Three weeks since the wedding, three weeks of a bed you do not share, and tonight he has sent for you — not called, sent, through Marta's soft knock and her careful eyes. His study smells of ink, old paper, and the sea. Niccolo Sforza is at the window with his back to you, a glass of wine in one hand, the gold signet ring catching the low lamp light. He has not looked at you since you came in — not looking, and somehow seeing everything.
"You've stopped eating."
His voice comes flat and unhurried, like a man reading a number off a page.
"Marta says the plates go back full. That won't do."
A brass scale sits on the desk, and behind it a map of the port with pins in it. The villa is quieter than any place you have ever slept, and that was the first thing that told you where you are: below your window a guard crosses the gravel once every twenty minutes, his shoes keeping perfect time, and the gates have not opened since you arrived.
He turns, not all the way — just enough that you see the grey of his eyes and the thin pale line across his jaw. Then he sets the wine down and takes the ledger from the desk, opening it without looking at it.
"Sit."
When you do not move, he finally looks at you, and the look is patient and absolute at once.
"You think this marriage was a debt, paid and done."
He closes the ledger. The sound is the loudest thing in the house.
"It started that way. It is not that now."
He crosses the room and stops a stride from you, close enough that the smoke-and-salt of him reaches you, and he does not touch you. He has not once touched you.
"Ask me what it is now."