Kaelith read the line again.
Then a third time.
Then she flipped the page over as if the back might kindly reveal that this was all an elaborate joke organized by someone with too much time, too little fear, and a death wish.
It did not.
Same parchment.
Same neat, official elven script.
Same horrifying message.
Kaelith Daemara is officially married to Princess Irielle.
Married.
She was married.
What the fuck.
For one absurd second, Kaelith genuinely considered whether she had finally drunk enough over the last month to damage something essential in her brain.
Maybe this was a hallucination.
Maybe she was still asleep.
Maybe Ruby had forged the whole thing because she had woken up this morning and decided violence against her older sister would be funny.
Ruby, unfortunately, looked far too delighted and far too confused for it to be her work.
Violet, meanwhile, had gone pale in that elegant way only people with pretty cheekbones could manage.
Kaelith looked back down at the letter.
There were dates.
Seals.
Magical notations confirming legal verification under both demon and elven law.
Signatures.
One of them, apparently, was hers.
She stared at the elegant slash of ink where her own name should not have been.
“No,” she said again, a little more weakly this time.
“No.
Absolutely not.
I would remember getting fucking married.”
Ruby, perched at the end of the bed like a gleeful goblin in silk sleepwear, said, “Would you?”
Kaelith turned on her.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Ruby raised both hands.
“I’m just saying, there was a lot of post-graduation drinking.”
Violet spoke with more care, because Violet at least occasionally valued her life.
“There was also that diplomatic banquet last month.”
Kaelith blinked.
A diplomatic banquet.
She remembered fragments of that evening.
Music.
Gold lights.
A great deal of wine.
Some insufferably polished noble from somewhere in the south trying to explain trade routes to her while she mentally arranged his death.
After that, things became…
softer around the edges.
There had been dancing, maybe.
And laughter.
And someone very beautiful glaring at her over the rim of a wine glass.
Blond hair.
Green eyes.
Small, lovely, aristocratic murder-face.
Kaelith froze.
“No,” she said for the third time, now filled with true horror.
“No, I hate this.”
Ruby’s mismatched eyes widened.
“You remember something?”
“I remember enough to feel spiritually attacked.”
That was all either twin needed.
Ruby sat up straighter.
Violet leaned forward with the bright, vicious attention of a woman watching scandal take human form.
Kaelith threw the sheet aside and got out of bed so fast she nearly tripped over it.
“Get out.”
Ruby gasped.
“Rude.”
“Out,” Kaelith repeated, pointing toward the door with the letter clenched in one hand.
“If I’m legally married before breakfast, I deserve privacy while I process the collapse of civilized existence.”
Violet rose first, because despite appearances she was technically the more sensible twin.
Ruby lingered long enough to say, “If you die, can I have your boots?”
Kaelith pointed harder.
The twins fled, though not with any real urgency.
Ruby was laughing by the time they shut the door behind them.
Violet was already muttering something about needing tea before the castle exploded.
Kaelith stood alone in the wrecked quiet of her room and stared at the letter again.
Princess Irielle.
Of all the women in all the kingdoms.
Irielle, the cold little elf princess with the face of an angel and the personality of a ceremonial knife.
Irielle, who was rumored to smile only when someone else’s life got worse.
Irielle, whose mother treated politics like embroidery, delicate and deadly and performed with elegant hands.
Kaelith knew who she was.
Everyone did.
But knowing who someone was and apparently marrying them in a drunken blackout were two very different levels of familiarity.
“This is bullshit,” Kaelith informed the room.
The room, being a coward, offered no solution.
She moved on pure outrage after that.
She yanked open her wardrobe, dragged out the first respectable black clothes her hands found, and dressed with the fury of a woman preparing for war, execution, or an extremely aggressive brunch.
Shirt.
Trousers.
Belt.
Boots.
Rings.
Hair half-brushed with her fingers because if the world expected composure from her right now, the world could go to hell.
By the time she stormed out of her room, letter still in hand like a warrant for reality’s arrest, several servants had already learned to flatten themselves against walls and avoid eye contact.
Smart.
Very smart.
She crossed the castle like a curse given legs, moving through long stone corridors washed in morning light.
Familiar banners hung above polished floors.
Somewhere farther away, someone was laughing.
Somewhere else, she could hear a tutor reciting ancient history to an unfortunate child.
The whole castle was continuing normally.
Meanwhile, Kaelith had apparently become somebody’s wife.
That felt deeply disrespectful.
Her mothers’ suite lay in the older royal wing, where the doors were carved from dark wood veined with silver and warded with enough magic to vaporize half the nobility if invited to do so.
Kaelith did not bother knocking.
She threw the doors open.
Inside, the room smelled of expensive incense, fresh linens, and the unmistakable atmosphere of two women being disgustingly in love before noon.
Malvoria was seated in a chair by the window with Elysia half in her lap, both of them dressed but very much occupying each other’s personal space like it was a sacred duty.
Elysia’s silver hair spilled over Malvoria’s arm.
Malvoria had one large hand at her waist and the expression of a woman who had been enjoying her morning until fate kicked the door off its hinges in the form of her eldest daughter.
Both turned.
Kaelith, breathing hard from rage and stairs, stood in the doorway holding the letter like it had personally insulted her.
Malvoria’s red brow arched slowly.
“You could have knocked,” she said.
“What if you’d seen us fucking?”
Kaelith did not even pause.
“We know when you do, Mother.
You’re too noisy.”
Elysia choked on a laugh so sudden she had to hide her face against Malvoria’s shoulder.
Malvoria looked offended for exactly one second, then thoughtful.
“That might be true.”
“Please focus,” Kaelith snapped, marching into the room.
“Look at that.”
She thrust the letter toward them.
Malvoria took it with the calm of a woman receiving routine tax reports.
Elysia, curious, leaned against her shoulder to read along.
The room fell quiet for a few seconds except for the faint crackle of the fireplace and Kaelith’s increasingly offended breathing.
Elysia blinked first.
Then she looked up, soft and beautifully unhelpful.
“Well,” she said, “looks like you are married.”
Kaelith stared at her.
The silence that followed was so profound it should have had religious significance.
“That’s all you have to say?”
Elysia gave a small helpless shrug, still perched comfortably in Malvoria’s lap as though her daughter’s legal catastrophe had interrupted nothing more serious than breakfast pastries.
“It does appear quite official.”
“Official?” Kaelith repeated.
“Mother, I have somehow acquired a wife.”
Malvoria took the letter back from Elysia and read the relevant line again, slower this time.
Her grey eyes sharpened with something that might have been amusement.
Or calculation.
With her, it was often both.
Then she looked up at Kaelith and said, with shocking calm, “Well, you are twenty-six years old and drink and fuck a lot.
I was actually wondering what was going to happen.”
Kaelith stared.
Malvoria leaned back in her chair, utterly at peace.
“I had bet on you getting a girl pregnant, but looks like not.”
Elysia made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a protest, but she was smiling.
Kaelith felt her soul leave her body and come back only to suffer more.
“That is not a normal thing to say to me.”
“It was a realistic thing to say to you,” Malvoria replied.
“This is not realism.
This is a nightmare with paperwork.”
Now, finally, Elysia looked a little more sympathetic.
A little.
Not enough to be useful.
“Darling,” she said gently, “do you remember anything?”
Kaelith dragged a hand down her face.
“I remember a banquet.
I remember drinking.
I remember…
Irielle’s face.”
Malvoria’s mouth twitched.
Kaelith narrowed her eyes at her.
“Do not smile.”
“I’m not smiling.”
“You are smiling in your soul.”
That got an actual laugh out of Elysia, and Malvoria’s lips finally gave in to the faintest curve.
Kaelith, abandoned by all maternal mercy, wanted to scream.
Instead she pointed at the letter again.
“Fix it.”
Malvoria looked at the parchment, then at her daughter, and the sheer lack of urgency in her expression was almost impressive.
“No,” she said.
“You put yourself in this situation.”
Kaelith opened her mouth in outrage.
Malvoria raised a hand first.
“Sit down,” the Demon Queen said.
“And tell me everything you remember about the last month, because apparently your social life has become state business.”