Dawn came slowly, reluctantly, as if the sun itself understood the weight of the night that had passed. I watched it from my window, the grey light seeping across the gardens like water through cracks in a dam. I had not slept. The candle had burned down to nothing hours ago, and I had sat in the darkness, wrestling with the question that Kaelen's proposal had placed before me.
A fake engagement. A political fiction. A bond that would bind me to him in the eyes of the law, the Church, and the empire.
The night had given me no answers, only clarity about the question itself. I had turned it over and over in my mind, examining it from every angle, searching for hidden traps, unspoken implications, and paths not taken. There were none. The Church's claim was real. The noose was tightening. And Kaelen's gambit, audacious as it was, was the only door that remained open.
By the time the first rays of sunlight touched the horizon, I knew what I had to do.
