His weathered hand found mine, his expression softening with something that made my throat constrict. “You’ve got her spirit, you know. My Molly never met a hurricane she wouldn’t stare down.”
The music changed then—the haunting strain of violins rising through the air, cutting off whatever I might have said.
Santos extended his arm, steady as an oak. “That’s us.”
The massive doors swung open, and for one suspended heartbeat, time itself seemed to pause.
Santos moved first, steady and sure. I followed, my fingers resting against his arm.
So many eyes.
The cathedral brimmed with Dominion royalty—hundreds of eyes tracking my every step, designer gowns and bespoke suits shifting as necks craned for a better view. Not hatred in their gazes, not quite approval either—something more calculating, as if assessing whether I’d been correctly priced.
Danielle and her two satellites occupied the left side, third row. She’d positioned herself between them like the center jewel in a crown, her champagne-blonde hair arranged in perfect waves, lips glossed to a mirror shine. The slight arch of her eyebrow said everything: surprise that I’d managed to cross the threshold they’d guarded so carefully.
On the right, my father sat rigid beside Coraline, his expression carved from the same marble as the floor beneath my feet. The man who had traded me away now watched as I walked without his arm to guide me. Santos’s steady presence beside me was its own rebellion. Had circumstances allowed, I would have had Alaric’s father flanking my other side.
I kept my gaze forward until we reached the midpoint of the aisle. Only then did I allow myself to look up.
He stood at the altar like the world had been built to make room for him, black tux, black tie, shoulders squared. His facewas unreadable until his eyes found mine. That was when he smiled.
It was low, private—one corner of his mouth pulling up as though the sight of me had dragged it there without his permission. A smile only I was meant to see filled with possession, recognition, and pride.
Santos’s arm tensed faintly beneath my hand as we reached the altar steps. “Plan A, then,” he murmured.
I smiled, barely. “Plan A.”
He kissed my hand, Amara took my bouquet, and then I was handed off to Alaric. His fingers closed around mine—warm, sure, and unyielding. The smile was still there, smaller now, and tempered, but it stayed.
When his thumb brushed over the inside of my wrist, it wasn’t a test of pulse. It was a promise, a private understanding no one else in that cathedral would ever grasp.
The officiant wasn’t a priest.
He was one of the elders—Stavros Markian, a man whose name could unmake fortunes with a single call. His presence carried the quiet gravity of power earned, not inherited. He wore no robe, no collar, only a tailored black tuxedo with the Dominion insignia pinned discreetly at his lapel, a serpent biting its tail, encircling a crown.
“Today,” he began, voice projecting through a small mic, “we bear witness to the joining of two bloodlines that have long upheld the Dominion’s legacy.”
The crowd quieted. Every breath felt weighted, suspended between reverence and expectation.
“These vows are older than any of us,” Elder Markian continued. “They were written not for purity, but for power. Not to sanctify love, but to bind loyalty.” His eyes—dark, sharp, ageless—shifted between us. “Selene Darzi, Alaric Kostas, step forward.”
We did.
“Selene,” Markian turned toward me, “you stand before us of your own will?”
“I do.”
“Do you swear to walk beside this man, to defend his name as if it were your own, to act in service of your shared house and its legacy?”
“I swear.”
His gaze slid to Alaric. “Alaric Kostas—do you take this woman as your equal and your keeper? Do you swear to protect what is yours without corruption, and to never betray what stands at your side?”
Alaric’s voice was steady, measured—but something beneath it pulsed with restrained power. “I swear.”
Elder Markian inclined his head. “Then your bond is sealed—not in God’s eyes, but in ours. What you are to each other now will be written into our records and remembered by every name that bears the mark of Dominion.”
Cassian stepped forward with the rings.
