Something's wrong the moment I step through the throne room doors.
Father stands at the window with his back to me, shoulders drawn up in that rigid line he gets when he's carrying news he'd rather set down and walk away from. Mother sits in her smaller chair—the one they bring out for family matters, not the throne—with her hands folded in her lap so precisely that her knuckles have gone white. A woman who has spent two decades running a kingdom does not clasp her own hands unless she needs something to hold onto.
Neither of them looks at me when I enter.
"You summoned me," I say, and my boots echo across the stone.
"Valeria." Father turns. He's wearing that expression I've come to know better than I'd like—the careful look of a man preparing to ask something he already suspects will be refused. "Sit down."
"I'd rather stand."
Mother's lips press thin. "This isn't a request. Sit."
I sit.
The cushion beneath me feels harder than I remember, or perhaps every muscle in my body has gone rigid enough to make anything feel like stone. I straighten my spine and hold Father's gaze as he crosses toward me, each footstep slow and deliberate. Orion, King of Galadria—always the steady one, the strategist who thinks three moves ahead while everyone around him is still reacting to the first. It's Mother who cuts through sentiment. Father is the one who makes you believe the cut was necessary.
"There's been a development," he begins.
"What kind?"
"The kind that requires action." Mother leans forward. Her dark eyes—the ones I inherited along with the thick lashes and the stubborn ability to hold a stare without blinking, though hers have always run colder—fix on my face. "King Mordain is mobilizing forces along our eastern border. Intelligence places his first movement within the month."
Mordain.
Just the name is enough. The Butcher King. The man who left three kingdoms in ash over five years and called the work unfinished.
"Then we fortify." The words come out faster than I intend. "Call the bannermen. Reinforce the—"
"We've done that." Father's voice is quiet in the way that means there's no room to argue. "It won't be sufficient. Karvath commands twice our numbers, and Mordain's forces have been hardened by years of continuous warfare. If they march on us—" His jaw tightens. "We fall."
The word settles into the room and stays there.
My kingdom. My home. Everyone in it.
"Unless," Mother says, "we secure an alliance."
"What kind?"
"A marriage alliance." Father's voice drops. "With Aurelia."
The silence that follows is very loud.
"Aurelia." I press the word like a bruise to test it. "The kingdom that has been our rival for three generations."
"Rivalry is preferable to extinction."
"King Brennan has agreed to the terms." Father moves to stand before me, close enough that I can see the new lines at the corners of his eyes. "His eldest son, Crown Prince Ignis, will wed you before the summer solstice. In exchange, their dragon riders join ours. Together, we hold Karvath at the border."
Prince Ignis.
I've never met him, but the stories have circulated through court for years the way stories about princes do—wrapped in admiration and exaggeration and an undercurrent of something harder to name. The Crown Prince of Aurelia. The youngest general in their recorded history. His dragon Sorin is said to be among the largest in existence, scales like molten bronze and a temperament built to match his rider's. They say Ignis is a tactician first and a person somewhere considerably further down the list. Brilliant in war. Ruthless at a bargaining table. Cold as a winter campaign and twice as organized.
"I won't." The words leave me before I've decided to say them. "You can't ask me to—"
"We're not asking." Mother's voice cuts clean through the room. "Your father and I have spent weeks looking for another way. Every path leads back to the same place." She pauses, and when she continues her voice has dropped just slightly, the edge of it softened by something I recognize as the closest she comes to grief. "There is no alternative that keeps Mira and Kael alive when Karvath's army comes through our walls."
My younger siblings.
Mira, who laughs too loudly at her own jokes and never apologizes for it. Kael, who carries a wooden sword everywhere like it's already the real thing.
The thought of Mordain's soldiers reaching them tightens my chest until breathing requires active effort.
"There has to be—"
"There isn't." Father crouches until we're level, and the pain in his expression is so unguarded that I have to look away. "If there were any other option, I would have taken it before I ever walked into this room. But Mordain won't stop at our border. He'll turn on Aurelia once he's finished with us. Brennan knows this. He's not doing us a favor—he's protecting himself."
"Desperate enough to marry his heir to me," I say.
"Desperate enough to stop the war before it starts." Father's hand covers mine briefly. "This isn't about love. It's about what survives."
I want to argue. I want to stand up and remind them that this is my life they're weighing, that I am not a clause in a treaty. The words stay down, because underneath all of it I know they're right, and I have no response to being right about something that costs this much.
"When?" My voice comes out flatter than I mean it to.
"There's a banquet tonight," Mother says, already rising from her chair. "King Brennan and his family are already traveling. They'll arrive within the hour."
Tonight.
An hour before his arrival. That's how long they've given me.
"I need you to be cordial," Mother continues, stopping close enough that I catch her perfume—rose and sandalwood, equal parts safety and constraint my entire life. "Polite. Welcoming. This alliance lives or dies on goodwill, and tonight is the first impression we make."
"You want me to charm the man you've already decided I'll marry."
"I want you to be intelligent." Her tone sharpens at the edges. "Can you set your pride aside for one evening? Can you sit across from your future husband and make conversation without making everyone in the room feel how much you'd rather be somewhere else?"
Future husband.
I look to Father, hoping for counterweight, but he only gives me that quiet, sorry look that means he agrees with every word she's said and hates himself for it.
"Am I so difficult to place," I ask, keeping my voice level, "that you couldn't give me even a day?"
"This isn't about difficulty." Mother holds my gaze. "You're twenty-two years old and a dragon rider and a princess of Galadria. Your great-grandmother married a king she'd never met to secure a border. Your aunt wed a man twice her age to hold the coastal provinces together. Every woman in this family has done what the moment required." A beat. "Now the moment requires it of you."
I want to tell her I'm not my great-grandmother. But there is no version of that argument that changes anything, and we both know it, and knowing it is its own particular kind of grief.
"Fine." The word scrapes out of me. "I'll be cordial. But I won't pretend I want this."
"I don't expect you to want it," she says. For just a moment, something moves across her face that might be sympathy or might be memory. "I expect you to endure it. The two are different things."
Father's hand rests briefly on my shoulder. "You're stronger than this feels right now."
I don't answer.
"Banquet begins at sunset." Mother is already at the door, already rebuilt. "Wear the navy gown, the one with the silver embroidery. Hair up. You want to look like a princess, not like you've come straight from the training yards." She pauses at the threshold. "One more thing."
"What?"
Her lips compress briefly. "Prince Ignis has a reputation. Sharp-tongued. Uncompromising. Difficult in ways that are more calculated than accidental." She shakes her head slightly. "Don't let him unsettle you. You're a princess of Galadria. Conduct yourself accordingly."
She leaves.
Father lingers. "He's not a monster," he says quietly, more to himself than to me. "Brennan speaks well of him. Says he's the sharpest strategist Aurelia has produced in living memory."
"Wonderful. I'm marrying a man who will treat our entire marriage like a military campaign."
Father's mouth twitches—almost a smile, on a different day. "Give him a chance. You might be surprised."
"I won't be."
His grip tightens briefly before he follows Mother out. The door closes behind him with a soft, definitive click.
Then the room is empty except for me.
I stay where I am for a moment. Let the weight of it settle.
Rising, I cross to the window. Below, servants are already preparing for the banquet—lanterns lit in careful rows, tables arranged with practiced precision, white flowers placed just so.
Everything flawless. Everything planned.
Lysara, I send the thought out through the bond, reaching toward the cliffs beyond the castle walls. I need you.
Her response comes immediately—low, warm, concerned.
What's happened?
Everything, I think back. Come to my balcony. An hour before sunset.
I'll be there.
The bond settles into its quiet, and I draw a full breath—the first real one since I walked through that door.
I have to get ready.
My hands don't shake when I lace the navy gown. I notice this, standing in front of the mirror while my maid pins my hair, and I notice that I'm noticing it, and I'm not sure yet whether that means I'm braver than I thought or simply too numb to register the weight of what's coming. I stare at my own reflection for a moment—the silver embroidery, the hair arranged to look like someone worth marrying—and I think: this is not a performance. This is armor. There is a difference.
Then I go downstairs.
* * *
The great hall's doors stand open when I arrive, candlelight and conversation spilling out into the corridor. My pulse picks up—not quite fear, more the particular tightness before a storm you can already feel in the air.
I step through.
Candles burn in clusters along every wall and overhead in the iron chandeliers, their flames caught and multiplied in the polished silver laid across the banquet table. White roses wind between the place settings. Someone has spent considerable effort making this look like a celebration.
The effort hasn't entirely worked.
Mother and Father sit at the head of the table, already in conversation with a couple I don't recognize—King Brennan and Queen Valencia, unmistakably. Brennan has the kind of face that's aged well: distinguished silver at his temples, laugh lines that suggest he actually earns them. His wife carries herself with the poise of someone who has spent decades being observed and made a form of art out of giving nothing away.
Mira is attempting not to stare at the Aurelian guests, which means she's absolutely staring, her fork suspended in midair and forgotten. Kael folds his napkin into increasingly intricate shapes—his tell when he's nervous but determined not to show it.
Other Aurelian faces scatter down the length of the table. A young woman with sharp, observant eyes. An older woman with silver-streaked hair. A boy around Kael's age examining a fork like he's never considered the object before.
And at the far end of the hall, standing with his back to the wall and his arms crossed loosely over his chest, is Prince Ignis.
Everything in me goes quiet.
He's taller than the stories suggested—considerably so, broad through the shoulders in a way that makes the tailored black jacket look almost like a concession. His complexion has a deep, warm copper tone that the candlelight has opinions about, and his dark hair falls across his forehead with the careful carelessness of something that hasn't been left to chance. Twenty-eight years old and he holds himself like a man who has spent years making himself difficult to read and succeeded.
Then he turns his head, and I see his eyes.
Green. Not the soft green of summer shade, but the particular bright green of new leaves held up to direct sunlight—vivid and sharp and awake. They move across the hall in a slow, unhurried survey, assessing the room with the patience of someone who catalogues everything.
Until they land on me.
The shift is immediate.
His attention settles with weight—a slow and thorough survey from my face to the length of my gown and back. Not lecherous. The way someone looks when they're collecting information they intend to keep.
I hold his gaze.
Let him look. I'm doing exactly the same.
His mouth curves. Barely. Not a smile—the acknowledgment of an unexpected move.
"Valeria!" Mother's voice cuts the distance between us, warm and performed. "Come meet our guests, darling."
I cross the hall. Father rises and offers his arm. I take it.
"King Brennan, Queen Valencia," Father says, in the formal cadence he reserves for diplomacy, "may I present my eldest daughter, Princess Valeria of Galadria."
I sink into the curtsy I've been practicing since I was old enough to understand what it meant—deep enough for respect, not so low as to suggest submission. When I rise, Queen Valencia is already smiling, and the warmth in it is specific enough to catch me off guard.
"Your Highness."
"Princess." King Brennan inclines his head. "We've been eager to meet you. Your father speaks very highly of your accomplishments."
"He tends toward generosity," I say, and Father's fingers press slightly on my arm—don't deflect.
"Not generosity at all." Queen Valencia's smile widens. "We've heard you bonded with your dragon quite young. Thirteen, wasn't it?"
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"Remarkable." She exchanges a brief glance with her husband. "Ignis was fourteen. He's always been rather particular about that distinction."
I glance toward the far end of the table, where the prince has been watching this exchange with an expression of composed attention that doesn't reach any part of his face that might give something away.
"Speaking of," King Brennan gestures in his direction. "Ignis, come and meet your future bride."
Future bride.
The words drop into the room like stones.
Ignis pushes away from the wall and approaches with the unhurried, economical grace of someone whose body has learned to function as a weapon and hasn't entirely unlearned it for polite occasions. When he stops in front of me, I have to tilt my head back to hold his gaze, and the small adjustment—having to look up at him—makes my spine straighten in a reflex I can't call voluntary.
"Princess Valeria." His voice is deeper than I expected, roughened at the edges. "What a pleasure."
Textbook correct.
The tone belongs to a different sentence entirely.
"Prince Ignis." I match his register precisely. "Entirely mutual."
It isn't.
We both understand this.
His eyes hold mine a half-second longer than courtesy requires, the sharp green gaze quiet and calculating, before he reaches for my hand. The kiss he presses to my knuckles is impeccable—brief, appropriate, carrying not a trace of warmth.
The warmth of his mouth registers through the fabric of my glove regardless.
I withdraw my hand and redirect my attention to the table.
"Please, everyone sit." Mother gestures, and I understand immediately why there is one empty chair directly across from where Ignis is heading.
Of course there is.
Father steers me toward it—barely three feet of polished wood between me and the Crown Prince of Aurelia. Close enough to see every small shift in his expression. Close enough that when he settles into his chair, I catch the faint drift of his scent: cedar, smoke, something underneath that's darker and more complex.
The first course arrives—some delicate soup I eat without tasting—and conversation unfolds around us the way it does at these evenings. Mother and Queen Valencia discuss ceremony arrangements. Mira asks Alina about Aurelian architecture with the bright, uncalculated curiosity that's always been her best quality. Kael and the younger Aurelian boy conduct the silent, evaluative assessment that boys manage without exchanging an honest word.
And through all of it, his attention finds its way back to me.
Not constantly. Not in a way that announces itself. But every time I reach for my glass, every time I turn to answer something Mother says, every time I set down my spoon—his focus is there. A weight I can't stop registering.
The way he cuts his food with clean, methodical movements. The way he listens to his father speak without contributing. The single moment when his fingers tap once against the table edge—once, controlled, brief—before going still.
I can't read him. The inability is maddening in a way I'd prefer not to examine.
"We were thinking two weeks," King Brennan says, and the announcement lands across every conversation simultaneously, stopping each one mid-sentence.
My glass arrests halfway to my lips.
Two weeks.
"I'm sorry?" Father's voice stays even, but I know him well enough to hear the surprise underneath.
"For the ceremony." Brennan sets down his fork. "Given Karvath's current movements, formalizing the alliance quickly is the more prudent choice. Two weeks gives us time to arrange something appropriate without leaving ourselves exposed."
"That's..." Mother pauses. "Rather immediate."
"It's strategic." Queen Valencia's voice carries quiet steel beneath its warmth. "Every day we delay is a day Mordain extends his reach."
The subtext: agree now, or reconsider everything.
I look across the table at Ignis.
I don't know what I'm looking for. Some reaction. A flicker of surprise or objection or recognition that two men have just decided when we'll be married and that this constitutes a significant alteration to both our lives.
His gaze meets mine.
Steady. Patient. Unmoved.
I look away first and reach for my wine.
"Two weeks, then," Father says quietly.
"Wonderful." Queen Valencia's expression brightens. "Of course, Valeria will want to come to Aurelia as soon as possible. There's so much to arrange—the ceremony, the gown, simply becoming familiar with the palace before the wedding. She'll want to feel at home."
My new home.
"Naturally," Mother agrees. "She'll have her companions. Lady Eira and Lord Caspian have already agreed to make the journey."
"Excellent." King Brennan nods. "We want Valeria welcomed as she deserves."
I smile anyway. "How thoughtful."
Mother's eyes find mine briefly—a clear directive. Don't.
So I don't.
I sit there, spine straight, expression arranged, while they plan my wedding around me. The ceremony in the Grand Cathedral. The guest list restricted for security. The vows spoken in both languages.
Ignis says nothing.
Doesn't volunteer a preference, doesn't object to a single detail, doesn't react when his mother mentions the timeline or when my father quietly agrees. He sits with that composed neutrality, occasionally lifting his wine glass without drinking very much.
His gaze, though—always returning to me.
I meet it directly and let him see what I'm not bothering to hide: the frustration, the resentment, the particular anger of being planned around. Daring him to react. To show something—anything—beyond that composure he wears like armor over armor.
The corner of his mouth moves.
Like I'm interesting.
My fingers close hard around the stem of my glass.
Finally—after what is certainly forty minutes and feels considerably longer—King Brennan pushes back from the table. "Orion, perhaps we should review the military arrangements privately."
"Agreed." Father rises. "Valencia, Maeve—the ceremonial planning?"
"Of course." Mother stands, already smoothing her skirts.
And just like that, the parents leave.
The hall expands in their absence. Alina says something that makes Mira laugh. Nova challenges Kael to identify the purpose of each piece of silverware in order—a game Kael takes immediately and absurdly seriously.
And Ignis simply looks at me.
"Do you have something to say?" I keep my voice low enough that it stays between us. "Or is this how you spend all your evenings."
"I'm observing."
"You've been staring."
"Is there a meaningful difference?"
"Yes. One is polite curiosity. The other is what you've been doing since I walked in."
He considers this with the measured patience of someone who doesn't feel the need to fill silence. "I'm trying to understand who I'm about to marry."
"That's what conversation is for."
"You haven't seemed particularly interested in conversation."
I set my glass down. "Get out of my eyeline."
"You're at my family's banquet."
"In my castle." I hold his gaze. "Move."
His mouth curves again—that same almost-acknowledgment—but he doesn't answer, and he doesn't move, and when the pressure in my chest reaches the point where the candles burn too warm and his presence three feet away has become something I cannot organize into anything manageable, I push back from the table.
Several heads turn. Mira's face flashes concern.
"Excuse me." The words come out tighter than I mean. "I need some air."
I don't wait.
Just move, crossing the hall toward the garden doors, and if the pace is faster than it should be, I don't particularly care.
The night air hits my face like something has been lifted—cool and clean, entirely free of rose petals and negotiated futures. I drag in a full breath and start toward the cliffs where the dragons roost.
I don't get far.
Because the sky above me has become a disaster.
* * *
Two massive shapes wheel through the darkness overhead, locked together in a spiral that's nothing like play. Lysara's scales catch the moonlight in brilliant flashes of sapphire and midnight blue as she twists sharply away from a gout of flame that turns the air bright as midday for half a breath.
Sorin.
The bronze dragon is larger than I expected even from the descriptions, his scales running gold and crimson as he banks hard and sends another wall of fire after Lysara. She rolls with the fluid grace of something born for exactly this and retaliates with a concentrated blast of water that catches him across the chest.
Steam explodes between them.
Lysara. I throw the thought with everything I have. Down. Now.
Her response crackles back, hot with righteous fury. He insulted you.
I don't care. Now.
A long pause—long enough to feel the full weight of her deliberation—and then she folds her wings and drops, pulling up barely in time to land in the courtyard with enough force to crack the flagstones beneath her.
Sorin follows a heartbeat later, hitting the opposite side with equal violence. His wings stay partially spread, tail lashing in slow, agitated arcs.
"Arrogant water snake," he says, loudly enough to be heard. "I should have finished it when I had the opening."
"Try again," Lysara shoots back, wings flaring. "See what I do with you."
"Both of you—" I step between them, which is probably the worst tactical decision of an evening that has not been short on bad ones. "Lysara. What happened."
"He started it."
"I stated a fact," Sorin says.
"What fact."
His tone carries a contempt that sounds well-rehearsed. "That my rider is being asked to bind himself to a kingdom that requires Aurelia's strength simply to survive. And to a rider who can barely—"
"Enough."
The word comes from behind me. I turn to find Ignis crossing the courtyard—of course he followed me—with the long, purposeful stride of a man who has run out of patience with an evening that used it up some time ago. Whatever composure he wore at dinner has stripped away. What's underneath isn't anger. It's colder than anger, more deliberate.
"Sorin." His voice is quiet in the way that doesn't need to be loud. "Stand down."
"But she—"
"Now."
The bronze dragon's jaw snaps shut. His wings fold.
I turn to Lysara. "My balcony. Go."
"He said—"
"I know what he said." Flat and final. "Go."
The deliberation again—briefer this time. Then she launches herself upward and disappears.
Which leaves me alone in the courtyard with Ignis and his insufferable dragon.
"You as well," Ignis says, still fixed on me. "Leave."
"She attacked—"
"Leave."
Sorin's wings snap open with a gust that pulls my hair loose, and then he's gone.
Silence.
Ignis stops about five feet away. Close enough that the moonlight shows his expression clearly. Far enough that I don't feel crowded yet.
"Well." I'm proud of how level my voice comes out. "That's one way to make an impression. Your dragon attacking mine before we've even signed the contract."
"Sorin doesn't act without reason."
"Neither does Lysara."
A pause. "Then it seems we have that in common too."
"We have nothing in common."
"We're both standing in a courtyard at the end of an evening neither of us wanted." He holds my gaze steadily. "Having spent hours performing for our families. Both managing. Both waiting for it to end." He pauses. "That seems fairly similar."
"The difference," I say, "is that you performed very convincingly. Sitting through dinner as though none of it touches you."
"What I feel," he says carefully, "is beside the point."
The words land and I let them land and I wait.
He doesn't add to them.
"I will never accept that I had no choice in this," I say.
"You don't have to accept it." His voice is level, not unkind, not warm. "You only have to move forward from it."
The words settle somewhere inconvenient.
I need space. I step back. "I'm going to my chambers."
"Running?"
"Removing myself from your presence before I say something honest enough that we both regret it." I turn toward the castle. "Which, given your stated appreciation for honesty, I assume you'll understand."
"Valeria."
I don't stop.
Don't turn.
Just keep walking until the doors are ahead of me and then I'm through them and the warm air of the corridor closes around me and his presence in the courtyard recedes behind.
I know he's still standing there. I know because I feel the precise moment when the air shifts—a movement that begins and doesn't finish, a hand or a step that stops before it starts—and then settles back into stillness.
I keep walking.
* * *
The door to my chambers closes harder than it needs to.
I lean against the wood in the dark for a moment, eyes shut, the room settling around me—the particular quiet of a space that has held all your ordinary hours and is about to stop doing so. The smell of it. The specific weight of the dark. I have exactly one more night here before I leave for a palace I've never seen, and I'm spending it standing in the black with my back against the door, listening to my own breathing slow.
Then, from the balcony:
Valeria?
Lysara is perched on the railing, her scales shifting through sapphire and violet in the moonlight, eyes bright with the concern she's passing off as curiosity.
I cross to the railing and close both hands around it, stone biting into my palms.
"Tell me exactly why you attacked Sorin."
Her tail sweeps slowly. He was being insufferable.
"How."
Her jaw closes with an audible snap. She stares out over the darkened courtyard.
He said you were beneath his rider's notice. That you were a burden being handed to Prince Ignis. That this alliance would only drag Aurelia down to whatever level Galadria has settled for.
The words arrive. I let them.
"And what did Sorin say about what Ignis actually thinks of this arrangement?"
Her silence says everything she won't.
I release the railing.
"Then he's right." The words come out flat and clear. "Galadria needs Aurelia's strength. I'm a political obligation they've been handed. And there is nothing—not one thing I've done tonight—that has given him any reason to believe otherwise."
You're wrong.
"Am I." I face her. "Tell me how."
You fought back. Her eyes hold mine. He's been watching you all night because he can't tell what you'll do next. That is not what a burden looks like.
I pull back enough to see her properly.
Show him what you are. Her voice is calm and absolute. Make him work to keep up. And don't let him see where it hurts—not yet. Not until you know what he does with that kind of knowledge.
"No weakness."
No weakness.
I turn toward the doors, then pause.
"Lysara." The question takes a moment to form. "Do you think he could ever see me as something other than an obligation?"
She is quiet long enough that I wonder if she'll answer.
I think, she says finally, that depends entirely on whether you let him.
Not the answer I wanted.
Probably the one I needed.
"Goodnight, Lysara."
Goodnight, little flame.
* * *
I close the balcony doors and stand in the center of my room in the dark, not moving.
Tomorrow I leave everything familiar. This room. This palace. Mira's too-loud laugh. Kael's wooden swords. I walk into Aurelia and spend two weeks learning a court that isn't mine, and then I stand in their cathedral and marry a man who watched me all evening with those sharp, unreadable eyes and gave nothing back.
But I know what I am underneath whatever mask they want me to wear.
I unlace the navy gown and let it fall, pull on my sleeping shift, lie back in a bed that already feels like it knows I'm leaving.
Sleep takes me faster than it should, and when it does the dreams are full of bronze and green and candlelight and a voice saying things that arrive as questions and land as something else entirely.
In the dream, I have an answer waiting.
Dragons have teeth.
When I wake before dawn, the fury has cooled into something steadier. The particular cold clarity of a woman who knows exactly what she's walking into and intends to walk in anyway.
I lie still for a moment in the dark.
Then I get up.