The hours had moved slowly and without mercy.
Aine sat on the edge of the bed in the dark, her back straight, her eyes on the door. He had not come. She did not know whether that was a relief or a warning and she had stopped trying to decide. She reached for the small bowl on the cabinet beside her and lifted a piece of garlic to her mouth. Then another. She chewed slowly and deliberately, her expression unchanged.
"I hope it is strong enough," she murmured to herself.
She set the bowl down, turned and pulled the blanket over herself, lowering her head against the pillow. The room was quiet. The house was quiet. She closed her eyes.
And the quiet took her somewhere else.
Jokull's voice, younger and carrying that particular edge he used when he was trying not to smile. "You think you will get pressure. I am your pressure."
And her own voice, softer than she ever let it be in daylight. Jokull, I am sorry. We could not even have a single day after we became official.
The memories moved through her like water finding the lowest ground and somewhere in the middle of them sleep found her, pulling her down gently into something that felt, for just a moment, like safety.
He knocked for the fifth time.
The doorbell had given up somewhere around the second attempt and he had resorted to his knuckles, standing on the front step of a house he had not stood in front of for longer than he wanted to calculate.
The door swung open.
His sister looked up at him with enormous eyes, her mouth dropping open before any sound came out.
"Mummy!" She spun around and screamed into the house. "Brother Jokull is here!"
He felt something loosen in his chest that had been tight since the rain. "Tiny gummy," he said. "How are you?"
She spun back around with immediate outrage. "I am not tiny and I am not a gummy!"
"Oh, I see." He opened his arms wide. "Big woman. Come here then."
She ran at him and he caught her, lifting her against his chest and carrying her through the door. She wrapped her arms around his neck and squeezed like she intended to keep him there permanently.
He walked further into the house and stopped.
She was standing in the hallway.
The person he had made a private promise to himself never to stand in the same room with again.
"Jokull, dear." Oriana's voice was warm and carefully measured, the voice of a woman who had spent years learning how to use warmth as a tool.
He looked down at the small body still attached to his neck. "Cosmy." He kept his tone even. "Go to your room. I have a mountain of gifts for you."
"Gifts?" Her eyes went wide all over again. She pressed a quick kiss to his cheek, wriggled free and was gone before the sentence had fully settled.
Oriana watched her go and then looked back at him with a smile that did not quite reach the part of her face where real smiles lived. "Jokull—"
"Bring me the papers."
The smile faltered. "I beg your pardon?"
"The papers," he said again, his voice carrying nothing. "I want to sign them."
"Jokull, those are—"
"I know what they are." He held her gaze. "Do as I say."
She looked at him for a long moment with an expression he did not bother trying to read, then turned and left the room. She returned with a folder and held it out toward him without speaking.
He took it and opened it on the hallway table.
The Dark World Contract. A document that had existed in his family's orbit for as long as he could remember, the formal entry into a world that operated beneath every visible structure of power. His father had held a position in it once, before the accident had moved him to the bottom of a hierarchy that showed no mercy to the weak. Signing meant stepping into that space. It meant becoming something the version of himself from six months ago would have walked away from without looking back.
He picked up the pen.
"I want to be clear about something," he said, not looking up. "I am not doing this for my father. I am not doing this for this family's position or its name." He pressed the pen to the paper. "I am doing this for my own reasons."
He signed.
He closed the folder and left it on the table, then walked down the hallway toward Cosmina's room, the bag of gifts already back in his hand, his face carrying nothing of what the signature had just cost him.
The door pushed open without a sound and every light in the room died with it.
Darkness pressed against her face like a hand and Aine pulled the blanket to her chest and went completely still, listening.
She felt him before she heard him. The air in the room shifted, cooling by a degree, and then the mattress beside her sank slowly under his weight. He sat close. Too close. His fingers moved through her hair with a deliberateness that was worse than roughness and then the blanket was lifted away.
His cold fingers traced along her legs, small sharp pinches marking the path upward.
"Fast asleep, little cosmos," he murmured, his voice low and unhurried in the dark.
He shifted her toward him and cupped her face in his palm, lowering his head toward hers.
Her eyes opened.
She held his gaze for exactly one second and then opened her mouth.
The smell hit him like a wall.
Ravi recoiled, standing up from the bed in a single motion, and Aine pushed herself upright against the headboard and laughed. It was sharp and genuine and completely unbothered.
"Got you," she said.
"You tricked me."
He moved toward her again and she opened her mouth a second time, letting the full force of it meet him. He stepped back.
"Garlic." The word came out flat with disbelief. "You ate garlic."
His eyes found the small empty bowl on the cabinet. He looked at it for a moment and then looked at her and something shifted in his expression that was not quite amusement but was not entirely removed from it either.
"You are more interesting than I expected," he said quietly.
Aine said nothing. She kept her eyes on him and her back against the headboard and her expression told him absolutely nothing he could use.