The church smelled like roses and secrets.

They had dressed her in white as if it meant something—like purity could survive a deal made in blood. Her hands trembled in her lap, fingers laced so tightly they ached, but she refused to let them see her break. Not today. Not in front of him.

At the end of the aisle stood the man she was being sold to—because that’s what this was, no matter how prettily they dressed it up. A marriage, they called it. An alliance. A necessity.

She called it a life sentence.

He didn’t look at her the way a groom should. There was no warmth, no love—only calculation. Cold, sharp, dangerous. The kind of man people whispered about. The kind of man her father owed everything to… and feared even more.

She hadn’t agreed to this.

But she also hadn’t been given a choice.

The doors creaked open behind her, and every head in the room turned. Her cue. Her fate. Her undoing.

As she stood, her father’s voice echoed in her mind: “This is the only way to keep you safe.”

Safe.

From what?

Or worse… from whom?