The nightly inspections started as the only way to secure my title without exposing the fear that haunts every decision. Valerie stands before me in the locked archive, her full figure revealed under candlelight as I take the measure of what belongs to the estate and to me, claiming her as the ritual demands.
Her instinctive compliance fuels the claiming, yet the resolve I see building in her eyes warns that silence will not hold. When our hands met on the vellum ledger in the hall and neither pulled away, the afternoon light seemed to expose the fragile line between duty and desire.
I command her voice to remain absent from the ritual, but I already know the danger in allowing her to answer back.
