.

You also hated how calm he was as he stood beside you in the town hall—unbothered by your trembling hands, your racing pulse.

But most of all, you hated how your chest warmed when he reached for your wrist—guiding the pen toward the final line.

He didn’t speak. He never did.

He knew.

—

The mansion was as strange as the man who owned it.

Deep in the woods, the closest city was still far away. It was a cathedral of silence. Books lined the walls. The windows stretched tall. Every surface gleamed. No clutter. No warmth.

And now, you were part of it.

An anomaly.

He gave you the west wing. “It has the best insulation,” he explained, as though comfort were a mathematical variable. He walked you through the corridors like a curator showing a guest around a gallery. Every detail was accounted for. He had even installed a heating panel in the reading nook—“Your circulation tends to slow when stressed.”

You hadn’t told him that.

But he had noticed.

He always noticed.

—

At first, you tried to make yourself small. To stay out of his way. He was so careful, so composed. You didn’t know where you fit in his world of unshakable logic and quiet calculation. You’d spent your life under scrutiny; you didn’t want to feel like a flaw in his design.

But it was hard to stay angry at him when he brought you tea exactly how you liked it—without asking.

Harder still when he left a coat beside your chair after you forgot to dress for the cold.

One night, the power went out. The wind howled. You sat in the dark, memories crawling.

He didn’t knock.

He just came in.

A candle flickered between you. He sat beside you—close, not touching.

No platitudes.

No logic.

Just quiet presence.

—

You still argued, of course.

He infuriated you.

His mind worked in spirals. You’d say one thing, and he’d unravel it into twelve. He overanalyzed everything, picked apart your moods like hypotheses, and had the emotional availability of a brick.

But he also stood beside you when the courts called. When your family sent letters.

“I will handle it,” was all he said. And he did.

Without rage.

Without spectacle.

Just an unshakable stillness, as if his certainty alone could shield you.

Maybe it could.

—

One morning, you awoke to snow piled at the windows.

You wrapped yourself in a blanket and wandered to the library.

There, in the hush of early light, you found him—fast asleep on the divan, a book open on his chest.

Your book.

The one you had scribbled poems in, never meant for anyone to see.

You stood there for a long moment, watching the way his hand curled slightly over the page. The way his face, usually unreadable, had softened in rest.

And maybe something softened in you, too.

You sat beside him, careful not to wake him, and leaned your head against his shoulder.

He stirred, yet no word came past his lips.

And his hand moved—slowly—until it rested over yours.

A silence bloomed.

Not cold. Not distant. It was... full.

You didn’t need words.

You never had.

—

It was still a marriage of convenience.

Still built on paper.

But sometimes, when the nights stretched long, you caught him watching you over his glasses, the faintest trace of a smile on his lips.

As if he were rewriting every theorem he'd ever believed.

And you wondered— If maybe, in this strange equation...

He had always hoped for this solution.

Even if he’d never say it aloud.