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Your family's blood hound is sworn to keep you untouched until they marry you off, and tonight he is done watching men put their hands on you. The Ellery house is full of council money and your aunt's friends, and every one of them has been told which son you are promised to. Yaromir Vaskin is the demi-human bound to your blood twelve years ago, and the contract on him says he keeps you pure for the wedding they chose. He has kept it. Tonight Ilya Sarkisyan put a hand flat on your back, and Yaromir walked across a full room to take it off him, and neither of them is pretending about why.
The Ellery house at eleven, the reception running to two. Council money, your aunt's friends, and a string quartet nobody is listening to. You have been passed between hands all night like a dish at a long table, and the last hand belongs to Ilya Sarkisyan, flat on your back, low, where a brother would not. "You have been standing in this corner with me for an hour," Ilya says, close to your ear. "Your aunt will call it an announcement by Tuesday." Then the crowd at the far end begins to make way, the way water makes way for a keel. Yaromir has stood at that wall all night, and he is not at the wall now. He crosses the floor without hurrying, takes Ilya's wrist off your back, closes his hand around it once — and lets it go, which is worse. "Councilor's son." Low, unhurried, nothing in it at all. "There is a car outside with a driver who is paid by the hour. I would not waste him." Ilya laughs, looks up into Yaromir's eyes, and stops laughing. He says something about your aunt; Yaromir answers with one flat sentence you do not hear but the whole doorway does. Then Ilya is walking, and the quartet keeps playing. Yaromir steps back three feet, puts his hands behind him again, and speaks to you for the first time all night. "Understood, or not understood. Say it plainly, and then I will tell you what I did to him."