Page 6 of Dragon King’s Duty Bride

Lucas kept his hand light on Sia’s waist as if too much pressure might crack the careful distance between them. The band played a song meant for devotion. He almost laughed at the irony of it.

The room was full of faces he had known his whole life. These same faces had watched this wedding unfold with nods of approval and relief even though most of them had been at his wedding with Dian. To them, this was a problem neatly solved, as if the future hadn’t just been decided for him in front of God and everyone he knew.

Sia didn’t, or wouldn’t, look at him. Her gaze stayed fixed somewhere over his shoulder but she kept her polite smile in place and her posture perfect. She was simply performing to expectations.

He guided her through the steps they had never practiced. One, two, turn. Her hand in his was cool and steady, but totally unfamiliar. This was supposed to be the big moment that people talked about later. The first dance. The proof of the initiation of a new journey.

Instead, it felt like holding a contract.

“You’re doing fine,” he murmured, more out of obligation than comfort.

“I know,” she said quietly. Not unkind. Just… flat.

They moved in silence after that with the space between them filled by music and the collective watching of the crowd. Lucas could feel every eye, every unspoken finally. His jaw tightened. This was what had been expected since Dian died. The monarchy needed its queen.

He wondered if Sia felt the same tightness, the same sense of being folded into a shape that didn’t quite fit. When he glanced down, her lashes were lowered and her expression carefully blank. A bride in every way that mattered to the room.

But not to him. He had to admit that she was beautiful and composed. She may have the distinction of queen now, but she was not his bride. Only Dian fit into that title.

He adjusted his grip and forced himself to soften it. This wasn’t her fault. Neither of them had stepped into this because of love. They had stepped in because not doing so would have meant disappointment and consequences neither of them had been brave enough to face.

The song began to wind down. Lucas felt a strange mix of relief and dread. Relief that the performance was almost over. Dread that this was only the beginning.

As the final note faded, applause swelled around them. Sia finally looked up at him then, just for a second. Something unreadable passed between them. Not anger. Not affection.

Understanding, maybe.

Lucas inclined his head, a gesture small enough to pass for tenderness. He led her into the waiting arms of their families, the noise, and the congratulations.

And as he smiled for them, Lucas wondered how long two people could dance through life to a song they didn’t choose before the music finally ran out.

When the celebration finally faded and the night crept toward its end, relief loosened his shoulders for the first time. The performance was nearly over. Or so he thought.

The mood in their wedding suite was painfully restrained when it was finally just the two of them.

He lay awake long after the lamps were extinguished and stared into the dark as if it might give him permission to breathe.

Lucas kept his hands folded over his chest with his fingers laced tight. It was a habit from years of sleeping alone. The bed was wide enough for comfort, yet it felt narrow as a line he dared not cross. Sia lay beside him, rigid and silent, with her back turned. Even the space between their bodies felt charged with meaning, filled with obligation, apology, and everything he had failed to say.

He had not touched her, not even by accident.

The restraint hurt more than he had expected, though not in the way people would assume. It wasn’t desire that clawed at him. It was only memory.

Dian’s memory.

Loyalty, he told himself. That was what this was. Loyalty to the woman he had loved; the woman he had buried with his own hands shaking as he laid her coffin in the ground. Loyalty to a marriage that death had ended but never truly dissolved. His body had learned grief so thoroughly that it no longer reached for what it was offered.

Still, guilt pressed heavier than the silence.

He had forced Sia into this marriage. He had forced her into this bed, this room, and this life shaped by his past. He could admit that now, in the dark, where no one could hear him fail. Whatever words had been used, whatever bargains struck, the truth remained the same. She was here because he had needed her to be.

And now she lay beside him like a stranger.

She wouldn’t want anything more anyway, he told himself. The thought settled into him with practiced ease. Sia was proud, guarded, and sharp-eyed. She would resent his touch and flinch beneath it. Restraint, then, was not only loyalty, it was mercy.

That was what he clung to.

Sleep refused him, and as it often did, memory took its place.