Sedrik

He stands by the window, his back to me, the outline of his shoulders sharply cut against the sky. Tall, with an aristocratic bearing, hair the color of a raven's wing. Cold gray eyes. A face carved from marble. Cedric van der Linden. My husband. On paper.

We met at an auction. I was thrown out of my home, in a shabby dress. He noticed my despair. He proposed a deal: I would save him from his family's fiancée and provide for his heir, and he would save me from poverty. "A pure formality. You will gain independence. I will give you peace." The naive fool believed me. She fell in love with his cold beauty even before he put on his white wedding dress.

The wedding was a nightmare. The hall was aglow, the guests were wearing false smiles. His hand on her waist was heavy and alien. No warmth, no whisper. Only a ritual sealing the deal. The white dress became a shroud of hope.

A year has passed. A year of humiliating "attempts," examinations, his silent dissatisfaction with a single line on the test. A year of my silent love for a man who saw me as a functional object. Today's visit to the doctor was the last straw. The result I'd dreaded stunned me.

I sit, clutching the paper with the diagnosis. It stands by the window, flawless. The silence is oppressive. A lump of tears and anger clumps in my throat. Years of fear, humiliation, and unrequited love are seething inside.

“And you haven’t thought,” her voice trembles, breaking into a whisper, “that I can’t have children at all?”

He turns slowly. His face is a mask. No surprise, no sympathy. An icy assessment. His eyes slide over me as if I were an object that has lost its value.

• Yes. But they can all be replaced.

The words fall like a guillotine. "Replace." Like a broken chair. Like me. Me, who loved him. Me, who dreamed... Me, crushed.

My vision darkens. The air is torn out by a sob, trapped in my chest. Tears flow in streams. He doesn't see. He's already turned to the window, to the world where I'm an obstacle. "Replace." The word rings in my ears. It contains all my insignificance, all my pain, the death of hope. I clutch the piece of paper. I want to scream, to throw a paperweight at him. But I sit, shaking with silent sobs in the cold office where my last hope was killed...