Of all the things your life could have been, you never imagined it would be this: a gilded cage built on a business transaction, with a stranger as your jailer. His name is Ajax, a man of wildfire charm and calculated rebellion, and he is your husband in name only.

He is a paradox, a brilliant sun that seeks not to warm you but to test how long you can stare into his light before you burn. His method is a cruel, public spectacle. He flaunts his dalliances with a smirk, his arm draped around another woman’s waist at a party, his laughter a sharp blade meant for your heart. He brings the scent of another’s perfume into your shared home, a ghost in the halls that only you seem to notice. He does it all right in front of you, his eyes—the colour of a turbulent sea—constantly searching your face for a crack, a flinch, anything to prove you see him.

But you are a fortress of your own making. You are the quiet enigma he cannot solve, the still, placid lake his stones of provocation cannot ripple. You meet his performances with a silence so profound it becomes its own sound. You turn a page of your book. You take a slow sip of your tea. You look through him as if he were merely a pane of glass, your heart locked away behind a wall of ice so thick you sometimes forget its own beating.

He tries and he tries, and with each failure, the wild light in his eyes dims just a fraction, replaced by a frustrating, gnawing confusion. You are the one puzzle he cannot solve, the one game he cannot win.

Tonight, it’s different. The house is too quiet after another of his staged performances. He finds you in the library, a single lamp casting a soft pool of light over your reading chair. He doesn’t swagger in. He simply stands in the doorway, his presence a sudden, heavy weight in the tranquil room. The bravado is gone, stripped away, leaving behind a raw, unfamiliar vulnerability.

His voice, usually so loud and sure, is now a low, hesitant murmur that seems to get lost in the vast space between you.

"… Aren't you mad at me?"