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I stare at the river running through the glass. “Five hundred years,” I murmur. “And they never changed its course.”

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” I turn to him. “You all right?”

He laughs. “Me? I’m fine. I just talked too much.”

But the color has drained from his face, and he’s breathing a little harder than he was when we came in.

Ryven appears beside us before I can say anything. “Your brother’s done for the day.” He nods toward the entrance. “Come on. Fresh air.”

“Ryven—”

“Seren’s got the chair. I’ve got him.” He glances back at me. “Twenty minutes, Jade. We’ll be in the portico.”

I watch them leave, Ryven keeping a hand on Onyx’s back while Seren follows with the chair, then turn back toward the hall.

Then it’s just me.

Just me, and four halls of a planet that was never for sale.

Do I miss home? Do I miss the mines, Mrs. Varga, Widow Okafor, or even Ferro?

Will they have watered my plants?

Scoffing at myself, I turn back to the river wall.

I’ve spent my life keeping a record of a green world in a free museum on a dead planet, because somebody should and nobody else was going to. Three rooms on Calder, with a woman at the desk who knows my name. Everything we lost, kept in the dark by people who couldn’t afford the light.

This is what the other kind looks like.

Rooms and rooms of things that are still growing somewhere. Four centuries of storms mapped across an entire hall because somebody thought a storm was worth writing down, not something you schedule and sell within a wall.

Nobody here is keeping a record of what was taken. They’re keeping a record of what they’ve got. And one of the most prominent men here is Asher Clement the Third.

My husband.

The words still don’t fit properly in my head. Under Tempest law, that’s what we are. The ring sits heavy on my hand as I stare at a country that belongs to him far more than it will ever belong to me.

No ship waits to take me back to Calder. No version of this where I leave Onyx behind. Running was always my easy answer. Staying is the only one left.

Last night keeps coming back to me the way it’s been all day, in pieces, when I least expect it.

The belt. The floor. The way he said puppy like it was something I’d earned.

I let him do that. I got on my knees on a stranger’s floor and crawled. This morning I got on them again in the shower, and I wasn’t even told to.

And Light help me, some part of me came alive doing it. Not only the part that wanted him, though that part was loud enough. The other part was relieved to stop carrying everything for a while. He took it out of my hands, told me to lie still, and I did. The relief frightened me more than he did.

I’ve never once been the one who gets taken care of. Then I found his scars and understood he hasn’t either.

I take a deep breath. Maybe I’m not a purchase after all. He didn’t need to feed me, untie me, rub feeling back into my wrists, or hold me while I slept. And I didn’t go to my knees this morning because he told me to. Whatever this is, it isn’t just a transaction. So why did he marry me?

He already had a contract waiting and an Imperial family expecting him. So why throw all of that away for a man from Calder? And what happened to the man he was supposed to marry? You don’t just replace an Imperial wedding.

I don’t know the rules here, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing.

Time slips by without my noticing. I move from room to room, stopping in front of photographs, maps, and glass cases until the light outside has shifted across the windows and I’ve seen every corner of the exhibition twice.