Chapter 8
Morning breaks sharp and iron-cold. The whole palace has that taut, held-breath feeling wedding preparations stretching through corridors like pulled thread.
By the time I step into the antechamber off the Great Hall, three women in blue wool and one priest in slate-grey are waiting. Incense smoke curls from a brass dish. Behind them, a steward stands with a wax tablet, eager to record my obedience.
"Your Grace," the grey-robed priest says, bowing just enough to insult. "Before the vows, the Priory requests observance of the purity rite."
There it is. They finally said it out loud.
I keep my voice even. "You may request what you like. I won't bare my body to men or a crowd."
A flicker of triumph touches his mouth—as if he'd been waiting for refusal. "It is the custom."
"Then the custom is poorly made." I look past him to the women. "If there is to be any examination, it will be private, and conducted only by elder women healers. Preferably Whitevein."
One of the blue-cloaked women dips her head. "Elder Mara Whitevein can attend within the hour, Your Grace."
The priest's fingers tense on his beads. "The Priory must witness."
"No," I say, calm as a blade laid flat. "You may be informed. You may receive the seal. You may not watch."
A beat of silence. The steward's stylus waits above wax. The priest studies me like a puzzle he dislikes solving. At my shoulder, I feel more than hear someone stop in the doorway.
Valerius.
He doesn't speak, just stands long enough that every spine in the room straightens. He gives the priest a single, bored glance that somehow feels like a threat, then looks at me. "Terms?"
"Private," I answer, not breaking his gaze. "Women healers only. No crowd. No men."
His jaw works once. "Done."
The priest bows again, deeper this time. "As His Majesty commands."
As he withdraws, Valerius lingers in the doorway. His eyes flick, briefly, to the steam-dark bruise on my wrist. He doesn't ask. He doesn't need to. Something like heat passes between us, quiet as breath, and then he's gone dragging the room's temperature up with him.
I exhale. The women in blue relax, a fraction.
"Elder Mara will meet you in your chamber," one says gently. "We will be discreet."
"Thank you," I tell the women—not the priest, not the steward. "I'll be ready."
It's done by noon.
No chanting. No men. No eyes that want to own. Elder Mara's fingers are cool and sure; the other women keep the room warm and the door barred. It is quick, clinical, human. Not ritual. Not spectacle. When it's over, Mara presses a small bone seal into my palm—etched with the healer's knot and a braided flame.
"For the Priory," she says simply. "Give them this. They'll accept it."
I nod. I don't trust my voice.
She studies my face a moment longer. "You do hard things with your chin high. It's admirable. It's also exhausting. Eat hot broth, Your Grace."
When they leave, I sit very still on the edge of the bed and hate the quiet. It lets too much in.
A soft knock. "Mwei?" Jei cracks the door, eyes wide and bright with worry. She carries a basket of torn silk scraps and ginger biscuits she's half-burned. "I made… snacks."
I laugh, one short, broken sound, and pull her into a hug. She's small and warm and real.
"Did it hurt?" she whispers.
"No," I lie, because the ache isn't in the body. "It was fine."
She pulls back, searches my face, then lets it go the way sisters do—choosing today over truth. "I traded the silk tails to the laundresses," she says, eager to fill the air. "They told me the Traditionalists are furious about your bridge fix. But the kitchen boys love you. They say you counted fair."
I kiss her forehead. "Good. Keep listening."
As she leaves, she pauses at the mirror and drags the flat of a cherry across her mouth, then mine. We grin at the matching stain. "Two queens," she says, joking and not.
"Two survivors," I correct, and send her away before I can crumble.
Klus corners me in the west passage an hour before the evening feast. The stones hold the day's cold; our breath ghosts in the dim.
"You slept in his chamber," he says—no accusation in his tone, only fact. "Half the castle thinks you did more."
"Half the castle is bored," I say. "I took the bed. He took the couch."
"You shouldn't need to justify it to me."
"Then don't ask like a judge."
He absorbs that without flinching. "You do not have to manuever alone. Use me. Use my guard. Ask."
"I did," I say. "I asked you to teach me to live through a fight."
His eyes flick to my wrist, the map of fresh bruises. "And I'm teaching you."
"I'm not a lesson to keep caged in the practice yard."
Something softens at the corner of his mouth. "No. You're a weather front. The question is whether you're rain or blade."
"Today?" I lift my chin. "Both."
We stare at each other too long, an argument neither of us started tightening between us like a drawn bow.
"Tonight," he says at last, voice lower, "after the feast. Training. Harder."
"Good." I step past him, then stop. The words taste like grit and glass. "And Klus… the Priory's rite— I agreed, on my terms. Private. But even so—" I have to breathe to get the rest out. "I hate that men think they're owed proof of a body they did not build."
His jaw flexes, slow. "I know." The words are simple and heavy. "I'm sorry I can't take that from you. I can only make sure they don't take anything else."
I nod, once—gratitude that feels like surrender—and walk away before the feeling makes me clumsy.
The feast is teeth behind a smile.
Banners hang from the vaults, braziers spit light, platters gleam. Nobles perfume the air with civility and knives. Monster artisans have been given a narrow balcony above, not quite honored and not quite hidden. The Priory sits in a sober block of grey, the High Flamekeeper's face arranged in saintly disappointment.
Valerius wears black and fire. He does not lounge tonight. He rules—with silence, with the economy of a man who dislikes it and does it anyway.
When I enter, the room ripples. The tight green dress from this morning has given way to deep iron-blue trimmed in rough silver—North-cut, practical, unnecessarily flattering. I wear no crown. I don't need one.
We hold our masks together through the first course. Through the second, some barbed toasts draw blood without staining the linen. It's the third course when a Traditionalist lord finally stops pretending to be polite.
"Majesty," he says, lifting a glass so his voice will carry, "it warms the heart that our southern guest has opinions on bridges and bread. Yet rumor says she sleeps in your chamber before the vow. Rumor says she calms your… tempers. Rumor says—"
"Rumor says you underpay your hands by two-thirds," I say mildly, raising my own glass. "Shall we trade rumors?"
Laughter breaks in a ring to our right—the balcony where the artisans watch. The lord reddens. "Your tongue is clever, girl, but a queen's virtue lies in humility."
"Then perhaps I should borrow yours."
A few muffled coughs that are not coughs. The High Flamekeeper dips his head, grave as a slab. "Her Grace's zeal is worldly. We must pray the wedding purifies—"
"Enough," a voice says.
Valerius. Not loud. Final.
Dozens of faces tilt toward him. He does not look at anyone except me. And somehow that's worse—because it means he's trusting me to choose the next step.
I stand. The table quiets. I let the quiet hold until even the braziers lean in.
"I have heard that a dragon's temper is a fault," I say, conversational. "And that his queen's temper is a scandal. I have heard that merchants should not count, artisans should not speak, wolf-kin should not stand at table, and women should not ask to be treated as human before divine."
I rest my fingertips on the rim of my glass—steady, controlled. "Here is another thing to hear: my husband-to-be is a man who does not waste heat. It terrifies cold men to see fire used for warmth instead of war. And it terrifies cowards to see a woman refuse to freeze for their comfort."
Silence. Somewhere above, a bear-kin rumbles approval; the sound shivers the wine.
I tip the glass toward the Traditionalist table. "If your daughters must be humble to make you feel tall, perhaps look to your own spine, not their backs. If your ledgers don't balance, perhaps fear the day I read them aloud. And if your faith requires public proof of a stranger's body, perhaps it is too fragile to rule a northern winter."
I drink. The hall breathes out, either scandalized or saved, I can't tell which. Valerius doesn't smile. He doesn't need to. The heat in the room shifts as if the braziers have taken a cue from his blood.
The High Flamekeeper lifts his palm in a gesture of benediction that's almost a threat. "May the Veil of Worth reveal what is hidden."
"It already has," I say, and sit.
For the rest of the feast, knives remain in fruit where they belong.
Night. Training yard.
Frost has rimed the pavers; our breath coils white. Klus says nothing when he hands me the practice dagger. He simply moves.
I move faster.
I'm sharper than yesterday—jaw tight, temper brighter, steps meaner. He notices immediately; he lets me drive, lets me spend it, redirects when it could bruise something we need later.
"Again," I say, chest heaving.
He obliges. I feint high, cut low, twist back into his guard and jam the heel of my hand into his wrist—the break angle he showed me. He rolls with it, catches, turns me, pins my forearm to his shoulder and arrests the fall with his hip instead of the ground.
"Good," he says, breath warm in my ear. "Again."
We reset. He watches the way my hands shake. "What did they do?"
"It was private," I answer. "On my terms. It still felt like strangers taking inventory of mercy."
He goes still, just for a heartbeat. "Say the word," he murmurs, "and I will ensure no one ever asks again."
"That's not how kingdoms work."
"It's how I work."
I look up at him—too close, not close enough. "Then make me so dangerous they don't dare ask."
He nods. The lesson shifts from form to intent. We stop being polite to pretend. He knocks me down; I roll through, kick his ankle, come up with fury for balance. He drives me back to the wall; I slide, pivot, bring the wooden edge across his ribs. He grunts, real pain, real pride.
"Again," I say, half-laughing now because the body is a map that makes sense and tonight I am so tired of things that do not.
"Again," he echoes, and the yard becomes the only honest room we share.
By the time we quit, sweat clings to my spine despite the cold, and my palms sting. He takes my hand without asking, checks the swelling at the base of my thumb, presses and releases with practiced care.
"You're holding your breath on the second exchange," he says. "It's costing you speed."
"I was thinking about speeches," I say. "It's a bad habit."
He huffs. "You make good ones."
"Then tell me you would've stood for it if they'd demanded a public rite."
"No." The word is immediate and hard. "I would have burned the dais."
We look at each other, the admission hanging like a standard we didn't mean to raise.
"Thank you," I say.
"For what?"
"For not asking me to be small."
He drops my hand, slow. "I have never mistaken you for small."
I should go back to my chamber.
I don't.
I walk the Silent Corridor with bruised wrists and a pulse that won't calm. The connecting door is not barred. It never is now. I ease it open and find Valerius at the hearth, half-shadowed, boots abandoned, shirt loose at the throat like he's finally stopped bracing against the day.
He looks up when the door clicks. His gaze slides, as it always does, to the finger-marks darkening my skin. Heat stirs the room a fraction. He doesn't comment. Neither do I.
"I'm sleeping here," I say, the same way I'd announce a trade: simple, undeniable. "We're to be married in days. I won't flinch then because I refused to learn the room now."
He studies me through a long, crackling moment. "You hate being watched."
"I hate being weighed," I say. "There's a difference."
Something like understanding tightens his mouth. He stands, gestures at the bed. "Take it."
"And you?"
"The couch. I'll manage."
I cross the room, then pause with my fingers on the fur throw. "One more thing."
He lifts a brow.
"If anyone—Priory, lord, gossip—thinks they are owed proof of me, deny them."
"That was done this morning," he says. "On your terms."
"I know." I draw the fur up and over the sheets. "Say it again anyway."
His eyes warm in a way that has nothing to do with flame. "Denied."
"Thank you." I slide beneath the covers, pulse finally slowing. "If you insist on ruling, you might as well be useful."
He makes a low sound that might be laughter. The fire softens. The room settles. Between the couch and the bed, the distance feels less like a wall and more like a line we are both carefully not crossing.
"Tomorrow," he says into the quiet, "you'll have more enemies."
"Then tomorrow I'll count them," I murmur, already half asleep, "and tax their arrogance."
A heartbeat later, the world narrows to heat, and breath, and the iron certainty that I will not be moved.
Outside, frost takes the windows. Inside, the dragon keeps the room warm. And for the first time since the South, I sleep without dreaming of hunger.