You scare me, our future

You scare me, our future
She took up a small brush and, without touching my skin except where absolutely necessary, smoothed the stray hairs at my temple. “The scent must be neutralized,” she said. “We will give you a different set of clothes, a different name in the halls. Out there, you will be Vida Gomez Gonçalves. Here, you will be visible. Use that.”
When she stepped back the robe was in my hands. It was heavy and dark and smelled faintly of cedar. I drew it closed around me, fingers trembling, and secured the tie. The fabric hid the worst of my exposure but not the rawness beneath my ribs.
Before she left the room she paused by the door. “You will sleep,” she said, “but not in the bed the brothers use. That would be improper tonight.” There was the tiniest half-smile. “I will bring what you need. Do not leave the room until morning unless I summon you.”
Her exit was as measured as her entrance. The click of the latch sounded louder than any shout. The hallway outside swallowed her steps, and for a breath I felt an odd kind of solitude: not safety, but space to think.
Alone, I let myself fold into the robe and onto the edge of the bed. The linen smelled like the house, which was both reassuring and foreign. My towel on the floor, my clothes, lay like an old life I might never retrieve.
I closed my eyes and rehearsed the bargains I’d already made: a locked room, a promise, a robe. They were tiny things, but in a house such as this, tiny things could open doors. I would hold onto each one and use them like stones to cross a dark river.
Somewhere beyond the wood and stone another plan unfurled: how to learn where they slept, which doors were left unlocked, which servants, if any, moved through dusk and dawn. How to make a single, stubborn demand into leverage.
For now, I breathed, dressed, and waited. The night was long; so, I decided, would I be.

The robe was a thin shield and not enough.
The latch clicked, not the soft, private sound I’d expected, but a heavier, more purposeful opening. For a second the world stuttered; my throat closed.
The door swung inward and an older man filled the frame.
He looked like the house made flesh: broad-shouldered, hair ironed back from a face carved by seasons and storms. Lines around his eyes spoke of long winters and harder decisions. There was a scar that angled along his jaw; his presence pressed into the room with the same quiet authority as their mother’s, only older, older and centered, like a tree whose roots had eaten stone. He carried the kind of smell August and Aedric shared, but layered with something older, steadier: smoke and leather and the faint, bitter pull of cedar.
For a heartbeat I couldn’t move. The robe slipped in my hands. Mortification flared hot enough to sting.
“What—” My voice cracked. “I’m—” I thrust my hands up instinctively, fingers fumbling at the robe until the fabric pooled between my palms. “Naked—” The word came out useless and graceless. I sounded like a child.
Their mother’s face was all composure. “He is your father-in-law,” she said, soft and absolute, as if that explained everything. “He will examine and ready you with me. It is tradition. It is necessary.”
My blood went cold. My body that had betrayed me all night curled into the most basic instinct I’d been taught: protect yourself. “No,” I said, the single syllable a brittle thing. “You promised me privacy.”
The older man’s eyes shifted to me with a calm that was almost clinical. “Privacy with a locked door,” he said, voice low and even, “is different from privacy without readiness.” There was neither malice nor warmth in it, only the certainty of someone used to being obeyed.
My mind raced, a flurry of bargaining and rage. This wasn’t what we’d agreed. The mother had promised a locked door. A locked door had a meaning, a boundary. This intrusion dissolved it like water on rock.
“You said locked,” I whispered, hearing the tremor. “You promised.”
The man inclined his head only slightly. “I kept my word,” he said. “You are alone here now. I will be with your guide. There will be no others.”
My heart thudded like a caged animal. No others. That was small comfort. Alone with two of them, that was the precisely measured violation of privacy I had feared.
“Why do you need to examine me?” My voice was steadier than I felt. A question could be a shield, a delay. Questions bought seconds, valuable, crucial seconds.
Their mother’s smile was the same porcelain mask. “To ready you for the household. To ensure you carry no charms, no foreign oils, no marks the pack would find displeasing. It’s ritual. It’s custom. You will be honored by the formality.”
The word honored scraped. It felt like varnish over coercion.