The Son in law They Should Never Have Betrayed

A WEDDING WITHOUT LOVE

CHAPTER 3 – A WEDDING WITHOUT LOVE

The flowers alone probably cost more than everything Kaelith had ever owned. White roses and pale green stems ran along every surface of the hall, climbing the pillars, draping the archways, falling in thick arrangements from the ceiling in cascades that moved gently each time a door opened somewhere. 

The chairs were ivory and gold. The floor was polished marble that threw light back up at you from below. Everything in the room was perfect and cold and expensive, and none of it had anything to do with him.

Kaelith stood at the front of it all in a suit that had been delivered to his door at six that morning with no note attached. It fit him well. He hated it.

The hall was full. Three hundred people at least, dressed in the quiet, effortless way that truly wealthy people dressed, no loud colours, no heavy jewellery, just fabric that draped perfectly and shoes that never scuffed. They watched him with the particular attention of people who had already made up their minds about what they were seeing.

He heard the first comment before he even reached the altar.

"That's him?" A woman's voice, low but not low enough. "He doesn't look like anything special."

"That's rather the point," a man answered. "Men like that never do."

Kaelith kept his eyes forward. He took his position beside the officiant, a thin man with silver-framed glasses who had not once made eye contact with him. The music started. The doors at the far end opened.

Seraphina walked in alone.

She was beautiful. He could not pretend otherwise, not even to himself at that moment. Her dress was white and structured at the shoulders, simple in the way only very expensive things managed to be simple. Her dark hair was pinned back from her face. Her chin was raised. She walked like a woman who had decided that if this was happening, then nothing and nobody in that room would see her flinch.

She reached his side and did not look at him. The officiant began speaking. Kaelith tried to breathe normally. He could feel the weight of three hundred pairs of eyes on the back of his neck. Someone near the third row whispered something and a quiet ripple of amusement passed through the seats on that side. He did not turn around.

He reached out his hand toward Seraphina. A small gesture, almost automatic, the kind of thing you did standing beside a person at an altar.

She looked down at his hand. Then she looked away. She folded her own hands together in front of her and stood very straight, as if his outstretched hand was simply not there.

He lowered it slowly. A woman somewhere behind him made a soft sound, not quite a laugh. Not quite.

The vows came. Standard words, read from a card the officiant held. When it was Seraphina's turn, she took a short breath and turned to face Kaelith fully for the first time since she had walked in. Her eyes met his. They were steady and dark and completely unreadable.

She spoke clearly, loudly enough for the front rows to hear every word.

"I take you," she said, "not out of love, not out of choice, but out of responsibility. This marriage is purely responsibility. Nothing more."

The silence that followed lasted exactly two seconds. Then came the laughter. It was not loud. It was the worst kind, careful and contained, passing from one mouth to the next like something being passed around a table. A few people covered their smiles with their fingers. Someone coughed to disguise it. The woman in the third row did not bother disguising anything at all.

Kaelith stood completely still.

He felt the heat rise up his throat and settle in his face. He felt the shame of it, not just in his skin but somewhere deeper, in the part of him that had gotten dressed that morning and told himself to hold his head up regardless. He looked at Seraphina. She had already turned back to face the officiant, her expression composed and untroubled, as though she had simply read out a grocery list.

He said his own vows. He said them quietly, and nobody laughed. The rings were exchanged. The officiant declared them married. No one cheered.

The reception passed in a blur of crystal glasses and string music and conversations that stopped when Kaelith walked near and started again the moment he moved away. He stood with a plate of food he did not eat and a glass of something he did not drink and listened to the room breathe around him.

"Climber." The word floated past him from a cluster of men near the bar.

"Opportunist." Two women by the flowers, not even trying.

"Trash." That one came from directly behind him. He turned, but whoever said it had already moved.

He set his glass down on a passing tray and walked to the window. Outside the city moved the way it always did, indifferent and continuous. He pressed two fingers against the cool glass and focused on the feeling of it.

The car ride to the Valecrest residence was fifteen minutes of complete silence. Seraphina sat on the opposite side of the back seat with her face turned to her window. He sat on his side. The driver did not speak.

The house was enormous. A staff member showed him to a room on the second floor, a guest room, he realised, not the primary suite. He stood in the hallway for a moment, then walked to the door at the end of the corridor and knocked.

Seraphina opened it four inches.

"This is my room," she said.

"I know. I just thought"

"There is a couch in the sitting room downstairs." She looked at him without anger, which was somehow harder to take than anger would have been. "Good night."

The door closed. The lock turned. The sound of it was very small and very final. Kaelith stood in the hallway alone, still wearing his wedding suit, and stared at the closed door for a long moment before he turned and walked back downstairs.

The couch was grey and firm and too short for his legs. He lay on it with one arm over his face and listened to the house settle around him.

He was almost asleep when something made him open his eyes. He sat up slowly and looked toward the tall window across the room. Through the glass, across the darkened grounds below, a figure stood near the garden gate. A woman. She was watching the house with her arms at her sides and a small, strange smile on her face, the kind that meant she knew something nobody else did.

She stood there a moment longer. Then the dark swallowed her up, and she was gone..