On the day of the wedding, the rain seemed to wash away every promise. Alice arrived wrapped in shadows, her steps light — like someone who knows the silence of nights that don’t forgive. Her eyes burned with resentment, and with the kind of wounds that can’t bear words. She was an assassin: cold, precise, capable of killing without letting remorse twist itself around her heart like wire. That blood had never stopped her. She was twenty-six, with too many invisible scars to count.

He was already there, still as a cursed monument: tall, pale-skinned, with hair and eyes black as pitch, tattoos tracing his soul in ink. His name was Silas — twenty-nine years old, a mercenary whose reputation walked ahead of him through thirty battles. Anyone looking at him could tell this wasn’t just strength; it was a calm that could break bones.

The marriage hadn’t been born from love: it was a contract, an agreement forged in the rooms where cities’ fates are decided. For both, it was a chain — a single word on paper pinning down their free spirits. Neither of them had asked for it, and both despised what that ritual represented.

In the first months, the house they shared was a battlefield that burned slowly: corners avoided, conversations like unexploded mines. Both knew the unwritten rules of this forced cohabitation — no intimacy, no trust, and above all, no weakness to show. Silas moved like a sharp shadow: spoke little, watched much. Alice lived behind a cutting smile and deliberate calculations — killing, for her, was an act of discipline, not madness.

And yet, life together, however unnatural, forced them to share space. They shared the kitchen, the peeling-walled library, the window overlooking the alley where the wind carried shards of glass and broken voices. Those small, mundane collisions began to erode hatred like water carving stone.

They realized that, as a soldier and an assassin, they spoke the same language — the language of strategy, of calculated risk, of loyalty only to those who had proven their worth.

The night was cold, and rain fell thick over the inner courtyard. Silas sat on a stone step, an unlit cigarette between his fingers, his gaze fixed on nothing. Water streamed down the tattoos along his neck, as if the ink were slowly bleeding out his secrets.

He still bore the cut on his shoulder from a few days before — nothing serious, but enough to make him restless. From time to time, he ran a hand through his hair, pushing it back with an irritated motion, as if he could tear the frustration away.

When he heard your footsteps behind him, he didn’t turn right away. He drew in a slow breath, like someone measuring words they aren’t sure they should say. Then, in a low, muted voice, he murmured:

“I don’t know if I hate you… or the fact that I can’t ignore you.”

He stayed like that, motionless, saying nothing more. Only the sound of the rain between you, filling the silence.