Arranged {Ominis Gaunt x Sebastian Sallow x MC}

{Part 16}

Ominis Gaunt, POV
~

The room is sealed. Hushed voices quieten as I enter the room. It was time for the meeting with my father.

I know this not by sight, but by sound, the final ward snapping shut like a bone set back into place. The air thickens, magic settling low and heavy, pressing against my lungs. Someone exhales nearby. Someone else adjusts their rings. They are all waiting.

And so is he, surprisingly throughout my childhood and my imprisonment, it was my father's presence that my instincts would pick up on the most. His stature, the fear he'd strike in others.
My father does not announce himself. He never has. He allows silence to do the work for him. When he finally speaks, his voice is calm.

"Let us speak plainly."

My spine stiffens. My hands rest folded on the table, fingers locked together to keep them still. The surface beneath my palms is cold stone, etched with runes I learned by touch before I learned their meanings. Serpent sigils. Blood-binding marks.

"She is compliant," my father says. "That much can be said." The word compliant scrapes against me.

There is approval in the room, followed by low murmurs, the subtle shift of bodies leaning forward. Interest. Hunger.

"Not remarkable," he continues. "But that was never the expectation."

I swallow.

Last night rises unbidden in my mind.

Darkness layered over darkness. The bed too large, the silence too sharp. Her breath had been shallow at first, careful, as though she feared disturbing me. When I reached for her, my hand had hesitated in midair—uncertain, searching. She had guided it herself then, placing my palm where she thought it ought to be, her fingers trembling.

"I hope I'm doing this right," she had whispered.

The memory twists painfully.

"She will learn," my father says now. "They always do."

Someone laughs. It is not nervous. It is entertained.

"Did she cry?" a voice asks.

The table erupts in quiet amusement.

My jaw tightens so hard it aches.

I remember her shoulders tensing beneath my hands. Not resistance. Endurance. The way she had gone still afterward, lying beside me without moving, as though waiting for permission to breathe again.

"No," my father replies. "She was well-trained enough not to."

The word trained makes my vision flare white—not with sight, but with rage. Magic prickles beneath my skin, crawling, seeking release. I force it down. I have learned the cost of letting it surface.

"She is soft," my father continues. "Soft things bruise easily. Break quietly. That may become a problem."

"Or an advantage," someone says.

Laughter again.

My fingers dig into my palms. I do not remember unclenching them.

"She carries no illusions of choice," my father adds. "I made certain of that before she ever crossed this threshold."

I hear it then—not said, but implied. The unspoken certainty that whatever fear had been instilled in her had not begun with me.

I think of how she had flinched when my hand brushed her wrist the first time. How quickly she had apologized for nothing.

"She bears my name," I say.

The room stills.

I feel my father turn toward me. I cannot see his expression, but I know it intimately—the mild curiosity, the thinly veiled irritation. The calculation.

"For now," he says. "Names can be removed."

My stomach drops.

"She is not here to be discussed like livestock," I continue, my voice low. "If there are judgments to be made, let them be made to her face."

My father exhales slowly. "You grow bold."

"I grow aware."

A pause. Dangerous. Deliberate.

"You are blind," he says softly, each word chosen with care. "Do not mistake proximity for perception. You felt her body and think you know her. You do not."

My throat tightens.

I remember the way she had clutched the sheets when I pulled away too quickly, afraid she had done something wrong. The way she had whispered my name afterward like a question.

"She exists to secure what you cannot see," my father continues. "Legacy. Continuation. Correction."

Correction.

The room hums with approval.

"If she fails," he says, "we will remind her why fear is useful."

My breath catches. I do not move. I cannot.

Because in my silence, I realize something with terrifying clarity.

I am not her shield.

I am the proof that the system works.

The meeting drags on after that. Words blur together—alliances, heirs, blood purity spoken with reverence. I listen because I must. I memorize because survival demands it.

But beneath it all, another memory pulses.

Her voice, barely audible in the dark.

"Will it always be like this?"

I had not answered.

Now, in this sealed room, surrounded by men who measure worth in pain endured quietly, I finally understand the truth.

Yes.

Unless I make it otherwise.

And that realization terrifies me more than my father ever could.