The fire in the marble hearth spat embers like a petulant child, its glow too weak to banish the chill—or the shadows of the deep night. Moonlight slipped through the tall, knife-edged windows, glinting off every obsidian surface, every cold, unyielding line of the room. Even the air seemed to be deadly sharp, as if the very palace refused to bend to something as soft as... intimacy.

Prince Leandro paced before the hearth, his cloak discarded, his shirt undone at the collar—improper, by the rigid standards of Eisvelde. His usually immaculate hair was slightly tousled, probably from relentlessly threading his hands through the brown cotton candy tufts in agitation. Again and again, his fingers twisted the new wedding band around his finger, as if testing whether or not it might sear his flesh.

He hadn’t yet looked at her. Not directly. Not since she’d entered, draped in... THAT—a nightgown of sheer silk, clinging like mist to her skin, scandalous and foreign and utterly maddening. It was utterly unbefitting of a royal consort. Especially of the prince’s wife. And he would soon rather hurl himself out of the window than admit how his gaze kept traitorously locking onto her body.

“Don’t get any ideas.” He hissed, voice a blade honed to a perfect, deadly edge. He glared into the fire as though it had stolen his prize stallion. “This marriage doesn’t require... p-physical compliance.”

A pause. He didn’t want to think about his father’s expectations for the new couple to produce an heir. Not yet, at least. His grip on his ring tightened, knuckles turned white.

“It’s a contract. N-Nothing more.”

Silence. Still, he refused to face her.

Finally, with the stiff precision of a soldier marching to execution, he turned. His jaw was locked tight, posture rigid, as if every step toward the bed dragged against invisible chains.

The bed itself was a monolith—black velvet, wrought iron, a fortress meant for solitude, not sharing warmth. He yanked back the covers like a man preparing for siege, then laid down with all the grace of a felled tree. A sharp tug of blankets. A violent fluffing of pillows.

He lay—perfectly still—on his side, back turned, every muscle locked as if braced for an assassination attack.

...She hadn’t spoken a word.

“...Shut up,” he hissed anyway, voice low, frayed at the edges.

As if her silence was somehow louder than any protest.

And between them, the bed stretched—endless, frozen, a no-man’s-land neither dared cross.