The breaking point came one winter evening.
Aria had spent days preparing a private dinner. She had arranged candles, chosen his favorite wine, even played soft piano music in the background. She wanted it to feel different, intimate, as though it might be the start of something new.
When Henry entered, she stood from the table, her heart racing. "Surprise," she whispered, her eyes shining with nervous hope.
He glanced around, taking in the candles, the carefully set table. For a fleeting second, she thought he might soften. But then his mouth hardened.
"Aria," he said coldly, "I told you before. Stop doing this."
Her smile faltered. "I just wanted… I thought maybe we could have dinner together, just the two of us."
"This is exactly what I mean." His voice rose, sharp and unforgiving. "You keep clinging to some fantasy. This marriage isn't about love. It never was. Stop embarrassing yourself."
The words struck like a blade.
Aria stood frozen, her chest hollow. The candles flickered, their flames trembling like her resolve.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, her voice breaking. "I only wanted to make you happy."
"I don't want this," he said firmly, his eyes like stone. "I don't want you."
He left the room without looking back.
The silence that followed was absolute.
Aria sank into her chair, her body shaking. Tears blurred her vision until the candles melted into shapeless light. For the first time, doubt overwhelmed hope. Perhaps love was not enough. Perhaps effort, no matter how endless, could never mend a heart that refused to open.
That night, in the cold expanse of her empty bed, she realized she was no longer a wife.
She was only a woman in love—with a man who would never love her back.
Aria had never felt the corridors estate so suffocating.The silence was no longer a mere absence of sound—it was thick, pressing against her ribs, making each breath a conscious effort. Henry's indifference had carved invisible wounds into her, and though she carried them beneath her gowns and behind her practiced smiles, they throbbed endlessly. She was desperate for guidance, for a voice of experience that might untangle this knot tightening around her marriage.
So she went to her mother.
---
Lady Mireille received her daughter in her usual place: the morning room, where lace curtains filtered the daylight into a hazy warmth. The older woman was embroidering, her silver-thread needle flashing in rhythmic precision. Aria sat opposite her, folding her hands so tightly in her lap that her knuckles paled.
"Mother," Aria began carefully, "may I speak with you about Henry?"
Lady Mireille did not look up at once. She tied a neat knot in the fabric, then raised her cool, pale eyes to her daughter's face. "You may. Though I do hope it is not yet another lament. A wife's duty is not to indulge in complaints."
Aria swallowed hard. "It is not complaint, truly. Only… I fear I cannot reach him. He does not speak with me, except when politeness demands it. He withdraws, Mother, as though my presence weighs upon him. I try to be patient, but I fear he does not—cannot—care for me."
Her mother's lips tightened into a thin smile. "Aria, my child. Do you truly think most marriages are born of love? That is for poetry, not households. You are young and still clinging to girlish illusions. Every woman feels what you describe in her first year. It is normal."
"Normal?" Aria's voice trembled, as though the word itself mocked her. "But Mother, I feel as though I live beside a stranger. Worse—a stranger who wishes I were not there at all."
Lady Mireille set her embroidery aside at last, folding her hands in her lap with composed authority. "Listen to me, Aria. A husband is not won by tears, nor by endless yearning glances. He is won by constancy. You must show him loyalty, gentleness, and above all, perseverance. Stop searching for signs of affection every moment. He will respect you when you prove yourself steady."
Aria's throat tightened. "And if he never grows to—"
"Love comes later, if it comes at all," her mother cut in, her tone sharpening. "But what binds a man to a woman is responsibility. You must give him reason to stay, to protect. Do you understand me?"
Aria looked down. "I think so."
"Good," her mother said, softening her voice. "Do not think yourself the first to struggle. Even I, with your father, knew coldness at the start. But I gave him children. And children change everything. A man may turn his back on a wife, but he cannot turn his back on his own blood. Bear Henry a child, and you will see his heart soften."
The words landed like stones in Aria's stomach. A child. She had scarcely learned how to breathe in Henry's presence without feeling judged or dismissed, and her mother was urging her to bring another life into such coldness. Yet desperation leaves little room for reason, and the hunger for Henry's affection was so raw it almost seemed worth anything.
"I will try," she whispered.
--
At night, she gathered every fragment of courage she possessed and slipped into his chamber. The fire had burned low, painting the room in shades of amber and shadow. Henry was at his desk, pen in hand, but he looked up at her entrance with a faint crease between his brows.
"Aria," he said, not unkindly, but not warmly either. "Is something wrong?" He didn't even take a look to her half naked body.
She stood there, heart hammering. Say it. Do not tremble. "No. I only thought… perhaps we might spend some time together. We are husband and wife, after all."
Something unreadable flickered in his eyes. He set down the pen, exhaled, and leaned back in his chair. "And what does that mean to you?"
Aria faltered. "It means… closeness. It means learning one another. It means…" Her cheeks burned, but she forced the words out. "It means that sometimes, a wife must reach for her husband."
The silence that followed was heavy. Then Henry spoke, his voice cool and distant.
"Do you think this is some bargain? That if you place yourself before me often enough, I will eventually pay attention? That is not love, Aria—it is a transaction. Forgive me, but I cannot view it otherwise."
His words pierced her like glass shards. "A transaction?" she whispered. "Henry, that is not what I mean. I only wish—"
"Wish," he interrupted, rising to his feet. His height made her feel small, almost fragile in comparison. "You wish, always. You hover, you plead with your eyes, you follow me from room to room as though waiting for me to bestow something upon you. And now you come here, uninvited, speaking of duty as if offering yourself will resolve what cannot be forced. Do you not see how desperate this looks? How—obsessive?"
The last word struck hardest. Aria's breath caught. She had not realized that her persistence, born of longing, might appear so grotesque in his eyes. Obsessive. As though her love were a sickness.
Her chest heaved, and she pressed her hands together to still their trembling. "I am not… obsessive. I am trying. You are my husband, Henry. What else am I meant to do?"
He turned away from her, pinching the bridge of his nose as though she were a problem too taxing to endure. "Sometimes, Aria, effort is not what is needed. Sometimes, silence is."
She left his chamber that night feeling as though her soul had been wrung out and left to dry in the cold. Every step back to her own room felt heavier, her mother's words echoing in cruel irony. Children change everything. How could she bear a child when her husband recoiled at her touch? How could she believe in her mother's counsel when Henry viewed her longing as obsession?
Yet the next morning, she still prepared his tea. She still watched for him in the hall, still arranged flowers she thought might brighten his study. She could not stop herself; her heart drove her forward even as her dignity withered.
Henry, for his part, grew more withdrawn. He answered her kindnesses with silence, her attempts at conversation with nods, her presence with faint irritation. And though he never raised his voice, the distance in his gaze was louder than any shout. She can see hate in his eyes.
Aria didn't know why she was trying so hard. Maybe he was right. She had attached herself to him anxiously. Her loneliness had only made her cling to him even more. She was trying to ignore the fact that this was a marriage contract. She was attempting to fill the emptiness of her need for love with him. She had never received affection from her family. She had no close friends. She had always lived a life away from the spotlight, following the rules. She was utterly alone. She fought with herself. Maybe Henry had even treated her politely. The turmoil in her soul was growing steadily and she couldn't stop it.