"Grace, if you rearrange those hymnals one more time, I'm going to think you're avoiding me."

I didn't turn around. "I'm not avoiding you, Pastor Hill. I'm organizing."

"You organized them yesterday."

"They get disorganized."

He chuckled behind me, that low, patient sound I'd known since I was small enough to sit on the front pew and swing my feet. I straightened the last hymnal, squared its spine with its neighbors, and finally faced him. He stood in the aisle with his coat already on, keys jingling in his hand, looking at me the way he always did when he thought I was hiding something.

"You've been here since six," he said.

"Grandma likes her tea at seven. I had time."

"You had time to sleep, too."

I smiled instead of answering. Some habits weren't worth explaining… not the early mornings, not the hours spent dusting pews nobody would notice were dusted, not the quiet I chased through this building like it owed me something. Pastor Hill didn't push. He never did. He just patted the door frame twice, the way he always said goodbye, and told me to lock up when I was done.

The church emptied out around me, footsteps fading into the parking lot, a car door, an engine, and then nothing. Just me and the hush of a building built for listening.

I liked it best this way. Alone with the light coming slant through the stained glass, red and gold pooling on the floorboards like something spilled and left to dry. I sat in the third pew from the front… always the third, never closer… and let my hands go still in my lap for the first time all morning.

My phone buzzed. Ethan.

*Grandma okay? She didn't answer the house phone.*

*She's fine,* I typed back. *Probably napping. I'll check when I get home.*

*You always say that.*

*Because it's always true.*

He sent back a laughing emoji and nothing else, which was as close as my brother got to affection over text. Ethan worried the way other people breathed… constantly, without noticing they were doing it. He'd been that way since our parents died, like the weight of watching over the family had simply transferred to him without anyone asking if he wanted it. I loved him for it. I also wished, sometimes, that he'd let himself want something that wasn't safety.

I slid the phone back into my pocket and looked up at the cross above the altar, plain wood, no ornamentation, the way Pastor Hill liked it. *Nothing to distract from what matters,* he always said. I used to believe that quiet was the same as peace. Lately I wasn't so sure. Peace didn't usually feel this much like waiting.

The bell above the door chimed. I assumed it was Pastor Hill, back for something he'd forgotten… his glasses, maybe because he was always forgetting his glasses… so I didn't turn around right away.

"We've been looking for you," a voice said.

Not Pastor Hill.

I stood so fast the pew groaned under me. Two men stood just inside the doorway, and the first thing I noticed… the only thing I noticed, for one long, disbelieving second… was their eyes. Not brown, not blue, not any color a person's eyes should be. A pale, molten gold, catching the stained-glass light and throwing it back like something lit from within.

"I'm sorry," I said, and my voice came out steadier than I felt, "we're closed. Service was this morning."

"We're not here for a service." The one who'd spoken stepped forward. He was tall, dressed too well for a Tuesday afternoon in my hometown, his coat cut from fabric that didn't belong within fifty miles of here. "We're here for you, Grace Carter."

My name in his mouth felt wrong, too intimate, the way it sounds when a stranger already knows something about you that you haven't told them.

"I don't know you." I kept my eyes on the door behind them, gauging the distance, the angle, whether I could reach it before they reached me. Old instinct, the kind you don't practice but somehow still have. "You should leave."

"You don't know us," the second man agreed. He hadn't moved from the doorway, but something about the way he stood there… utterly still, utterly patient… made the hair on my arms rise. "But we know you. We've been searching for you for longer than you'd believe."

"That's not comforting."

"It's not meant to be comforting. It's meant to be true." The first man tilted his head, studying me the way you'd study something rare and slightly dangerous. "The Moon Stone chose you three days ago. We've spent those three days confirming it wasn't a mistake."

"The Moon Stone." I let out a breath that was almost a laugh, the disbelieving kind, the kind that comes out when your body doesn't know whether to be afraid or amused. "I think you have the wrong person."

"Grace Carter. Twenty-four years old. Raised by your grandmother, Eleanor, after your parents passed. You volunteer here five days a week and you've never once asked this town for anything in return." He recited it like a grocery list, like facts he'd memorized on the drive over, and each one landing correctly made my stomach drop a little further. "We don't have the wrong person."

"How do you know all that?"

"Because it's my job to know it." He finally smiled, and it wasn't unkind, but it wasn't warm either… it was the smile of a man delivering news he already knew I wouldn't want. "My name is Cassius. I serve the Alpha King. And as of three days ago, you are his bride."

The word hung in the air, absurd and enormous, and I actually laughed this time, short and disbelieving. "Okay. This is… I don't know what this is, but I have to get home. My grandmother's alone, and… "

"Your grandmother is being looked after." Cassius said it gently, which somehow made it worse. "We wouldn't leave her unattended. Not today, of all days."

The laugh died in my throat. "What does that mean?"

"It means you're not the only one who received a visit this morning." He took another step, and this time I did retreat, my back finding the edge of the pew. "I understand this is frightening. I understand none of this makes sense to you yet. But I need you to come with us, Grace. Quietly, if you can manage it. The alternative isn't something either of us wants."

"You're threatening me in a church."

"I'm not threatening you." For the first time, something like reluctance crossed his face… not enough to stop him, but enough that I believed, oddly, that he meant it. "I'm telling you there are people far less patient than me who would come next if we failed. I would rather you walk out of here on your own feet."

I looked past him, toward the door, toward the ordinary gray afternoon outside where my car sat in its usual spot and my whole unremarkable life waited to continue exactly as it always had… and I understood, with a clarity that felt like falling, that none of that was true anymore. Whatever had walked into this church wasn't going to let me go back to it.

"And if I refuse?"

Cassius's gold eyes held mine, steady and sorrowful and utterly immovable.

"Then I hope your grandmother forgives us both for what happens next."

Behind him, the man in the doorway finally moved… not toward me, but to the side, revealing a third figure I hadn't seen waiting in the shadow of the entryway, tall and silent and watching me with an expression I couldn't read at all.

And that was when I understood I had already lost this argument, three days ago, in a ceremony I'd never attended, to a king I'd never met.