The women are finding each other. It happens in stages, like water finding its level. First the surface courtesies, the compliments and introductions and safe questions.Where are you from? What did you do before?Then the layer underneath, the careful admissions, the shared experiences spoken in half-sentences that the other women finish.
"I didn't know what an auction dinner was until three weeks before," Amelia says to Liv, quietly, while Dayan is deep in conversation with Serik about something logistical.
"Neither did I," Liv says. "I thought it was a charity gala. I showed up thinking I was raising money for something."
Katriona smiles at that. "I knew exactly what it was. My family arranged my attendance. I was an offering, essentially. Package deal with a shipping alliance."
"And you went anyway," Juliette says.
"I went because saying no wasn't an option I was offered. Saying yes to Akyl was the option I gave myself." She glances at Akyl, and something private and complex passes between them that I recognize because I see it between myself and Claudia. Thelook of two people who understand each other's darkness and have chosen proximity anyway.
Claudia refills Katriona's wine glass. "We all ended up here the same way," she says. "Different doors, same room."
"A very expensive room," Juliette adds, gesturing at the chandelier.
"With very dangerous men in it," Liv says, and there's a tremor in her voice, not fear exactly, but the echo of fear, the memory of a feeling that hasn't fully resolved itself into something else.
Claudia reaches across the table and touches Liv's wrist. A brief, deliberate contact. "Dangerous men who want us to stay," she says. "That's the part that matters."
The table goes quiet for a moment.
Volody breaks the silence by knocking over the salt shaker with his elbow. The moment dissolves into motion and laughter, and Greta appears from nowhere to sweep up the mess, and the dinner continues.
Akyl leans toward me during dessert. Greta has made a chocolate cake with fresh cream that has rendered Volody speechless, which is itself a minor miracle.
"The weddings," he says. "We should discuss."
I nod. This is the other reason for tonight. To hammer out the details of what happens next.
I tap my knife against my glass.
The table quiets. Ten faces turn toward me, and I feel the weight of their attention like a physical thing. My brothers know this gesture. They've seen it in boardrooms and back rooms and the kinds of places where decisions are made that shape other people's lives. The women are learning it.
"We're getting married," I say. "All of us."
"Not all at once, I hope," Serik says.
"Sequentially. And soon." I look at Claudia. "Ours will be first."
She doesn't blink. She holds my gaze and I see in her face the same certainty that drove her to walk across to me at the auction and sit beside me. The woman who chose me hasn't stopped choosing me for a single day since.
Claudia's hand finds my thigh under the table. Her fingers press into the muscle, firm and grounding, and I cover her hand with mine and hold it there.
"After Rovin," Akyl says, and he's looking at Katriona now, not at me, "we follow. Within the month. I don't want a long engagement."
Katriona returns his gaze with an expression that is part challenge, part acceptance. "You haven't formally asked me."
"I outbid six men for you. Consider it implied."
"I don't accept implications."
The corner of Akyl's mouth lifts. "Then I'll ask you properly. Tonight. When we're alone."
Katriona's composure doesn't crack, but color rises in her throat. She picks up her wine glass and takes a deliberate sip, and Akyl watches her drink with the focused intensity of a man who has found something he intends to keep and is enjoying the anticipation of securing it.
"We should do them close together," Serik says. He has his arm across the back of Juliette's chair, his fingers resting against her shoulder in a contact so casual it could be unconscious. It isn't. Nothing Serik does is unconscious. "One after the other. It sends a message."
"What message?" Juliette asks.