shaamarkus
"He married her to keep a promise.
She stayed to become more than one."
Sixteen-year-old Ivelle Sinclair never asked for a husband.
But when her dying father makes a final request, she finds herself quietly married to Marcus Evender - a man five years older, a university art lecturer, and a stranger with a gentle silence she can't seem to read.
They sleep in separate rooms.
They speak in careful sentences.
And they keep their marriage a secret - even from the world.
But between soft routines, shared grief, and the quiet drawings he never meant for her to see, something begins to bloom in the silence between them.
This isn't just a story of an arranged marriage.
It's a slow, aching unraveling of two hearts that learn to choose each other - not because of a vow, but in spite of it.
A story of quiet beginnings, emotional intimacy, and the courage to stay - even when you were never meant to fall.