The door shut behind the last of them with a soft, expensive click.
And suddenly the room felt different.
Too quiet.
Too polished.
Too full of perfume, tea, and all the things Kaelith currently wanted to set on fire.
For a few seconds, neither of them spoke.
Kaelith stayed standing near the table, one hand braced against the carved wood hard enough that her rings clicked softly against it.
Across from her, Irielle remained by the window, straight-backed and composed, sunlight catching in her blond hair and turning it into something almost unfairly delicate.
She looked calm.
That was the first thing Kaelith hated.
The second thing was that she still looked beautiful while being the cause of Kaelith’s legal and emotional ruin.
Kaelith took a deep breath.
Then another.
Mostly so she would not start this conversation by flipping the tea table over and becoming a diplomatic incident.
When she finally spoke, her voice came out low and controlled, which was a miracle.
“You really are a wicked person,” she said.
“Making me sign a marriage contract while I was drunk.”
Irielle did not flinch.
Not even a blink.
Her green eyes rested on Kaelith with the same cool stillness as before, as if outrage were just another weather pattern she had learned to endure.
“Not my fault you are a stupid drunk.”
Kaelith stared at her.
Then laughed once in disbelief.
“Excuse me?”
Irielle tilted her head by a fraction.
“Was any part of that inaccurate?”
Kaelith pushed away from the table and started pacing, because standing still felt impossible.
“Let me think.
You manipulated me at a banquet, tricked me into signing a legal marriage contract, and now you’re insulting me for being angry about it.”
“You asked me for honesty.”
“I asked for an explanation.”
“That was part of it.”
Kaelith turned toward her sharply.
“You really do have ice in your veins.”
Irielle’s mouth curved, but not enough to count as warmth.
“And you really do fill silence with noise.”
The urge to say something devastatingly rude rose in Kaelith’s throat, but it collided with something more inconvenient.
Because standing here now, properly alone with Irielle, Kaelith could feel it.
Not just the coldness everyone talked about.
The distance.
The way Irielle held herself too carefully.
The way every word seemed chosen before it left her mouth.
The way her face remained composed even when there was something tighter hiding underneath it, something quieter and far less easy to name.
Kaelith knew armor when she saw it.
She wore her own differently, with laughter and arrogance and movement, but she knew it.
And Irielle’s was made of frost and elegance and not letting anybody too close.
Kaelith hated that she noticed.
More than that, she hated that some treacherous part of her wanted to crack it.
She stopped pacing and looked at her more directly.
“Why?”
Irielle’s gaze did not move.
“You know why.”
“No,” Kaelith snapped.
“I know it was political.
I know your father is a power-hungry bastard with a crown.
But I want to hear you say it.”
For the first time, something flickered in Irielle’s face.
Not softness.
Certainly not regret.
Just a tiny pause, a held breath beneath the perfect posture.
Then it was gone.
“My father wanted the alliance,” she said.
“You are useful.”
The bluntness of it hit harder than Kaelith expected.
Useful.
Not beautiful.
Not charming.
Not irresistible.
Useful.
Kaelith crossed her arms.
“That’s all?”
“What else were you hoping for?”
There was something about the question that felt sharper than it should have.
Like it had been aimed with care.
Kaelith’s jaw tightened.
“I was hoping for a little humanity.”
Irielle looked at her for a long moment, long enough that the silence between them became strange and taut.
Then she said, “You were drunk.
Flirting.
Loud.
Easy to distract.
It was not difficult.”
That did it.
Kaelith moved before she really thought about it, boots striking hard against the polished floor as she crossed the room.
She stopped close enough that Irielle had to tilt her head back slightly to keep looking at her.
There it was again, that maddening calm.
Kaelith could smell her now, something clean and expensive beneath the flowers in the room.
She could see the fine line of her lashes, the pale gold strands of her hair against her throat, the infuriating smoothness of her skin.
She could also see that Irielle had not stepped back.
Not because she trusted Kaelith.
Because she refused to show fear.
“You think this is a game,” Kaelith said quietly.
“No,” Irielle replied.
“Games are supposed to be fun.”
Kaelith let out a breath that was almost a laugh and almost anger.
“You are impossible.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“You trapped me in a marriage.”
“Yes.”
“And you stand there acting like we’re discussing weather.”
Irielle’s eyes sharpened.
“Would you prefer tears?”
That caught Kaelith off guard, not because of the words, but because of how flat they were.
Not mocking.
Not dramatic.
Flat.
As if tears belonged to a language Irielle had forgotten or buried or never been allowed to speak.
Kaelith stared at her.
For one second, just one, she had the wild sense that if she pushed hard enough, said the right thing, moved the wrong way, the whole elegant frozen structure of her might crack.
Instead, she said, more softly than before, “You don’t seem happy about this either.”
That was the wrong thing.
Or maybe the right one.
Because Irielle went very still.
Colder still.
When she answered, her voice had gone smoother, flatter, more beautiful in the way a frozen lake was beautiful right before someone drowned in it.
“My happiness was never part of this.”
Kaelith felt that sentence like a bruise.
There it was.
The glimpse.
The hairline fracture.
And before she could do anything with it, Irielle had sealed it over again.
Kaelith hated that too.
Hated the castle.
Hated the letter.
Hated her own recklessness.
Hated the fact that under all her fury, curiosity had begun to coil like something alive.
She dragged a hand through her longer white-and-red hair and exhaled sharply.
“You know what I don’t understand?”
Irielle said nothing.
Kaelith stepped even closer.
“If you hate this, if your father arranged it, if this whole thing is as rotten as it looks, then why do you keep talking like I’m the only fool in the room?”
That finally got a reaction.
A tiny one.
A flash of anger in Irielle’s green eyes.
“Because you were the one who signed.”
Kaelith barked a laugh.
“Ah, there she is.”
Irielle’s chin lifted.
“Do not speak as if you know me.”
“Then stop speaking as if I’m too stupid to see what this is.”
“And what is it?” she asked, voice suddenly edged with something fiercer, less polished.
“Go on.
Since you understand everything.”
Kaelith looked at her and, for the first time since this nightmare began, saw more than coldness.
Not much.
Just enough.
The anger there did not look clean.
It looked trapped.
Old.
Taught into elegance so nobody would notice it bleeding.
And just like that, the room got smaller.
Kaelith’s pulse thudded once, hard.
She should have stepped back.
Should have cooled off.
Should have remembered every diplomatic warning Elysia had ever given her.
Instead she moved forward and closed the last of the space between them.
Irielle had only enough time for one sharp breath before Kaelith’s hand landed beside her head against the wall, the other catching lightly but firmly at her waist as Kaelith pinned her there.
Not hurting.
Not gentle either.
Just enough to make the point.
Irielle’s eyes widened by the slightest degree.
Victory, small and vicious, curled through Kaelith’s chest.
She lowered her head, close enough to feel the change in Irielle’s breathing, close enough that her next words brushed the shell of her ear like a threat dressed as a murmur.
“Do you know what a marriage is like?”