Episode 1 — The Deal They Never Asked For

The dress cost more than her rent.

Lyra Voss stood in front of the mirror in a white silk gown that belonged on someone who wanted to be here, and she thought not for the first time today about running.

She could. She was good at it. She'd run toward burning buildings before just to see what was inside. She'd jumped off a cliff in Bali on a dare from a stranger. She'd told her last boyfriend she loved him ten minutes before breaking up with him because she wanted to see his face do both things at once.

Running away, though that she'd never been great at.

"You look beautiful," her mother said from the doorway, voice soft with the particular guilt of a woman who knew she was doing something wrong and had decided to do it anyway.

Lyra didn't turn around. "Don't."

"Lyra..."

"Don't explain it." She finally looked at her mother in the mirror really looked. Took in the tired eyes, the careful makeup hiding the shadows under them. The way her hands were folded like a prayer that hadn't been answered yet. "Just tell me his name again."

"Kael Nox."

The name landed strange. Heavy. Like it had weight that names shouldn't have.

"Nox," Lyra repeated. Night. Even his name was dramatic. "And his family's been in business with Dad's for how long?"

"That doesn't matter.."

"It matters to me." She turned around now, facing her mother fully. No trembling. No tears. Just that flat, direct stare that had always made people uncomfortable. "How long?"

Her mother looked away first. She always did. "Longer than you've been alive."

He was already there when she walked in.

That was the first thing that struck her not the size of the venue, not the guests in their expensive suits watching her like she was a performance, not even her father standing at the front with that smile he wore when he'd won something.

Just him.

Kael Nox stood at the altar like he'd been there forever. Like the room had been built around him rather than the other way around. He was tall taller than she'd expected dressed in all black, which felt like a choice that meant something. Dark hair, Jaw like it had been cut from something colder than bone. And his eyes, when they found hers across the length of the aisle..

Wrong.

That was her first thought. Something about his eyes was wrong. Not cruel, not cold she'd seen both and knew how to name them. This was different. Like looking at a window and realizing there was no room behind it.

Like he was wearing something the way other people wore skin.

Lyra kept walking. Of course she did. She walked toward the wrongness because that's what she always did because the thing that scared her a little was always more interesting than the thing that didn't.

She stopped beside him.

He looked down at her. Up close, she could smell something cold air, petrichor, the particular dark that lives between stars. It made no sense. He smelled like night. Not cologne trying to imply it. The actual thing.

"You're shorter than I expected," she said, because she was nervous and when she was nervous she said the first real thing in her head.

He blinked. Slow. Like the concept of being surprised was something he was doing for the first time.

Then almost imperceptibly the corner of his mouth moved.

"You're louder," he said. His voice was low. The kind of low that didn't need volume to fill a room.

"You say that like it's a complaint."

"I say it like it's a fact."

The officiant began speaking. Lyra stopped listening after the third word. She was watching Kael's hands instead how still they were. How a normal person fidgets, shifts, betrays themselves in small movements. He was motionless. Like something that had learned to imitate stillness so well it forgot it was imitating.

What are you, she thought.

He turned his head slightly. Just slightly. Like he'd heard her.

She told herself that was impossible.

The reception was everything she expected and nothing she wanted.

Champagne she didn't drink. People shaking her hand and saying congratulations like it was a compliment. Her father laughing too loud at something Kael's father said and Kael's father, who had a smile that went nowhere near his eyes, laughing back.

Kael stood beside her all evening like a very beautiful wall.

"You don't talk much," she observed, around hour two.

"I talk when I have something to say."

"Most people don't follow that rule."

"Most people waste a lot of words."

She looked up at him. He was watching the room not any one person, just the room, with the kind of attention that took everything in at once. Like a predator clocking exits. "Are you always like this?"

"Like what."

"Like you're waiting for something to happen."

A pause. And then he looked down at her, and something moved behind those wrong eyes something that flickered like a light in a very deep place. "Yes."

She should have found that unsettling.

She found it interesting instead.

They gave them the honeymoon suite.

Of course they did.

Lyra stood in the middle of it enormous bed, city glittering forty floors below, the whole ridiculous romance of it and felt the first crack in the armor she'd been wearing all day. Not fear. Not quite. Something adjacent to it that she didn't have a word for.

Kael closed the door behind them.

The room felt different with just the two of them in it. Smaller. Or maybe he just took up more space than he should.

"I'll take the couch," she said. Firmly. First.

"It's your choice." He hadn't moved from near the door. Jacket off now, dark shirt, sleeves not yet rolled standing there like he had nowhere to be for the rest of time. "I don't sleep much."

She turned to look at him. "How much is much?"

"Rarely."

She stared. "That's not a number."

"No," he agreed. "It's not."

She didn't know why that was the thing that did it. Maybe it was the day. The dress she still hadn't taken off. The champagne she hadn't drunk and maybe should have. The way her mother had hugged her goodbye with both arms like an apology. Maybe it was just the accumulated weight of a day that had taken something from her she hadn't agreed to give.

Whatever it was, her eyes went hot.

She didn't cry. She refused to cry — blinked hard, looked at the ceiling, jaw set. But her throat moved. Her hands came up and pressed against her face.

She heard him move.

He didn't say anything — didn't offer platitudes, didn't give her the performative it'll be okay that people defaulted to when they didn't know what else to do. He just moved to stand near her. Not touching. Just — near. A presence in the dark.

"I'm fine," she said, voice only slightly wrecked.

"I know," he said.

Which was the wrong thing to say. Which was somehow the only thing that could've made her feel, just slightly, less alone.

She dropped her hands. Looked at him. His face was unreadable in the low light — all shadow and sharp angles — and his eyes had that quality again, that window-with-no-room-behind-it quality, except.

Except now there was something there.

Small. Faint. Like a single candle at the bottom of a very deep well.

She didn't know what it was.

She thought, inexplicably: He's been alone for a very long time.

"Get some sleep," he said quietly. And turned away.

She watched his back and thought: What are you?

And somewhere in the dark of the room, in the space between one heartbeat and the next —

she could've sworn she heard him exhale.

Like he'd been holding his breath for centuries.

Like she was the first thing worth breathing for.

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***