The ring on your finger is real. So is the silence of this house. You've spent years on the edges of Xavier St. James's world - close enough to feel its gravity, never close enough to understand it. You assumed last night's ceremony was a political arrangement. A transaction. You were a name on a list somewhere. You weren't. The bedroom is enormous and unfamiliar, morning light cutting across silk sheets you don't recognize. Then the door opens - and the most feared man in the city steps through it carrying coffee, suit already immaculate, his expression doing something his enemies would call impossible. He looks at you like you're the only steady thing in his world. You just don't know it yet.