Georgia's POV
There's one lesson Mother seems determined I absorb before the wedding. Not about love or happiness or survival. Those are secondary. What matters is understanding my place.
After the dress fitting, she leads me into her private sitting room. Velvet curtains drawn just enough to cast everything in permanent dusk. Through the gap, I can see her rose garden, sculpted within an inch of its life. Not a single petal out of place. A perfection that suddenly looks more like a prison than an achievement.
She settles into her chair, smoothing her dress over her lap. "Sit, Georgia."
I do. The air smells like polished wood and old roses, but beneath it, something sharper. Antiseptic. Like a wound being dressed but never truly healed.
"You need to understand something important about your marriage." Her voice comes deliberate, weighted. "To Josiah. To any man, really." Her eyes fix on mine, pupils dark and bottomless. "It's not about love. It's about duty."
I wait, silent. My hands press against the folds of my dress until my fingertips go numb. Somewhere in the house, silver clinks against china. Life continuing.
She's preparing me for slaughter, not marriage.
"Josiah is older." She twists a strand of hair between two fingers, eyes unfocused. "He'll have his own way of doing things. His own rhythms." Her gaze flicks to mine, sudden and sharp. "Your role is to adapt. To fit yourself into his life. To become the woman he needs."
A dull hum starts in my ears. I swallow against it. "What do you mean, fit myself?"
She offers a thin smile. "Being married to an older man is different. He has expectations you're not used to." Her voice softens, not with warmth but with something more insidious. Resignation disguised as wisdom. "You'll find, at times, that you are more companion than partner. But never forget what you represent. Stability, status, a future aligned with his needs. You will support him in the way he requires. Be his confidante, his comfort. When it suits him."
Her words slip beneath my skin, worming between bone and marrow. My dress feels suddenly too tight, cinched around my ribs like a corset I didn't agree to wear.
"But I'm not—" I start before she cuts me off.
"You are."
Not a reassurance. A command.
This is who I am to her. Not a daughter. An investment finally maturing.
"In a marriage like this, it's not about your needs. It's about making him feel needed. Important." She leans forward slightly. "He is older, Georgia. Established. Your role is to enhance his life, not the other way around."
Enhance. The word hits like a cold weight in my chest.
"Josiah expects a quiet home. Everything in its place." Her eyes narrow. "He won't tolerate chaos or a questioning wife. Your behavior must be composed. Controlled. Always submissive. Gentle. Never show true frustrations. A proper wife knows how to be gracious, no matter what."
Gracious. Submissive. Words that taste like dust and decay.
This is how she survived. By making herself small.
"And, Georgia." Her voice drops lower. "A woman like you, beautiful and poised, must reflect him. Your appearance is your first defense. Never let your beauty fade. Keep yourself up for him. Never let him look elsewhere for what you should provide."
I nod because that's the only thing to do. The only script I know.
But inside, something coils. Something with teeth.
What if I bit back?
She stands, satisfied. Smooths her skirt. Smiles with the serenity of someone who has successfully passed along a family curse. "You'll do fine, Georgia. Everything you do, you do for the family. For Josiah. For your future."
Then she's gone. Leaving behind only her scent, her words, her expectations curling around me like vines.
I sit there, still as stone. Hands limp in my lap. Somewhere, a clock ticks. My breath comes too shallow. My pulse races too fast.
The life ahead of me is not the one I imagined. It's a prison. Beautiful and gilded with marble floors and crystal chandeliers, but a prison nonetheless.
The only question now is how long I can survive it.
Or how long until I set it all on fire.
I always knew Miranda would be the one to name the rot.
While the others orbit me like vultures circling wealth and status, she alone dares to put her finger on the bruise. To press hard. She sees beyond the veneer, beyond the perfect smiles and designer clothes, to the hairline fractures spreading beneath my skin.
That's what makes us friends. Worlds apart, yet bound by something raw and unspoken.
Late afternoon light fractures through my bedroom curtains, casting broken patterns. I pretend to read, but the words blur. My mind hasn't been mine for months.
Miranda perches on my bed's edge, watching. Waiting. The silence stretches thin as a garrote wire.
"Georgia." Her voice comes soft but lined with steel. "I need to ask you something. Be honest with me."
I glance up, caught off guard by the unfamiliar weight in her tone. Miranda has never been afraid of hard questions, never tiptoed around ugly truths. But today, fear lurks beneath her words. Not for herself. For me.
"What's wrong?" My voice emerges smaller than I intended. Like prey.
Her gaze holds mine, dark and knowing. The words hang between us for one heartbeat. Two.
"You're not happy, are you?"
Four simple words. Four words that crack me open like an egg.
She knows. She sees. She's the only one who ever has.
I freeze, feeling stripped bare. Raw. Like she reached inside my ribcage and wrapped her fingers around the truth I've been suffocating.
"I'm just..." The lie forms on my tongue, bitter as antifreeze. "I'm fine."
Her eyes narrow. Not buying my bullshit for a second. "No, you're not. It's not just the wedding, Georgia. It's him. Josiah." She glances at the door, checking for listeners. "The age gap, it's too much. I hear how you talk about him. Or don't talk about him. I see how he looks at you. Like you're a doll. A prize. You're just a girl to him. Don't you see that?"
Her words hit with the precision of a blade sliding between ribs. Heat blooms across my face. Not embarrassment. Recognition. Visceral and undeniable.
Josiah's coldness. The calculating gleam in his eyes. The way his hands claim rather than caress. I'm not his partner. I'm his acquisition. His trophy. His pretty little thing.
"It's not like that." I whisper the lie so fragile it practically shatters on my lips.
Miranda leans closer. The scent of her cheap drugstore perfume suddenly more real than anything else in my expensively furnished prison. "Georgia, you've told me this marriage was your family's decision. Not yours. But you don't have to go through with it. You're not trapped." Her fingers find mine, squeezing with desperate intensity. "Please, don't think this is your only choice. You deserve better than being sold off."
I yank my hand away, her touch burning like salvation I'm not allowed to want. I pace, heart hammering against my sternum like it wants to escape.
"You don't understand." My voice cracks. "I can't walk away. Everything would collapse. My family would lose everything." The truth claws up my throat, jagged and painful. "I don't have the luxury of choice. I never have."
To choose myself would mean destroying everything else.
Miranda's expression softens. Not with pity. She knows better than to offer me that poison. This is something worse. Pure, unfiltered grief for what I'm about to lose. For who I'm about to become.
"Georgia, I know they're counting on you. I know you think it's your responsibility. But you don't have to lose yourself." She stands, moving toward me like approaching a cornered animal. "You deserve your own life. One where you're not just playing a part in someone else's story."
Her words land like stones. My chest constricts, lungs fighting for air as walls close in. Could I even recognize myself if I escaped all this? Would there be anything left of the real Georgia after years of being carved away, redefined, remolded?
"I know you want what's best." The words come hollow as a corpse. "But I don't see a way out."
Miranda doesn't argue. She stands motionless, her silence more eloquent than words.
But her question hangs in the air like smoke. You're not happy, are you? Four words that taste like freedom and terrify me more than any cage.
The truth is, I'm not just unhappy. I'm dying inside, one breath at a time. As the wedding day approaches, I can feel the last pieces of myself breaking away, scattered like ashes.
Soon there will be nothing left but the perfect bride, the perfect wife, the perfect doll.
Unless I find the courage to set fire to everything.