Married By My Father's Debt

sleep t

words stop looking like words and start looking

er in my hands like it might rearrange itself into something less f

lse. Maybe someone from Williams Textiles reported to th

- and I hold onto this one the longest, the way you hold onto anything that lets

k that eve

everything sitting cold and heavy in my stomach. He looks up before I've fully crossed the room, and the smile tha

didn't sleep," he

two nights ago, a tightness around his mouth that makes him look older, more burd

admits. "My fathe

goes still.

the truth he's allowed to hand me. "About my future. About decisions that aren't

tching his face for anything that might exp

e's paying closer attention than he was a second a

to marry a man I've never met, a king is threatening my sister's education if I don't agree - and for one reckless second I want

an. I think about how little I actually know about the man across from me, how easily a stra

mallest, safest way a sentence can be true. "Complica

hen let's ruin it with something else instead," he says, and just like that the tension breaks, and we spend the next

aughs like that, that either o

r them. The way he angles his body slightly toward the door every time it opens,

and calls him nothing but "sir," never a name, in a way that

uring our conversation, and both times he glances at it and doesn't touch it,

says at one point, ca

afe way to say it. "You seem like s

id something far more dangerous than I meant to. "That's a strange thing to notice about a stranger," he sa

I say. "Occupationa

your occ

ny my father built from nothing, or I'm about to, once I figure out how t

I say instead. "It'

ind his eyes, and then he laughs, low and a little rueful. "We'r

if I asked?" I say

. "I want to," he says finally. "That's the truth. I want to tell y

ir

an't un-know," he says. "And I don't know if I'

s, looking for the shape underneath them. I think about the black car. I think about the text message still sitting u

e, her homework abandoned in front of her, dark circles under

ken my coat off. "A man. Said he was from the palace.

s cold. "Wha

program dad set up for me. He said it might need to be - reviewed - depending on some decisions you make

g on? What decisions

ze with a sick, sinking certainty that whoever sent that te

last name. And now they've stopped threatening me and started threatening her, and I have no idea

I've been telling both of us since the day the pho

hand

table, the careful way he watches doors, the words he said that I s

ster's shaking hands, which one of us