The week before the gala, Damien returned to the estate for good, apparently done traveling for the time being. Our paths crossed more often, though "crossed" was generous, mostly it meant passing each other in hallways with a nod, or sitting at opposite ends of the same table during the rare dinners we shared in silence.
It was during one of these silent dinners that Felix Gray first appeared, breezing into the dining room like he belonged there, which apparently, he did.
"Am I interrupting a moment?" Felix asked, dropping into the seat beside Damien without waiting for an answer. He was handsome in an easy, unthreatening way, with a wide grin that seemed permanently attached to his face. "Because it looks like I'm interrupting the most riveting silence I've ever witnessed."
"Felix," Damien said, not looking up from his plate. "Don't you have work to do?"
"I finished it. Unlike some people, I know how to delegate." Felix turned his attention to me, extending a hand across the table. "You must be the infamous Mrs. Crew. Felix Gray. Damien's best friend, personal assistant, and the only person in this house with an actual personality."
I shook his hand, smiling despite myself.
"Silveria."
"Silveria," Felix repeated. "I like it. Very fitting, actually, it sounds like something out of a fairy tale, and clearly you're stuck living in one, given who you married."
"Careful," Damien said flatly, though there was the faintest hint of something almost like amusement in his voice.
"I'm just saying," Felix continued, unbothered, "the whole city thinks you're some kind of demon, and yet here you are eating dinner like a normal person. Groundbreaking stuff."
"The rumors serve their purpose," Damien said simply.
"What purpose is that?" I found myself asking before I could stop myself.
Both men looked at me, mildly surprised I'd spoken up. Damien's expression didn't change, but he answered anyway. "People who fear you don't waste your time. They don't try to get close for the wrong reasons. It's efficient."
"That sounds lonely," I said quietly.
Something flickered across his face but gone before I could name it. "It's practical."
Felix, sensing the shift in the air, quickly changed the subject, launching into a story about a business deal gone hilariously wrong involving a spilled glass of wine and an important investor's white suit. I found myself laughing again, the second time that week, and I caught Damien watching me from across the table with an expression I couldn't quite read.
After dinner, as Felix excused himself to make a call, I lingered at the table, gathering the courage to ask something that had been bothering me since the day I signed the contract.
"Can I ask you something?"
Damien glanced up, mildly surprised by the question itself. "Go ahead."
"The rumors. About your family. Are they true?"
His expression shuttered immediately, the same wall I'd seen the very first day in his study slamming back into place. For a moment I thought he wouldn't answer at all.
"My parents and my sister died in a car accident when I was ten," he said finally, voice carefully flat, like he'd recited this a thousand times to strip it of any feeling. "I was in the car. I survived. They didn't. That part is true."
"I'm sorry," I said quietly.
"Don't be. It happened a long time ago." He stood, pushing his chair back. "The rest of the rumors that I'm heartless, ruthless, whatever else the papers say, believe what you want. It doesn't change anything."
"I don't believe them," I said before he could walk away. "The rumors, I mean. I don't think you're heartless."
He paused, halfway turned toward the door, and looked back at me with an expression I hadn't seen from him before, something like almost startled, like nobody had said that to him in a very long time and he didn't quite know what to do with it.
"You don't know me," he said, though it lacked the sharp edge his voice usually carried.
"No," I agreed. "But I know what it's like to lose people who were supposed to protect you, and build walls so nobody can hurt you like that again. I know what it looks like from the inside."
He held my gaze for a long moment, something unreadable passing behind his eyes, before he simply said, "Goodnight, Silveria," and left the room.
It was the first time he'd used my actual name.
I sat alone at the long table for a while after he left, turning the moment over in my mind, wondering what exactly had just happened. It wasn't much though, a shared piece of history, my name spoken instead of "Mrs. Crew" but it felt like something had shifted, even if just slightly, even if just for that one moment.
I thought about what Rosa had said my first morning here *he's not what the rumors say, just a man who's been hurt so many times he stopped letting people close enough to hurt him again* and for the first time, I understood exactly what she meant.
Maybe this contract marriage wasn't going to stay as cold and simple as the paper made it sound.
Maybe, despite every warning bell in my head telling me not to, I was starting to actually care what happened to Damien Crew.
That thought terrified me more than anything else that had happened since the wedding.