The trouble with being raised to notice everything was that happiness had nowhere to hide from grief. I had known Ryven was planning something before the first attendant failed to meet my eyes after breakfast. By noon, three separate servants had stepped out of corridors too quickly, one footman had nearly dropped a tray of correspondence when I asked whether the western terrace had been opened for the evening, and Maleah had looked directly at my hair, smiled too innocently, and told me I should wear it down tonight. That had been the true betrayal. Maleah was very good at secrets when those secrets involved statecraft, dangerous magic, or the careful concealment of household disobedience. She was much less convincing when romance was involved, mostly because she looked pleased with herself in a way that made denial pointless. I let them believe I had not noticed. That was my gift to the conspiracy.
By sunset, Emberhall had folded itself into one of those rare evenings where Summer did not feel like a court waiting to devour someone. The palace glowed beneath the warm fall of dusk, its emberstone walls catching the last gold of the sun and holding it like banked fire. Beyond my wing, the flame gardens breathed heat into the air, night blooming flowers beginning to unfurl along the paths in slow curls of crimson, gold, and deep orange. The pools below the eastern arcade shimmered with reflected lanternlight, their surfaces broken by drifting petals and small floating flames that had been enchanted not to go out, even when the evening breeze skimmed across the water. It was beautiful. Of course it was beautiful. Emberhall was always beautiful when it wished to be cruel.
I stood before the mirror in my private dressing chamber while my attendants finished pinning the last delicate chains into my hair. I had chosen a gown of soft gold silk that bared my shoulders and fell in clean, elegant lines rather than the heavier court regalia everyone seemed determined to wrap around me lately. The sleeves were sheer, embroidered with tiny sunbursts at the cuffs, and the bodice held just enough structure to remind anyone looking that I was still a princess of Summer, even when I had no intention of spending the evening performing like one. My hair fell mostly loose down my back, brushed until it shone, with only the front sections drawn away from my face and fastened by slim ruby pins. I looked like myself, not the version the Solar expected, not the version Mother had spent a century carving into usefulness, not even the version Mira needed when her world tilted and she reached instinctively for the sister who knew how to stand still. Just myself. It should not have felt like defiance.
“My lady,” one of the attendants said, voice carefully neutral, “Prince Ryven is waiting in the lower flame court.”
“Is he?” I asked, because I was not above being difficult when everyone around me had chosen to lie badly.
The attendant’s mouth twitched. “So I am told.”
“By whom?”
She glanced toward the other attendant, who suddenly became deeply invested in smoothing a sleeve that did not need smoothing. “The message came through the household office.”
“How very official.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
I met her eyes in the mirror, and the poor woman’s composure cracked just enough for a smile to escape. I let my own answer it. “Thank you. That will be all.”
They left me with the kind of quick, graceful efficiency that meant the entire wing would know within three minutes that I had not ruined Ryven’s surprise by being insufferably observant. I waited until the door closed behind them before I touched the ruby pin nearest my temple and adjusted it a fraction to the left. A useless gesture. A nervous one. Mother would have noticed.
The thought came without warning, as most grief did lately. It slipped between one breath and the next, uninvited, precise, and too familiar to mistake. My hand stilled against my hair.
Mother would have noticed the pin, the gown, the conspiracy, the reason I had chosen gold instead of red. She would have lifted one elegant brow and said something cutting enough to disguise concern as critique. She would have told me not to let romance make me careless. She would have reminded me that a princess did not become less watched because she wished for privacy. She would have stood in the doorway, beautiful and impossible, and made me want to impress her even as I resented needing to. She was not dead. That had become the sentence we all used to keep standing.
She was not dead. She was healing. She was sleeping. She was beyond ordinary reach, held somewhere between damage and return while healers spoke in careful voices and Tharion turned every corridor near her chamber into a fortress. Mira did not know what to do with the silence. Neither did I. The difference was that I had been trained to look like I did.
Two weeks. In two weeks, I would marry Ryven. The date had been set before everything had broken open so thoroughly that dates felt obscene. Every practical voice in Emberhall had quietly asked whether we should postpone. Not directly to me, of course. No one wanted to be the first person to ask Princess Selene Firebrand whether she intended to marry while her mother lay unconscious in the palace healing wing and her sister struggled beneath the weight of powers no one fully understood. But they asked around me. Near me. Through schedules and seating charts and devotional offerings and consultations with priests who had all suddenly developed strong opinions about auspicious timing. I had not postponed. Some part of me still wondered whether that made me selfish. Some part of me, smaller but growing teeth, did not care.
I wanted my mother awake for it. I wanted her standing with me, proud in that distant, devastating way she had, watching me step toward a future that was no longer only hers to arrange. I wanted her to see that Ryven was not merely the match she had agreed to, not merely the prince of Dusk and Night who could stabilize alliances and thread another line of power through Summer’s future. I wanted her to see that I had chosen him, that he had chosen me, that something which had begun under the old machinery had become alive in our hands. And I wanted to marry him even if she slept through it. That was the part that hurt. I lowered my hand from the ruby pin and left the room before I could give grief any more space to sharpen itself.
The corridors of my wing were quiet in the way palace corridors became quiet when everyone knew something private was being protected by collective force. No one stopped me. No one pretended not to watch me pass. Emberhall staff had the gift of seeming invisible while absorbing enough information to destabilize governments. I descended the eastern stairs toward the lower flame court, the hem of my gown whispering against polished stone, the air growing warmer as I neared the gardens. The scent of stargazer blooms reached me first, then ember jasmine, then the faint mineral steam of the heated pools beyond the arcade.
Ryven stood beside the water. For a moment, I let myself look at him before he noticed me. He had chosen black, which should have made him seem like a shadow slipped accidentally into Summer’s gold, but Ryven had never looked accidental anywhere. His jacket was cut in the Dusk style, high-collared and fitted, the fabric dark as the hour after sunset with subtle threads of violet and silver catching the lanternlight whenever he moved. His hair fell loose around his face, dark and soft enough to make my fingers remember it, and his crown was absent. That, more than anything, made my chest tighten. He had not come to me as prince tonight. Not first. Not primarily. He had come as himself.
The poolside terrace had been transformed without being made ostentatious. That was how I knew he had done it carefully. Ryven understood that grand gestures made me bristle unless they had a purpose beyond display. A low table had been set near the water on woven gold-and-black cushions, surrounded by floating ember-lanterns and duskglass globes that held tiny whorls of violet shadow inside them. Summer flowers trailed over the edge of the arcade, but among them he had woven night-blooming Dusk vines, their small silver flowers opening only where the lanternlight dimmed. The food was arranged beneath warming charms: spiced sunfruit, chilled moonwine, seared fish with citrus glaze, honeyed bread, tiny jewel-bright pastries I suspected had been chosen because Mira had once declared them “dangerous little sugar crimes,” and a dish of pomegranate seeds resting in crushed ice. It was not courtly. It was intimate.
Ryven turned before I reached the last step, as if he had felt me looking. His expression changed with such open pleasure that I forgot, for half a breath, how to be observed. It was not the practiced admiration courtiers wore when they wanted favor. It was not the guarded appreciation of a man aware of political value. It was softer than that. Worse than that. He looked at me as though the evening had not begun until I entered it. “Selene,” he said. My name sounded different in his mouth. Less like a title pretending not to be one.
I descended the last step. “You have involved half my household in a conspiracy.”
“Only half?” His brows drew together with theatrical concern. “I will have to speak with the others. Their commitment disappoints me.”
“You corrupted Meleah.”
“Meleah was already corruptible. I merely provided direction.”
“She told me to wear my hair down.”
His gaze moved over me, not greedily, not crudely, but with enough warmth that my skin became very aware of the open neckline of my gown. “For once,” he said, “Meleah has my complete support.”
I should have answered sharply. Something polished. Something worthy of the fact that he was making me blush like a girl too inexperienced to know better, which was absurd because I was a century old and had survived more diplomatic dinners than most soldiers survived campaigns. Instead, I said, “You are pleased with yourself.”
“Very.”
“At least you admit it.”
“I find honesty works better when I am already caught.”
I reached him at the edge of the pool, and he bowed over my hand, not the formal bow he used in public but a slower thing, his lips brushing my knuckles while his thumb turned my palm slightly upward. The kiss was barely more than warmth against skin. It still moved through me with embarrassing force.
“You look beautiful,” he said.
“I am aware.”
His mouth curved before he straightened. “Yes, I know. I enjoy watching you decide whether to accept the compliment anyway.”
“That sounds like a dangerous hobby.”
“I am marrying into Summer. I assumed dangerous hobbies were required.”
The words struck me more deeply than they should have. I am marrying. Not negotiating, not aligning, not submitting to an arrangement. Marrying.
Ryven saw the flicker. Of course he did. He saw too much, and unlike most people who saw too much, he did not always use it as a weapon. Sometimes he simply adjusted around the wound.
“Two weeks,” he said, quieter now.
I looked past him to the water, where the lanterns trembled in gold and violet reflection. “Two weeks.”
“Still certain?” I looked back at him sharply. He did not flinch, though perhaps a wiser man would have. “Not of me,” he said before I could decide whether to be offended. “Never of me. I am asking whether the timing hurts you.”
There it was. Not the question everyone else asked without asking. Not should we postpone, not what will the Solar think, not whether Summer could withstand a royal wedding with the High Lady unconscious and the Summer Court changing shape around my sister. Just whether it hurt me. That was far more difficult to answer.
“Yes,” I said, because lying to him had become harder than truth. “And no.”
Ryven’s hand closed gently around mine. “Explain it to me.”
I almost laughed. Not because it was funny, but because no one said that to me enough. Explain it to me. As if I were allowed to have thoughts more complicated than strategy. As if my pain did not need to be immediately useful to deserve room.
“I want her there,” I said. “I want Mother to wake before then. I want her to see me. I want her to know I am not angry enough to exclude her and not obedient enough to wait forever. I want…” The words tangled. I looked down at our joined hands. His was cool compared to mine, Dusk-shadow beneath Summer warmth. “I want the impossible, apparently. That is very fashionable in my family lately.”
Ryven brushed his thumb over my knuckles. “Wanting your mother at your wedding is not impossible.”
“No. Expecting the world to arrange itself around that want may be.”
“You are allowed to want it anyway.”
I exhaled slowly. The pool steamed beside us, warm mineral water breathing into the evening air. “If she does not wake, I will still marry you.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” I asked, too quickly.
His gaze held mine. “Yes.”
The answer was so steady that it unsettled me. I had grown up around people who heard uncertainty and reached for leverage. Ryven heard it and gave me ground to stand on.
I looked away first, irritated by the sting behind my eyes. “You are annoyingly calm for a man two weeks from binding himself to this family.”
“I have met your family.”
“And you remain calm?”
“No,” he said. “I hide panic attractively.”
A laugh escaped me before I could discipline it. It startled one of the tiny floating flames, which bobbed away across the pool as if offended. Ryven watched it go, then looked back at me with a satisfaction I should not have found endearing.
“There she is,” he said.
I narrowed my eyes. “Do not speak as if you have summoned me.”
“I would never presume to summon a Firebrand princess.”
“You arranged a secret dinner in my own palace.”
“I invited. The palace conspired.”
“The palace knows better.”
“The palace knows you needed to eat somewhere no one would ask you to approve a funeral seating chart disguised as a contingency plan.”
My expression cooled before I could stop it.
Ryven’s did not change. He simply lifted my hand again and kissed the center of my palm this time, a touch more intimate than knuckles, less safe because he knew exactly what it did. “I am sorry,” he said. “That was too sharp.”
“No,” I said after a moment. “It was accurate.”
Accuracy had become exhausting. Mother unconscious. Mira ascended and pregnant and pretending she was merely overwhelmed by coursework. Elias Quinveil smiling from campaign posters in the human city. Summer nobles trying to determine whether grief made the throne vulnerable. Summer and Starveil both felt different now around Mira, as though a distant pressure had shifted beneath their foundations and no one had yet found the right words for it. Cassian still awaiting formal sentence because law had manners even when monsters did not deserve them. And me, still expected to know how to fold every disaster into something elegant enough for court consumption.
Ryven had arranged dinner. That was ridiculous. That was everything. He led me toward the cushions, but he did not release my hand until I sat. Another small detail I filed away against my better judgment. He waited for my choice, then moved with it, neither ahead nor behind. The table between us was low enough that our knees nearly touched beneath it, and the lanterns shifted above the water, casting his face in alternating warmth and shadow. Dusk and Summer. Night and flame. The political symbolism would have been obnoxious if it had not also been beautiful.
“You did this yourself?” I asked, accepting the cup of chilled moonwine he poured.
“I planned it myself.”
“That is not the same answer.”
“No. The kitchen staff refused to allow me near several things after I asked whether flameberries should be sliced before or after charming.”
I stared at him. “Please tell me you were joking.”
“I have many strengths.”
“Cooking is not among them?”
“I can survive indefinitely on campaign rations and spite.”
“That is not cooking.”
“It is adjacent.”
“No, it is survival. Mira would have you thrown out of her kitchen for saying that.”
His smile widened. “Your sister is terrifying in a kitchen.”
“She is excellent in a kitchen. There is a difference.”
“I once watched her reduce a visiting noble to silence because he suggested adding salt to a dish before tasting it.”
“He deserved it.”
“He probably did.”
His smile flickered at Mira’s name, not with amusement alone. Everyone’s expression changed around my sister now. Mine included. She had become too many things too quickly for any of us to hold one version of her at a time.
“She is doing well?” Ryven asked.
“She is sitting in lectures and pretending not to be a queen. So, no. But also yes.” I sipped the wine because the answer felt too honest, and the moonwine was crisp and cold enough to give me somewhere else to put my mouth. “She is happy with Cassie. That helps. She is terrified. That also helps, oddly. Mira is at her most dangerous when she thinks she is unqualified and does the thing anyway out of spite.”
“A family trait?”
“I am perfectly qualified.”
“I did not say otherwise.”
“You implied.”
“I admired.”
I gave him a skeptical look over the rim of my cup. “That was nearly smooth.”
“I will continue practicing before the wedding.”
At the word wedding, something inside me turned warm and fragile again. I hated the fragility. I treasured it. Both reactions were inconvenient and true.
“What are you looking forward to most?” he asked.
“The end of seating negotiations.”
“Selene.”
“The moment Thornspire realizes I refused their floral recommendations.”
His mouth twitched. “Beloved.”
The word moved through me like a hand along bare skin.
I set the cup down carefully. “Do not weaponize tenderness to make me answer sincerely.”
“I would never weaponize tenderness.”
“You are from Dusk and Night.”
“A fair point.”
I looked out across the pool because looking directly at him was becoming a liability. The floating flames drifted lazily beneath the arcade, their light touching the water in trembling gold. Beyond the gardens, Emberhall rose in layered terraces and bright windows, a palace full of watchers, mourners, schemers, servants, soldiers, family, and ghosts that had not yet had the courtesy to die. Somewhere inside it, my mother slept. Somewhere inside it, Mira’s old rooms still existed even though she belonged to Starveil now. Somewhere inside it, I remained a daughter, a potential heir, a sister, a princess, a woman two weeks from marriage, and none of those selves were waiting politely in line.
“I am looking forward to waking beside you without the court needing a reason for it,” I said finally. Ryven went very still. The admission embarrassed me almost instantly, not because it was shameful, but because it was small. So small compared to alliances, vows, crown lines, future children, court reforms, Dusk negotiations, Summer stability, and whatever disaster would inevitably drag all of us into blood and prophecy by breakfast. I had named waking, not power, not status, not spectacle. Just waking beside him.
Ryven reached across the table and took my hand again. “That is what I want too.”
“Surely you want something more impressive.”
“I have wanted impressive things. They are usually loud and poorly behaved.”
“Mira will be offended when I tell her.”
“Mira is loud and poorly behaved.”
“Mira is pregnant.”
“That does not make her quiet.”
I laughed again, softer this time. “No. It does not.”
Ryven’s thumb moved over mine. “I want the morning after. And the morning after that. I want to learn which side of the bed you prefer when you are not choosing based on defensible exits. I want to know whether you drink tea before speaking or whether you speak first and regret it. I want to watch you take down your hair at night when you are too tired to pretend the pins do not hurt. I want private irritations. Repeated conversations. Your books beside mine. Your shoes where I will trip over them and pretend not to be pleased.”
My throat tightened.
He looked almost apologetic, as if he knew he had gone somewhere neither of us could easily retreat from. “I want the part after the ceremony more than the ceremony.”
“You are very dangerous tonight,” I said.
“Yes.”
“At least pretend to deny it.”
“No.”
The honesty should have made me laugh. It did not. I stood instead, because sitting across from him suddenly felt too far, and moved around the table to his side. Ryven rose immediately, but I placed one hand against his chest before he could turn the movement into courtesy.
“Stay,” I said. He obeyed. That should not have pleased me as much as it did. I stepped closer, the hem of my gown brushing his boots, and let my hand rest over his heart. His heartbeat was slower than mine. Of course it was. Ryven had always seemed made of patience in the places where I was made of polish. He watched me without reaching for more than I offered. That was why I offered more. I touched his face, my fingers grazing the edge of his jaw, and kissed him.
The first kiss was slow because I wanted to know what unhurried felt like. The second was less slow because Ryven’s restraint cracked enough for his hand to settle at my waist, and the contact sent a warm, dizzying certainty through me. Not sex. Not yet. Not here, not tonight, not with my heart full of too many things and my mother asleep somewhere above us. But desire was there, braided through tenderness, patient and alive. I wanted him. I wanted the ceremony. I wanted the mornings. I wanted the bed, eventually, and the right to reach for him without translating the action through duty first.
When I drew back, his eyes were darker than before. “You said dinner,” I reminded him, though my own voice had become unhelpfully soft.
“I did.”
“If you ruin it by being too charming, that is your fault.”
“I accept responsibility.”
“You accept too easily.”
“With you? Rarely.”
I almost kissed him again just for that. Instead, I sat beside him on the cushions rather than returning to the opposite side of the table. The choice was small and not small at all. Ryven noticed. He did not comment, which was why he survived.
We ate slowly. Or, more accurately, Ryven attempted to feed me like a civilized person while I interrogated every dish and discovered he had memorized which foods I tolerated after late council sessions and which ones I only pretended to like because Mother had once praised them. The honeyed bread was warm enough to pull apart with my fingers, the fish bright with citrus and smoke, the fruit chilled until it burst sweet and sharp against my tongue. It was the sort of meal I would have dissected for symbolism in public. In private, I let it be food.
“You hate the saffron cream,” I said after the third course, watching him avoid it with the careful dignity of a man who believed no one had noticed.
“I do not hate it.”
“You have eaten around it with military precision.”
“It is… assertive.”
“It is saffron cream, Ryven, not an invading army.”
“I have respected it as an adversary.”
I set my cup down before I spilled wine on my gown. “You planned a dinner and included a dish you dislike?”
“You like it.”
“I tolerate it because Mother likes it.” His expression changed, only slightly but enough.
I looked down at the small dish between us, golden and fragrant and suddenly heavier than food had any right to be. “She always ordered it for summer betrothal dinners,” I said. “Not every time. Just enough that I noticed. I think she believed it made the table look traditional.”
“Do you want it removed?”
“No.” I surprised myself with the answer. “No, leave it.”
Ryven nodded once and did not make the mistake of treating the moment as fragile glass. He simply took a piece of bread, dipped it into the saffron cream with visible resignation, and ate it.
I stared at him. “You do hate it.”
“I am proving devotion.”
“You are proving poor judgment.”
“Marriage requires sacrifice.”
The laugh that left me this time hurt at the edges. He smiled, but gently, and nudged the dish a little closer to me. I dipped my own bread and tried not to think about Mother sitting across from me at every formal meal of my life, perfect and untouchable, correcting posture with a glance and affection with strategy. I tried not to think about her absence at the wedding table. I tried not to think about the possibility that she would wake after and look at me with betrayal because I had gone forward without her.
Ryven’s hand found mine under the table. “I am afraid she will think I abandoned her,” I said. His fingers tightened. The confession should have shamed me. It did not. Not with him. That was becoming a problem, or perhaps the opposite of one.
“She will not,” Ryven said.
“You do not know that.”
“No. I do not.” He turned my hand over and traced the lines of my palm with his thumb. “But I know you. You have not abandoned anyone. You are holding more than one person should be asked to hold, and you are still choosing a life rather than waiting to see whether grief gives you permission to have one.”
My vision blurred. I hated that. I breathed through it with the discipline of a woman trained to survive rooms full of predators and discovered, not for the first time, that tenderness was worse. “I want her there,” I whispered.
“I know.”
“I want Mira beside me and Mother behind me and Tharion pretending he is not emotional and Father actually staying seated through the ceremony instead of finding an excuse to pace and all of it to be impossible in the correct direction for once.”
Ryven lifted my hand and kissed my palm. “Then we will make room for all of it. The wanting. The absence. The hope. The anger. The joy. I am not marrying only the easy parts of your life, Selene.”
“There are easy parts?”
“One or two.”
“Name them.”
“Your fondness for organized schedules.”
“That is not easy. That is civilization.”
“Your ability to terrify men twice your age into behaving at council.”
“That is recreation.”
“Your smile when you forget to guard it.”
I looked at him. He looked back, entirely too pleased with himself. “That was manipulative,” I said.
“That was sincere.”
“Worse.”
He laughed then, low and warm, and the sound settled somewhere beneath my ribs. I leaned into him before I decided whether doing so was wise. His arm came around me, not possessive, not public, not arranged by rank or approved by anyone’s council. Just there. I rested my head against his shoulder and looked out over the pool while the floating lights drifted across the water.
Emberhall had rarely allowed me to be still. Even as a child, stillness had been training, observation, composure. Sit straight. Listen. Watch. Do not fidget. Do not reveal. Do not need more than you are given. With Ryven, stillness changed shape. It became something shared instead of enforced.
“What if she does not wake in time?” I asked.
“Then we will leave a seat for her.”
My breath caught.
Ryven continued, voice quiet. “Not as spectacle. Not as pressure. Not for the court. For you. If you want it.”
I closed my eyes. A seat for Mother. Empty if it had to be. Waiting if hope was not too foolish to place at a wedding table. “Yes,” I said.
“Then there will be one.”
“It will start whispers.”
“Everything starts whispers.”
“Mira will cry.”
“Mira cries when people peel fruit correctly now.”
A laugh broke through me, wet and inelegant. “That is unfair.”
“Is it untrue?”
“No, but she is pregnant. She has an excuse. And Mother may have died trying to save her and her grandchild. I think that earns her a few tears.”
“Then I stand by it.”
I wiped beneath one eye with the heel of my hand before tears could ruin the careful work my attendants had done. “She will also threaten anyone who comments on the chair.”
“As will I.”
“As will Tharion.”
“As will Cassie, probably before anyone speaks.”
Ryven considered. “A well-guarded chair.”
“The safest chair in Dominveil.”
“Then your mother would approve.”
The words should have cut. Instead they warmed. Because he was right. Mother would approve of excellent security. She would approve of a symbolic gesture made tactically defensible by overwhelming threat. She might even approve of Ryven, if she woke and allowed herself to see him beyond the arrangement.
“She likes you,” I said.
“Your mother?”
“She respects you.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“With Mother, it is adjacent.”
“I will accept adjacent affection from the High Lady as a starting point.”
“You are brave.”
“I am marrying her daughter.”
“Her better daughter,” I said, because I was in love and therefore apparently willing to be smug.
Ryven’s arm tightened around me. “I would never enter that debate.”
“Coward.”
“Survivor.”
We stayed there for a long time after the food had cooled and the lanterns drifted farther across the pool. The evening deepened around us, Summer heat softening into night warmth, Dusk shadows settling along the edges of the flame court like Ryven’s magic had taught the garden a quieter language. Somewhere beyond the terrace, Emberhall continued being Emberhall: watchful, hungry, wounded, magnificent. But here, beside the water, with Ryven’s arm around me and his heartbeat steady beneath my cheek, the palace loosened its grip.
I tilted my face up. “Two weeks.”
He looked down at me. “Two weeks.”
“You are certain?”
His smile was small and devastating. “Never of the timing. Always of you.”
I should have had an answer ready. A perfect one. Something elegant enough to deserve the look he was giving me. Instead I rose onto my knees beside him, took his face in both hands, and kissed him again.
He met me slowly, as if he understood that this was not hunger alone, though hunger was there. This was promise. This was grief allowed to sit beside joy without poisoning it. This was a woman raised to be useful choosing, for a moment, to be wanted. His hand slid up my back, warm through the silk, and I let myself sink into him until the world narrowed to waterlight, ember-jasmine, his mouth, his breath, his careful restraint, and the terrifying sweetness of knowing restraint would not always be necessary.
When we parted, I rested my forehead against his and smiled faintly. “No sex tonight,” I said, because clarity remained one of civilization’s nobler achievements.
His laugh brushed my lips. “I had gathered.”
“Do not sound smug.”
“I am trying not to sound honored.”
That undid me more than any seduction could have. I kissed him once more, brief and fierce, then settled back against his side with my hand still caught in his. The empty place where Mother should have been did not vanish. It would not. In two weeks, it might still be empty. A chair might wait where a queen should stand. Mira might cry. Tharion might stare murder at anyone who noticed. Cassie might threaten a diplomat with a fork. Ryven might hold my hand beneath the table where no one could see. And I would marry him. Not because the arrangement required it. Not because Summer needed it. Not because Mother had once decided it would be useful. I would marry him because when the world pressed too hard against my ribs, he gave me room to breathe without asking me to become smaller.
The pool shimmered with fire and violet shadow. Above us, the first stars appeared beyond Emberhall’s golden roofline, faint but stubborn against the palace glow. For once, I did not count exits. I did not calculate consequence. I did not listen for footsteps behind me or rehearse the next duty waiting beyond the garden. I sat beside the man I would marry in two weeks and let myself be happy. Not untouched by grief. Not free from fear. Not foolish enough to think joy made the future gentle. Happy anyway.