The hallway outside Ayoka's room smelled like dust and distant lavender. He paused at the door, hand resting on the frame, listening first. No argument. No tension. Just the sound of blocks stacking and Ayoka humming—off key, half-hearted, sweet.
He pushed the door open gently. The room was warm and dim, lit by a flickering oil lamp and a string of old prayer beads hung across the window like a curtain of whispers. He felt something stir in his chest—familiar, but not quite love. It was deeper, heavier. Responsibility, guilt, longing. He wondered, bitterly, if this was what his mother felt when some puffed-up noble had tried to claim him as his own. The man had waddled in, draped in velvet and arrogance, with rings on every finger and a lie in every breath. His mother had laughed in his face, then calmly—furious beneath the surface—told him the truth: he was her first cousin. No inheritance. No honor. Just a scandal in waiting.
His father nearly killed the man for it—stormed across the courtyard with blood in his teeth and rage behind his eyes. But his mother stopped him, not out of pity, but practicality. "He's too fat to fight and not worth burying," she had said with a sneer. Viktor never forgot that moment. The way she held the truth like a blade. Maybe he was holding something like that now—something too complicated to be called love, and too sacred to dismiss.
Ayoka sat on the floor in her house dress, legs folded beneath her, gently combing Malik's soft curls with her fingers. She had changed since last he saw her—back to her usual self. Hair wrapped, face bare, posture relaxed.
She looked up, unsurprised. "You look tired," she said, voice even—but her heart wrestled with silence. She didn't know what to say in that moment. Earlier, she had overheard servants whispering just outside her quarters—too close, too careless. One said that if she ever became the lady of the house, it would only stir up trouble. Another, one of Viktor's closer aides, had responded curtly that it would never happen. They spoke as if she didn't exist—like she was just furniture. And maybe, in their eyes, she was: A slave,bed warmer, or something used when the night got cold. A mistress, if someone was feeling generous.
She wrapped Malik's curls around her fingers slowly, her mind drifting to all the women who had survived by lying down quietly and calling it love. Was it even a sacrifice, she wondered, if you gave yourself so willingly? Or had the world trained her to believe that surrender was the only kind of power she would ever be allowed to hold?
Some part of her wanted to spit. Another part just wanted to be held. Because when she played her part—slave, mother, woman—she understood too well how different those roles truly were. History had always drawn thick lines between them. A slave might be a mother, yes, but rarely a wife. A mistress could be a caretaker, but never a lady. Women like her were taught to blur lines, to survive by slipping through cracks. From the hushes of Southern plantations to the whispers behind fine New Orleans parlor doors, the world had told her again and again: power doesn't come with love—it comes with endurance. And even then, they wouldn't call it hers.
"I am," he replied. But even as he said it, his mind wandered. He thought about that night—the way they found themselves tangled together in a moment neither of them had planned. He wondered why he made the first move. Maybe it was the way they mirrored each other's exhaustion, their edges fraying under pressure. Or maybe it was the clothes, the silence, the illusion he'd painted so carefully around them—like a picture world where nothing could go wrong. He'd become addicted to that illusion, drunk on the fragile joy of planning a life he never thought he could choose.
For a moment, he felt... happy. Not the kind of happiness that bursts with light, but the quiet sort—the one that fills the cracks so the loneliness doesn't seep in. But Sabine's words haunted him still, tucked into the corners of his thoughts. Maybe, just maybe, it was time to go through with the plan.
Still, he offered a smile—fake, easy, practiced. He didn't want Ayoka on edge. And he didn't want Malik to feel the weight of what might come.
Malik looked up and beamed at him, holding up a crooked tower made of old wooden blocks. One of them still had a bloodstain from an old splintering accident—smoothed over with time.
Viktor crossed to the edge of the carpet, crouched just out of arm's reach. "That's a strong tower," he said. "Stronger than mine ever were."
Malik giggled and knocked it over. Ayoka smiled faintly and went back to combing his curls.
Viktor didn't speak. He didn't move closer. He just watched. There was something calming here—something he didn't deserve. The scent of old wood. Ayoka's steady breath. Malik's hiccupped laughter. No magic. No hunger. No mirrors. Just life, like it had never been broken.
His hands flexed on his knees. She didn't look at him again. Not right away. She just let him sit there, behind the line she'd quietly drawn.
And for now—he stayed on the other side.