Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There’s a flash against the snow, quick as a hare through a drift. Haki shifts on her cushion, peering through the lattice of her windowpane. The women’s wing might be as far from any area of import as her father can manage, but it does afford her a clear view of the entrance. A useless feature normally; visitors of any interest are few and far between this far north, but now, now–

There’s plenty of reason to be looking outside.

Cold seeps through the glass, blunted only by the shawl drawn about her shoulders, and Haki wraps her hands tightly around her tea. There’s a sleigh, dashing through the courtyard, spraying snow as it rounds before the doors. 

“Ah,” she hums, taking a sip from her mug. “It seems Lady Satomi has arrived.”

The Maid of Varghala descends from her conveyance with the same sultry elegance than won her mother an earl. Or at least, so it is said; she’d only met the woman once, back when she was just a babe, and her memory of her was little more than dark skin wrapped in blue silk and the awe of a child when they are brought face to face with such beauty.

“Strange.” She leans close, trying to catch a glimpse of dark hair beneath the blinding white fun. “I’d always thought she’d be the kind to make a grand entrance. You know, an hour late clad only in gold leaf.”

Haki settles back against a pillow, pulling the shawl tighter over her shoulders. If the night was cold, then the silence that envelops her room is colder.

“I wonder what plans she has, coming this early,” she remarks, thrilled when her voice bends into a diffident drawl. “Maybe she has designs on Makiri.”

A snort lets her know just what her audience thinks of that particular guess. She scowls at the window, picking out his gold head in the reflection. Lowen excels at being a certain kind of frustrating, and tonight is no exception.

“Well then.” She turns to him, expression composed entirely of a patience and mildness she does not feel. “You do have an opinion after all.”

Lowen is half-shadowed so close to her hearth, but even still, she sees how his mouth curves ever so slightly at a corner. High amusement, from a man such as him. “I always have an opinion, my lady.”

She bites her lip to keep it from jutting into a pout. “Of course. You just do not always deign to share it.”

He huffs out a laugh, his head shaking. “I do not always dare to share it, my lady.”

The deep indigo of his eyes is piercing even in the dim, pinning her in her place like one of the butterflies at the university. Her fingers twist in the wool of her shawl. How easily he can do that, reminding her of the gulf between them. “You know I do not mind if you speak freely.”

She would prefer it, longs for it, but– that is not something to be said. Not now. Not when she can already see the tension coiled in his legs, the anxious energy that has dogged him all night. Lowen might put himself between her and a hundred blades to keep her safe, but tonight–

Tonight, a simple dance has made him poised to flee.

“How would you know?” The arch of his brows and the curve of his mouth may read simple curiosity, but Haki knows him too well to miss the mocking tilt of his chin, the cold reason in his eyes. “You have never heard it.”

“Fine.” She folds her arms beneath her breast, hoping she looks insolent and seductive, but the way his lips twitch tells her she’s missed the mark and hit sullen and petulant instead. “Then what is your theory about Lady Satomi’s motives? If it is not my brother drawing her so early, who could it be?” She lifts a dubious eyebrow. “You?”

His lips bow as if he has a secret and she is a fool not to know it. “I can firmly say that neither I nor your brother would suit the lady’s tastes.”

Haki frowns. “What does that mean?”

“Nothing, my lady.” His gaze drops, following the smooth motion of the cloth over his blade. “However, from what I have observed of Varghala’s Maid, she is less likely to be drawn to a place by a who rather than a what.”

Her father has taught her better than to show her surprise, but it still takes her a moment to manage, “And what do you think that is?”

“Why, my lady,” he drawls, his smile glinting coldly in the light, “I could not even venture a guess. Perhaps she only wished to be ahead of the storm.”

Haki peers out the window, watching as the flakes swirl furiously outside the pane. If that was her goal, Lady Satomi chose a poor night for travel. “Do you think it will storm the night of the party?”

“If it does, it won’t matter,” he says easily. “All your guests will have arrived in plenty of time to attend. Unless you think Lady Satomi is the only one who would take advantage of your father’s generosity?”

Generosity. She huffs out a laugh. He knows as well as she that no lord hosted a ball for only a single night. Maybe in the south, where everyone had their sprawling manors in the capitol, and it was only a matter of minutes between a guest’s door and their destination. But in the north–

Well, even here in Wilant, there were few neighbors within a stone’s throw that could boast a title. And her father would have nothing if not the choicest of lords for his daughter’s birthday fete.

It was no feat to ponder why. “I wonder if my fiancé will deign to attend.”

Lowen stiffens, hand still on his blade. Haki smothers a smile as she continues blithely, “It’s only a year until we’ll be married, after all. If he chooses to attend the wedding.”

With a stuttering pace, his hands once again start their slow grind of stone against steel. Haki waits.

“Perhaps,” he grits out, every syllable begrudging.

She takes a long sip from her mug, enjoying how bloodless her guard has become. “Surely he must be curious about his bride.”

“Or he might be practical.” Lowen lifts his brows if not his gaze, the hint of a smile hovering at the shadows of his mouth. “If he has no choice in marrying you, there is no point in traveling all the way north to mark your measure.”

Haki draws herself up, affronted. “By all accounts, Izana Wisteria is a profligate dandy who only cares for excess. A man like that would surely come, if only to know whether I meet his standards for a lover.”

“Oh, my lady.” His gaze meets hers, dark in the flame, and oh, Lowen’s grin is as wickedly sharp as his blade. “Every woman looks the same in the dark.”

Haki hardly knows she’s gaping until her jaw aches, mouth gone dry in the silence. She shuts it, delicately, teeth making a soft click as they meet.

He lets out a bark of a laugh, eyes shifting back to his lap. “You are not a lover, my lady, but a wife. All he would need to do is hold his nose and do enough of the deed to get an heir on you.”

It is the heat of the fire that makes her flush, not– not anything else. Silly Ami always made it far too hot in the evenings.

She stands, and with the practiced elegance of a woman meant to be queen, scampers to the hearth. It’s nothing to push the log back, to push some of the ashes on top of it, but–

“Is something the matter, my lady?” her guard asks her, far too innocent. “Too hot for you, perhaps?”

–Lowen notices. He always does; there is nothing about her that ever escapes his notice. She pokes at the fire, if only to have some sort of occupation, anything to keep from having to meet his too-inquisitive gaze.

“To think,” she mumbles, hunching her shoulders, “you said you do not speak your mind.”

“And to think,” he says, pointedly loud, “you said you would enjoy it.”

She favors him with a glare, mouth pulled thin. Wanting him would be so much easier if he did not make her regret it so often. “The point is moot,” she snips, dropping the poker back in the stand. “He won’t be here. Last I hear he was still on his grand tour.”

Lowen’s jaw tightens. “Is that what you’ve heard?”

“Everyone knows,” she tells him airily, taking the seat across from him. It’s easier to talk to him this way, when he’s not so reminded of the gulf between her place and his. “He’s only been on it, what is it, two years now?”

His mouth twitches. “Something like. But surely a lady of your standing would not judge a man for his wanderlust?”

“Of course not.” She lets her mouth tilt into a knowing smile. “But I will judge him for the women and drink.”

That draws him up sharp, for a moment. “My lady,” he begins, almost haltingly. “Just because a man travels abroad does not mean he is spending it carousing in taverns.”

“Oh, no, definitely not,” she agrees, so easily his gazes turns wary. “A man of the prince’s stature gets soused at manor houses and has the courtesans brought to him.”

Lowen’s mouth thins. “Makiri tells you too much.”

“I rather think he tells me just enough.” She cocks her head, confident. “A girl can never be too careful, nowadays.”

He hums, attention wandering back to that accursed blade of his, just where she doesn’t want it.

“So.” She leans, trying to mirror his casual affectations, as if she has no care in the world for the conversation that unfolds, as if she is not directing it as subtly as man might a river. “You are of the opinion I should marry him?”

The stone stutters over his blade, just a moment, before the stead drone of the grind begins again. “Pardon?”

“The prodigal prince of Clarines,” she clarifies, though she knows by the steady blankness of his face that it is unnecessary. “I should marry him, you think.”

His lips curl at a corner. “I was not aware that my opinion held weight, my lady.”

“It does.”

Her hands furrow in her nightgown, the tight weave of flannel scratching her palms. Silly, stupid girl. That might as well have been a confession itself.

His hands still in their task, his slender fingers delicate and pale in the firelight. He’s never touched her with them, not more than a gentle guide on her back or a press at her elbow, though she’s thought about it. Thought about it more than is seemly for a girl in her position, especially when they are left to their own devices like this each night. Her father would never allow a lord so close to her age to sit with her like this, but Lowen–

Lowen is too far beneath her to consider. Father may find his advise in the war room indispensable, but he is no peer, no knight, just a man that takes money for his services. It is unthinkable for him to cross that divide.

Save that she does. That she wants him to. That even now she wonders what it might be like for him to stand and close this space between them, to kneel at her feet and hold her hands in his, and–

“I think–” his fingers pluck the oiled rag from beside him.– “you have little choice in the matter, my lady.”

Haki’s mouth bows with displeasure, fingers clenching into fists. He might rise to the bait, just once. He plays at apathy, but she has watched him too closely to miss how he stiffens at the very barest of the prince.

“You’re right,” she decides loftily. “If there is no recourse, I might as well be pragmatic about my betrothed. Resign myself to my fate, so to speak.”

Lowen does not raise his gaze, but his every move becomes wary, hesitant, as if he is searching for a trap. “I suppose.”

Her mouth thins. Not exactly the reaction she had been hoping for, but– an Arleon is nothing if not resourceful.

“He is rumored to be quite pretty,” she muses, setting her chin on her hand. “I could like that about him.”

“I believe most say he is handsome,” Lowen corrects tightly. “Not pretty.”

Ah, now there is something she could work with. “It is said he has no beard, like a child.”

“They are not so fashionable in the south as they are here,” he explains. “Hardly any man wears one. Not even the council.”

“Not even the council?” Haki gapes. “But they’re my father’s age! Older, even!”

He shrugs, never once looking up from his occupation, but his mouth curls at the corner.

“Ah, but you were a mercenary in the capital, weren’t you, Lowen?” she inquires, all innocence.

He hesitates. It is only for a moment, a blink of an eye, but Haki feels it, as heavy as the silence between them. “For a time.”

“Did you ever see the first prince?” She can play this game, the noble lady in love with the idea of her betrothed, especially if it makes Lowen wince as he does now.

“I was not stationed inside Wistal Castle.” His tone reminds her more of a clerk quibbling over precedents of law than a soldier relaying the particulars of a post. “Mercenaries are not employed by the crown.”

“But they are employed by the lords.” He scowls down at his blade, and ah, she has got him now. “And personal guards are allowed within the palace. So–” she leans on her hands, batting her eyelashes– “is he handsome? Is he pretty?”

“I couldn’t say,” he deadpans, eyes still fixed to his blade. “I saw only glimpses, and he seemed fine enough to me.”

“Boo!” she jeers, smile parting her lips. “Surely you can say more than that. Unless, of course, he is quite deformed, and you mean only to save my–”

“He would give you no cause for complaint,” Lowen hastens to say. “And even if he was not, it would be the least important thing about him.”

“Spoken like a man,” she laughs. “If I am to have no choice in the matter, I might as well like the look of him, if nothing else.”

“Or you might like his character,” he says sourly. “Or perhaps the way he treats you.”

“I suppose that I could be told of his kindness, or that you were personally impressed by his generosity to his people. But no one may tell at a glance how a man is behind closed doors.” If his words are sour, hers are bitter, seasoned well by her years at her father’s side. “But to tell me he is handsome, that– that at least can be trusted, even if the rest of him is rotten to the core.”

Lowen does not dare lift his gaze, but he slants her a glance from the corner of his eyes, one that speak volumes, but only in a language she has never read and–

And this mood is far too serious for what she wishes to accomplish. At least for tonight.

“Though if His Highness does appear for a dance on my birthday, that will go a long way in vouchsafing his character, would it not?” She offers him a sly smile. “And failing that, Master Lowen, I will take a dance from you.”

Lowen recoils with a hiss. “Ah, stupid.”

Haki nearly takes offense– it was a bold proposition, certainly, and one unbecoming from a woman of her station with her sort of complex marital arrangement– but still, stupid is a harsh assessment–

Until he shifts, blood glittering black in the firelight, and she realizes: he has cut himself.

“Oh!” Her hands flutter uselessly in front of her, papers lost to the wind. She has never been one to balk at the sight of a little blood– silly to, when so much pours from her each moon– but for it to be his flusters her.

Like any woman of breeding, Haki can produce a handkerchief from thin air, and so she does.

“Here,” she murmurs soothingly, taking his wrist in her hand. “Let me.”

He stares down at her fingers, wide-eyed. “My lady, I couldn’t possibly–”

“Shush.” A fine lady she may be, but she is a younger sister too, a veteran of mending her brother’s scrapes. “Give it to me.”

He hesitates, but only for a moment. She fixes him with her most sternest glare, the one that gets even Makiri into line, and his arm eases, hand falling open over hers.

“Ah, there. You should be more careful,” she scolds, pressing the cloth firmly against his palm. “You could hurt yourself.”

He lets out a dry laugh. “So I am learning.”

“But about the dance.” His hand is held firm between her own, warm beneath her fingers, and if anything, Haki is her father’s daughter, born to press when she has the advantage, to give no quarter. “You will agree to it?”

“I…” His gaze tangles with hers, the sea tangling with the ice before it skitters away. “I do not think your fiancé would approve of another man dancing with his wife.”

Haki lets out a bleating laugh. “If he deigns to show himself, then he may see to it that his are the only hands that touch me that night. But if he does not–” her mouth cants into a secretive smile– “then I shall be dancing with a dozen men to please my father instead. Why should one of them not be you?”

“My lady,” he breathes, every word steeped in frustration. “I doubt that this will please him.”

“And how is that?” She laughs, pulling back the cloth to see the wound well with crimson. Ah, it needed another moment. Fortuitous, as she does as well. “My father loves you. My brother would be you, if he could. What could bring either of them greater joy?”

“He will not rejoice in my lack of a title,” Lowen insists with his stubbornly pragmatic tone, fist clenching beneath her touch. “Not when you could spend that set with a man that already possesses one.”

She pulls the cloth tight against his skin, biting back a smile when he grunts. “If it bothers him so much, then he can just give you one.”

Lowen stiffens, jaw slack. “I’m…I’m sure he could,” he admits, begrudging, “but I think that would be…counter to the purpose of the dances, to give you to a man he already owns.”

Haki balks– she is not a woman to be given anywhere, not without her say-so, but as he turns his head in the firelight she catches pink sprayed across those high cheeks. There is no point in arguing when he is so close to routed.

“Come now,” she soothes, smoothing the handkerchief along his palm, before tying it across the long bones of his hand. “Surely you would not deny a young lady her one birthday wish?”

He snorts. “I would.”

“Mm.” She edges closer, her skirt brushing his boots. “But would you deny me?”

He looks at her then, eyes hooded with contemplation. “It’s a waste of a wish. Maybe I cannot dance.”

She grins at that, finger delicately tracing her handiwork. “I will not believe it. I know you can.”

“Do you now?” He raises a skeptical brow. “And just where does this unfounded confidence come from?”

“I’ve seen your swordplay.” It’s a bold claim, but one that is rewarded by his wide-eyed stare. “A man with such fine footwork would never be out of place in a ballroom.”

His expression eases. “And this would be your professional opinion?”

“It is,” she hums, tilting her chin smugly. “Come now, you have been caught out.”

“Ah, yes, you have caught me.” He cocks his head in a way she might dare to call playful. “I am a passable dancer.”

“Then you must agree to favor me with your passable dancing.” Her mouth twitches with mischief as she leans in, so close she can see the delicate sweep of each of his eyelashes. “Unless there is some other reason you are afraid to be near me?”

His breath puffs hotly against her lips, and she cannot help but fidget, cannot help but lick them to mute the sensation but–

But his gaze drops to watch, eyes tracing her path with pupils blown wide.

“A single set.” Her touch travels to his wrist, rubbing over the delicate nub at its waist. “That is all I am asking.

“Your father.” The words are little more than a breath. His body stills beneath her, save for the frantic pulse beneath her fingertips. “He will not approve of it.”

A weak parry. It would take a sterner father than her own to deny a single dance. “Then let us dance out of sight. We will not be missed.”

“My lady–”

What he means to say is lost; her fingers smooth along the vein, and what words he has elide into something softer than a moan.

“Lowen.” She teases the edge of his cuff, a nail slipping just beneath. “Do you not trust yourself alone with a lady?”

“A lady? Yes.” His breath rattles out of his chest. “With you…?”

His fingers spasm beneath her wrist, just the barest touch before they pull away.

“The atmosphere is different a ball,” he says, stilted, as if he had meant to say something else.

A laugh slips from her chest, tinkling breathlessly in the air between them. “It’s louder for one.”

“Hah.” It leaves him in a burst, harsh. “Not quite what I meant, my lady.”

“Cloying, for another,” she continues, trembling with her success. If only she could keep him this close, if only she could make him laugh like that again. “And hot–”

“What I mean,” he drawls, casting her a playful glare, “is more in–” his breath catches– “timate.”

Just the word is enough to make her shiver. “I see,” she manages, knees brushing against his own. “I have never…” Her gaze rises to meet his, but never gets beyond the perfect bow of his lips. “I have never found so.”

“Ah.” He’s so close the heat of his sigh sears. “Neither have I.”

“Then it’s–” his fingers brush the flannel of her nightgown, and ah, it is so hard to think when his breath caresses her lips as tenderly as he might himself, if only she could dare these last inches– “it’s settled then. A ball is no more dangerous a place than this b–” her voice fails her, dropping to a whisper– “bedroom.”

“Perhaps,” he hums, a sounds she can hear through her bones. “But I have heard with the right partner, any dance may seem–” his touch drags down her arm absently, brushing tantalizingly over her own palm– “much more.”

“But could that not be said for anything?” she teases, tilting her head just so. “Even a–” her breath catches, and oh, the words leave her mouth before she can gather them back– “a conversation?”

His hand spasms around her, and again his eyes are on her lips. “Could it?”

Haki hesitates. A flirtation is a fine thing for a lady, a healthy thing some might argue, but– there are things not to be said, lines not be crossed–

But oh, how can she care for such things when he is so close, when he might want her just as she wants him. “Yes.”

She leans in, eyelids dropped to half-mast, lips parting as his breath fans hotly over them, and–

And she is left cold.

“I should leave you,” he says, words too loud for this room, this hour, this conversation. It is good he has put as much space as he can between them.

That is, without dropping her hand. “Should you?”

“Yes.” It’s a decisive tone he uses, even if the way he looks at her describes all the ways he would like to say. “You should be in…”

Bed, he means to say. A dangerous word to have between them now.

“Perhaps.” Her thumb rubs along the long bones of his hand, and oh, she has never seen a man so poised to flee with eyes that burn to stay. “Are you to watch over me?”

“I…do not think it prudent, my lady.” His lips curl wryly as he stares at their joined hands. “Not at this hour.”

“You have stayed before,” she protests. “I will set the chair for you, and–”

His hand comes to her shoulder as she attempts to rise, guiding her back into her seat. “No. It would not be wise to–” he shakes his head, and with clear eyes, meets her gaze, “the hour is not too late, my lady, but too dangerous.”

Her fingers squeeze his gently. “I’m never in danger from you, sir.”

“Ah, maybe so. But I am in danger from you.” He lifts her hand, as he has so many times before, though never here, not in her private rooms, and the kiss he lays upon it–

She struggles for breath. It has never quite felt like that before either. “Sir–”

“Goodnight, my lady.” His mouth rucks ruefully as he backs away. “Let us converse in the morning. At a safer hour.”

Chapter Text

Morning comes far too soon.

If she were to consult only her own memory, Haki would posit, with no little confidence, that she had not, in fact, slept a single wink during the night. Instead, she had lain awake, the ghostly pressure of Lowen’s hand warm upon her palm, and attempted to die from mortification.

She had been bold– brazen, truthfully. Acting in a manner unbecoming of a lady. Not that she could pinpoint the exact moment they had crossed from their usual witty rapport to a– a flirtation. But they had. And they had because she wanted to, from the moment he had walked her to her door and followed her inside. Her hands itched to take that mask he wore and crack it down the center, as if the barrier between them were no more than the shell of an oyster, waiting to be pried open and be plundered for its prize.

Even now she could feel his breath fan across her lips, the way his eyes had fixed upon them, growing dark as a cat stalking its prey. And she, she–

She had leaned in. She had closed her eyes and waited for a kiss than never came.

A mad laugh bubbles up from her belly. If only her dandy of a prince could see her now. Even he would turn her away; too impure a woman to make a wife. Or perhaps–

Well, perhaps he would find her quite a match indeed. At least maybe then they could presume upon each other, instead of the innocents in their employ.

Her hand blindly slaps the bed beside her, swiping over the flannel of her sheets until she finds it– a pillow, plump with down, plush to the touch– and promptly smothers herself, groan and all. To think, if she suffocated here and now, she wouldn’t have to face Lowen and his implacable mask in the cold light of morning. What a pleasant thought.

It’s not to be. If only her problems could be so simple as to be solved by a very convenient yet tragically aesthetic death.

Chill settles into her fingers, joints stiff and numb as she fists them in the silk. Strange; the last she checked, the fire had been burning merrily in the hearth. And yet, when she finally pries the pillow from her face, it’s easy to see through the wrought-iron screen that the fire has died.

She had slept, it seems. And Ami had not seen fit to come start the fires this morning. Silly girl.

No– she’d told her it wouldn’t be necessary. That Sir Lowen would be staying the night, and she could take a late morning, so long as she arrived to dress her in time for breakfast.

Heat licks up her neck; not the pleasant spark and smolder that kindled when Lowen’s fingers brushed hers, oh no, but the scorching scourge of shame. She might have made a good show as a seductress to a lord as inexperienced as herself, but to a man of the world– well, he must have had a hearty laugh on the way back to his rooms. The silly duke’s daughter, making herself ridiculous over him.

Cold palms clap to flaming cheeks, and Haki expels a full-bodied groan. There’s nothing for it; she’ll just have to get up and soldier on as if nothing untoward occurred at all. And hope that Lowen would oblige her.

The cold stings her even through the flannel of her nightgown; she levers herself upright, blankets and furs pooling around her hips. A shiver settles just beneath her skin, waiting for her to move, to bare enough of herself to earn it. It’s clear: if Ami isn’t going to light her fire, she will– unless she’d like trembling hands to tie her corset.

A chill wafts off the stones of Wirant like ice itself; her soles hover indecisively above it, toes curling before she sets one out to snag a slippers. They are not the fashionable sort; a southern lady might encase her feet in silk, sleek and delicate, but here Haki wrangles wool and fur and still hisses as she sets them on the ground.

It’s best to keep moving; ice forms from still water, not streams. An easy thing to say when it’s an academic proposition, less so when she is hurrying across the stones, trying to find where Ami squirreled away flint and steel. It’s not obvious– the embers are supposed to be regularly stoked and fed, not allowed to burn out completely, and when they do, Ami is quick to pinch a coal from the kitchen’s hearth– but there’s always a set, just in case. And though some ladies consider themselves above such tasks, Haki would rather dirty her hands than lay abed, helpless.

“Curse you, you clever girl,” Haki grumbles, pitching up to her toes to search the mantel. “The point isn’t to make it impossible, it’s to– ah!”

The sharp scrape of stone pricks her fingers, and she wins her prize free: flint and a metal curve, hidden inside a sweet porcelain shepherdess. The stone itself rattles out with little issue, but the steel protests, fixing itself in every awkward angle it can devise to keep from being prized out of its hideaway.

So of course that’s where Lowen finds her, fingers two knuckles deep into a hole, trying to coax her wayward hook from a shepherdess’s bottom. How else would her day start but with this.

“Good morning, Lowen,” she murmurs with great indifference, affecting a pose to imply that if he found anything amiss, it was his own personal failing. “I trust you slept well?”

“My…lady.” The words are mild and even, savoring of both reverence and wryness in equal measure. The way he usually speaks, as if he sees nothing wrong with the tableau before him. As if nothing has changed between dinner and this very morning.

And if she does not look up, it could remain so. But therein lies the rub, doesn’t it? The hero always peeks.

Lowen is not the sort of man who wear his emotions as a badge on his sleeve; were she any other lady, she’d think nothing of the polite mask he wears. But she is accustomed to his face now, of the way it sits when he’s truly at ease, and oh, she cannot miss the slight rise of a single brow, or the way the corners of his mouth subtly twitch.

She lifts her chin with an imperious tilt. It’s impossible to look down her nose at a height like his, but Father does not raise quitters. “Is there something you need, Sir Lowen?”

“Oh no,” he rumbles. “It seems that my lady has everything well in hand.”

His gaze dips pointedly, and if she hadn’t been aware that her housecoat was still slung over the winged back of a chair, she certainly is now.

“I was trying to light the fire,” she mutters. “This is where Ami hides the flint.”

He hums, impassive, but Haki does not miss the way incredulous creep of his brow. “I came to bear a message from your father, but I suppose I might start the hearth, if my lady wishes.”

Her hands hurriedly press the figurine into his. “If you insist.”

A corner of well-formed lips curls. “I suppose I must.”

“It would be the gentlemanly thing to do,” she advises, skirting out of his way as he steps past. She’ll never admit it, not where he possibly might hear, but there is something quite pleasing about the way he kneels on the hearth. His own long finger slips inside the shepherdess, and quite suddenly Haki is taken with the pattern on the settee.

“W-what was it my father wished to say?” she asks the small foxes prancing across the silk. “He must have told you.”

Lowen hesitates. “No.” The word sits heavy on the air for a moment before he adds, “Only that he wanted you to see him.”

Mercenary though he might be, Lowen did not tell lies– he merely said just enough truths for the mind to paint a different picture of it. As he was doing now, though for what reason Haki could hardly fathom. “Now?”

He takes a moment– not the fetch the steel, but rather to unfold the knife from his pocket. His long fingers coax the steel blade from its nest in the handle and– ah, yes. The flowers on the throw are quite last season. She’ll have to have that replaced.

“He did not stipulate a time.” He strikes the flint, sparks jumping into the air like stars; still not enough to catch the tinder. “Though it was implied sooner would be preferable to later.”

“Am I to take it you’re to dress me as well?”

Steel skips over stone, clanging onto the hearth. “Ah–”

“I meant because Ami hasn’t– she isn’t–” Haki refuses to clap her hands over her cheek, but that doesn’t help with the heat kindling there– “I can dress myself.”

“Haah.” If Lowen were the sort to laugh, she’d say that sound was the beginning of one. His hand reaches out to pluck the handle of his knife from the ashes. “I take your meaning just fine, my lady.”

One last strike catches the tinder, and with a deft hand, he sets it into the hearth’s. His back bows as he leans it, mouth rounding gently to blow–

“I should do that,” she blurts out uselessly, turning her back to him. “Dress, I mean. Since father wants me presently.”

“It would be prudent.” She chances a glance over her shoulder and catches his grin. “Not that anyone would mind if you roamed the halls in your nightgown.”

Her mouth opens, rounds, and then, with no other sound, she flees behind her screen. The water at her vanity is ice cold, but there is nothing for it; Haki strips down to her skin and muffles a hiss as the cloth touches her.

“You know,” Lowen calls out, strangely loud in the silence. “I do not think I have ever noticed this shepherdess. Is it new? A gift from one of your admiring suitors?”

Haki blinks, grimacing as she scrubs off the night’s leavings. “Perhaps you have not heard, sir, but I am engaged to the prince of Clarines. There are few men who would dare to compete with him.”

“But not none.”

Her hand hovers over the chemise left out for her, linen soft against her fingertips, and remembers how the wool of his coat had scratched her palms, how his breath had washed over her face–

“No,” she agrees, wishing she could sound less breathless. There was no need to stroke this man’s ego, when he was so adept at doing it himself. “Not none.”

He hums, thoughtful, and stone rattles against porcelain. She shrugs on her chemise, ignoring his playful perusal under the guise of rolling on her stocking.

“It’s not new, anyway,” she informs him loftily, once she’s finished. “It was a gift from my fiancé, upon the occasion of our betrothal.”

The rattle quite suddenly stops.

“Is that so,” he says. Somehow, it’s not a question. “It must mean quite a lot to you, if you keep it–”

“I hate it.” A hand claps over her mouth, but it’s too late, the words have already escaped her. “I mean, Ami is the one who chose her hiding spot, not me.

He’s silent again, and she reaches for her corset, eager to have some armor around her if they are going to speak like this, forever circling closer to what they mean to say. She pulls the laces, working them closer and closer until the boning sits snug against her body, protecting all her soft parts from the world outside.

There’s a soft thunk, the sound of porcelain settling against wood, and Lowen says, “Where is your woman this morning? I don’t imagine the duke will be happy to hear I’ve been playing lady’s maid while she’s been laying abed.”

“It’s not her fault!” Haki insists, steadfast. “I told to to take the night–”

Her teeth click down hard, but even bitten off, her words lay thick in the air between them. Or rather, the implication does.

“You told her…?” Lowen’s quips are always quick, but when he speaks the words run like treacle from his tongue. “…Last night…?”

“If I could borrow your hands,” she says, too high, too quick, dragging a gown on over her head. “I would…”

Ah, but what she had just said– and following the moment before– and now–

Well, the connotation is certainly different. “…I cannot button the back myself.”

A sound not unlike a laugh but kissing cousins to a sigh bursts from his lips. “Haah. Yes. Of course, my lady.”

Lowen always walks softly, the sort of man who moves more like a ghost than a mercenary, but every sense of hers is attuned to him now. The clack of his boot heels might as well be canon fire for the way her breath jolts with every step. She’s all nerves when he rounds the screen, his shadow swallowing her whole.

“You know, of course,” he murmurs, conversational, “that I am always your servant.”

He touches her, tugging at her gown. Haki is not a small woman, but against her back his hands seem enormous. They do not touch her, not more than is necessary to pull the wool tight around her and button it closed, but every shift of fabric is hesitant, intimate, as a caress. Her hands flail out to grip the vanity; the only thing that keeps her upright as her knees fail beneath her.

“There.” He’s far too close, voice far too low. “How is that?”

Not enough.

“Fine,” she pipes, too loud for the space between them. “You make an admirable lady’s maid.”

“Good to know.” He steps back, and she dares to face him, heart fluttering at the wry curl to his lips. “I’ll be sure to apply for the position, should it ever open. Perhaps, after this morning, it will sooner than I thought…”

“Father won’t do any such thing,” Haki huffs, pushing past him. “I’ll explain it to him, in–”

“Full?” Lowen offers, and oh, she should know better than to glance back, but she does, she does–

If she imagined the heat in his gaze last night, then her madness is complete, for there is no missing it in the light of day.

Her fingers tangle behind her back, trembling. “As much as needed. Come along, sir. You know how Father hates to wait.”

Father isn’t known for a comely face, though Haki has never found much wrong with it; he is not known for his piles of dir nor vast tracks of land. He has not made himself a reputation as a leader of men or as a courtier concealing a knife, a dandy or a miser, a fool or a wiseman. In no way could any man say that Arleon was a man of extremes.

Instead, he has built his house on prudence. On knowing the exact moment to act. Many a lord would rally to the Bergatt’s cause, should Father join them. Rugilia knows it. And Rodatrad.

And Wisteria.

“Finally.” Father glances up from his parchment, and ah, yes, there is the other thing he is most known for– his stare. Even used to it as she is, Haki’s heart leaps into her throat as steel gray pins her in place, as fast as any blade. “Sit.”

He waves his hand vaguely toward the chairs in front of him. At least, the only one left– her brother has dragged the other to abut the domineering expanse of his desk, already glowering from his perch.

Her stomach twists, but she keeps her legs, alighting to the cushion with an elegant pace that sets Makiri’s teeth to grinding. “As you wish, Father.”

The hard veneer of her father’s mask cracks, a sigh softening the lines of his face. “There’s no need for all that. There’s been news.”

“News?”

“Yes.” His eyes dart up, mouth bowing into a frown. “Lowen, you stay.”

Haki dares a sly glance from the corner of her eyes; her guard lingers at the doorway, wide-eyed.

“My lord,” he says, stilted. “it isn’t necessary for me to–”

“It is.” Father’s thick fingers knit above the dark wood of his desk. “Your insight on this…situation will be invaluable.”

Lowen hesitates, gaze trained longingly on the hall beyond. “If that is what you wish,” he manages, closing the door. “I am ever your man, my lord.”

In the spare light of her father’s study, shadows cling to the circles beneath his eyes, haunt the hollows of his cheeks. His skin has always had the look of painted porcelain, just like her shepherdess– delicate in appearance though not in skill, her father had said when he first bested Makiri years ago– but as he takes his place behind her, he has never looked more pale.

“We’ve had a letter from Wistal.”

Her attention snaps back to her father, taking in his stiff posture, the way her brother lurks sulkily next to him, like a gargoyle placed on a particularly unnoticed buttress.

“Ah.” She allows her lips to take on the slightest hint of slyness as they cant. “So my fiancé has finally deigned to send his regrets?” A stubborn silence takes hold, and she ventures, “Or shall I take from these dour countenances that he means to evince himself at last?”

“No.” Father’s mouth twitches; unlike with Lowen, it is never a sign of good humor. “It did, however, pertain to the marriage and its…particulars.”

“Strange that His Majesty would be so eager to move forward with the arrangement,” she muses, ignoring the strange pang of disappointment that shoot through her, “especially when the groom cannot be produced for any price.”

Father stills, and so does her heart, right where it used to beat in her chest. Oh, this cannot be– he cannot mean–

“Unless…” she begins haltingly, dread dragging at every word, “you mean to tell me that our understanding is to be…dissolved.”

Father does not answer, not with anything more than a tightening of his lips. Truly, that is answer enough.

She should be elated. She’s never wanted this betrothal, never wanted to be a prince’s wife. Every morning since its announcement, she had prayed that today would be the day it would be dissolved, that the next few hours would deliver her from the clutches of her marital misery.

Haki doesn’t remember when she stopped. When being the first prince’s betrothed became a part of her, like being Arleon’s daughter or Makiri’s sister. When the thought of her freedom could leave her so bereft.

Freedom. That’s what she should be thinking of: no longer tied to the throne, able to cast her gaze elsewhere–

It’s no surprise that it lands on Lowen. Lowen, whose eyes are not alight with heat, whose gaze is not even on her but wrenched away, eyes shuttered and closed. His breath hisses from his nose, pained.

Ah, so that– that isn’t all.

“The king does not wish to lose the alliance,” Father says, “merely change the object of it.”

Her eyes fix on her father, wide as coins. “To who?”

“The second prince. Prince Zen.”

There’s no air in her lungs. Zen. “He’s a child.”

“Three years difference,” Father says evenly, “the same as Prince Izana and yourself.”

It’s true, but still– Haki suddenly understands why Izana might have chosen to go on a continental tour rather than meet the child he was promised to marry.

“You can’t be serious,” Makiri scoffs. “He’d need a stool to kiss her at the wedding.”

Father grunts. “And what say you Lowen? You served in Wistal.”

Lowen hesitates. “It has been some time, my lord.”

“There’s no need for false humility in this.” Father’s fingers drum absently on his desk. “A man like you must have taken the opportunity to get the boy’s measure. I’d like to hear it.”

“I…” His mouth works, and oh, she had never though to see Lowen at a loss for words, not like this. “He is an idealist, obsessed with the tales of chivalry his nursemaid would read to him before bed. The sort of child that thinks all of a kingdom’s problems could be written off as easily as a storybook’s end.”

Father nods, mouth taking a thoughtful bent. “A fool, you mean.”

“No.” The word comes out loud, so forceful even Lowen pauses to blink. “I mean only that he is inexperienced, my lord. He has not yet learned to bend the way a leader must. But he is fair, even to a fault. He believes that a king is meant to serve his people, even at risk to himself. He is…”

Lowen laughs. Not in the bombastic way of her father’s men, or the quiet snicker of a lord, but– a soft, self-deprecating chuckle, only meant for his own ears. “Prince Zen is everything a commoner thinks of a prince. A character straight out of a children’s tale.”

Haki stares at him. “Is that all you have to recommend him, sir?”

His mouth ticks up as he stars down his long patrician nose. “He’s pretty too, if you care about that sort of thing.”

She sniffs, turning her chin away to hide the sting. To think he would believe her vain and shallow, and not–

Ah, it doesn’t matter. At least, not to him.

“So.” Father observes Lowen carefully, palm running at the beard on his chin. “You think it a good match.”

She’s not watching him, or at least not closely, but even she can see the green that colors his pale face. “There are…worse ones, my lord.”

Father hums. “Interesting. In any case, it is His Majesty’s desire that the boy join us for your birthday fete.”

Lowen nearly jumps from the wall. “What?”

Haki only barely restrains from doing the same. “But that’s in days! The guests have already begun to arrive–”

“Which means His Highness is almost certainly on his way,” Father says, even. “I expect that his arrival will follow swiftly. There is no reason to give us more time to prepare out arguments.”

Her fingers knot in the fabric of her skirt, her breath rasping from her chest. “Arguments.”

Father spares her a knowing look. “I presume his visit can only be to force us to accept him in his brother’s stead.”

It shouldn’t matter. She never wanted this, after all. She hasn’t even met Izana, and he’s certainly never shown an interest in her. But still– “I haven’t agreed to this.”

“Oh, my daughter.” Pity blooms in her father’s eyes. “I am afraid your opinion hardly matters at all.”

Chapter Text

With the weight of her words so firmly established, there is little else to say. For her at least; Haki might keep her own counsel, but here in her father’s study, the only opinions that mattered arrive by letter, smelling of sun and honeysuckle. Her future this may be, but she would have as much a say in it as a bitch had in what stud mounted her.

That her father had not much more was not the balm as she had hoped. “Makiri.”

Her brother straightens in his seat; his stiff spine does nothing for the sulk lingering on his mouth. “Yes, Father?”

When she dares to glance at him, it is not her father that looks back, but the duke, implacable as the mountains that surround them. “Please see your sister to her chambers.”

Hot bile spikes into her throat, but Haki is practiced at swallowing small insults. A lady does not hold the most glittering court of the North without learning to close an ear or turn a cheek. But her brother–

Ah, well, men never did. “Are you sending me away?” Makiri’s on his feet in an instant, pacing a trench in front of his chair. “You mean to discuss such matters while I–?”

“Makiri.” The very act of father saying his name draws him up short, cheeks flushed and red as if he’s been slapped on both sides. “You will see your sister out.”

The breath her brother takes is not only audible but deafening, the pressure of his disapproval as shrill as a kettle set to boil. But Father has never been a patron of the arts; he does not mark these theatrics with anything but the turn of his back, applying himself to the accounts before him. And with nothing to exercise his displeasure on in that corner, Makiri turns to her.

“Well, come on then,” he snaps. “Let’s go.”

“Your Grace.”

Haki nearly trips on her hem, halted by the sound. Lowen’s silence had been so thick, so complete, that she barely remembered he had come with her. But he moves now, shifting himself off the wall, becoming more man and less wallpaper. “If it would please you, I could always–”

“It would not.” Father’s mouth twitches, and she could swear, even in her darkest moment, he is amused. “For it is you I wish to speak to, Sir Lowen.”

Lowen does not so much stiffen as still. No muscle tenses, just…stops. A statue made flesh.

No, she thinks, eyeing his pallor. Flesh made stone.

“I know the way to my sister’s chambers,” Makiri informs him, not content to take his displeasure out on a single target. “Certainly better than you should.”

Lowen’s gaze shifts, slipping over Makiri’s shoulder to fix upon hers, and– and there is no heat in it, none at all to etch his interest upon her. Instead his eyes are dull, glassy as a doll’s as they slip away from her as well.

“That,” he breathes, “was hardly my point at all.”

With Makiri in high dudgeon, it’s child’s play to give him the slip.

“What are you doing?” he snaps as she lags behind, mouth already fouled up into a frown. “You heard Father.”

Ah, good, she has his attention. Haki could not claim to be as adept at theatrics as her brother, but as his sister– well, her own proficiency was certainly not a layman’s.

It would be easier to pull off this particular bit of theater if she had those large, dark eyes for which Lady Satomi was so well known. With the right angle of brow, those could call to mind a favored hound whimpering at his bowl, but Haki had learned to make do with what nature had given her.

Her hands splay across her belly, back taking on a pitiful stoop. “I know…”

Makiri stalls, feet scuffing to a stop on the carpet. If her father was known for his prudence, Makiri was known for his temper, a brooding figure upon the walls of Lilias. And yet, those within those same walls, he was known for yet another feature: his concern for his dear, sweet sister.

“Haki.” His eyes narrow, not in skepticism. “Are you well?”

She sighs valiantly, a martyr as she leans against the wall. “As well as could be expected.”

He steps towards her, consternation shifting into concern. “Is something the matter?”

“No.” She ducks her chin, turning just so, as if she might hide. “Nothing so wrong…”

Makiri reaches out, fingertips brushing the cap of her shoulder. “Haki…”

“It’s only…” She lifts her gaze to his, letting her eyes water. “I’m having…feminine issues…”

His hand drops, as if her silk scalds. “Oh! Ah…” His mouth pulls into a grimace. “Can’t you deal with that back in your chambers?”

It’s only practice that keeps her lips from twitching. “Oh, surely. But they’re…so far. I thought I might use the privy back–”

“Ah!” His hands fly up between them, as if even the words might be catching. “Yes. If you must. I trust you can, ah, see your way back when you’re finished solving your…logistical issues.”

Only Makiri could view a woman’s menses as a battle, a slow week-long siege. It’s a feat to keep her mask in place, to not break her pitiful character. 

“Yes,” she says, letting the last of it elide into a whimper. “I do think I can locate my own chambers.”

Both haste and hesitancy mark her retreat; she would not put it past Makiri to double back as well, duty discharged, and claim his place in the room as his due. And if he were to catch her skulking back the same way, lingering just outside Father’s study–

He might laugh. That’s what he would have done when she was not yet a lady, and he still chafed beneath the expectations of Arleon’s heir. But now, his shoulders bear the title with pride and ease, and she– she is no longer a little girl, raised at her father’s knee. She is Lady Haki, betrothed to the First Prince of Clarines.

And ladies do not belong in the study of their fathers, acting as if their word was as good as any man’s. Or so it has seemed, lately.

In any case, there’s no reason to rest her success on her brother’s leniency. She takes a more winding route back, circling through long halls and around the scuffle of servants, using the soft silk of her slipper to sidle across the carpet when she arrives. The door sits the barest sliver ajar, enough that when she presses a hand to it to steady herself, it gives a gasping creak.

Haki yanks it back with a grimace. She knew that Father wouldn’t allow his study to be cleaned by any hands but his own, but she hadn’t realized the edict extended to oiled hinges as well.

“Well?” her father rumbles, half amused. “Did you have something to say?”

Her heart surges into her throat. Caught– by the bare squeak of a hinge, she’s been caught, and now Father will never–

“You’ve been standing here, still as a statue, since I told her.” She cannot see him, but his desk creaks; Father must be leaning on it, folding his hands the way he always did when he scented secrets. “I’ve seen you split a man from brow to balls, Lowen, and you never looked as green as when I read you that letter.”

Ah, so it’s not her that’s been caught out. Even from here, she fancies that she can hear his jaw creak, and yet, her knight stays silent.

“Are you his man, then?” There’s no heat in the accusation, just a bone-deep weariness. “I’d always thought his lack of interest odd, but if you were–”

“No.” It’s less a word than a laugh, dripping with self-deprecation. “I’m not here in any…official capacity. Besides yours, Your Grace.”

Father’s chair groans beneath him. “Is that so? Then what is it that ails you so?”

On the training ground, Lowen is quick, aggressive even as he is economical in his movement. At least, that is what Makiri whispers in her ear as they watch him.

You see that? He would gesture with the flat of his hand, cutting toward the ring. He commits to every move. He’s a confident fighter. He knows his limits.

By her side, he is the same; a man whose wit is quick and purposefully applied. One of her father’s men accused him of being slow to speak, but Lowen had only slanted him the barest grin and told him, unlike most men, I choose my silences.

So that he hesitates before her father speaks volumes more than his words. “You can’t really mean to take his offer.”

“Can’t I?” Father laughs, loud and bold, as a northern lord should. “Don’t give me that look, sir. Do I seem a fool? We could agree to this second son, Kain’s lesser prize, and in a fortnight that man will produce his prodigal heir and pluck himself a richer fruit.”

The silence that settles over the room is one with purpose, with thought. “You told Lady Haki that you were considering the proposal.”

“Because we must. Or at least–” Father does not often smile, but she knows this tone of his heralds a small, proud one– “we must give the impression we are. I have sent her off in a fit of pique now, but I raised her as I raised my own heir. When her temper is cooled she will know well enough what I mean to do.”

Ah, well, now that he has said it, it is obvious. Stupidly so. If only she had stopped to think, Father’s plans would have been plain to see.

“And what is that, Your Grace?”

Her mouth curls. Haki fancies that it might match her father’s.

“When my father first took this seat, he was an earl. Did you know that, Lowen?” She cannot hear, but he must answer, since Father continues, “That is the way of it, in the North. Earls, with a high king to sit over them. That had always bothered Kain, that his wife had only been the daughter of a lesser title.”

Laughable, really, to imagine anyone calling the Bergatts lesser. Father had thought to marry her to their heir first– though not even the thought that his line was of the last kings, that she might be a secret princess had ever made her warm to him. And by the time she was old enough to understand the strategy of it, to understand how it might unite the North under one banner–

Ah, well. Other plans had been made.

“Kain needed the North– needs it still, if he means to keep his trade with Tanbarun– but he refused to have his son and heir be subject to the ignominy of such a match.” Her fists clench by her side, blanching at the knuckles. “So when he decided that the North needed to forget their Bergatt kings, he gave their lands to Arleon. A duchy, to fit the prestige of a royal consort. Two birds with one stone; an enemy lost, and a bride price paid.”

Lowen draws in a harsh breath. “But what does that have to do with the second prince?”

“You’re a smart man, Lowen. I’m sure you’ve worked it out.” Pragmatism is all she hears when her father speaks. “A child like that makes a terrible husband, but a good hostage.”

“Ah.” A warm hand clamps down upon her wrist. “I should have known you would be here.”

Haki may be born a lady, meant to alight on divans and float across ballrooms no matter which part of the country she decorated, but she was not raised a fool. How to deal with an unwelcome advance had been first among the things her father taught her before she debuted.

The mysterious hand has hardly begun to grip her when she turns, bringing her arm down swift as a scythe. She’s no warrior to break a wrist with a tap, but her swing is hard enough to at least surprise, if not disengage a pernicious suitor.

Too bad it is also slapped so easily away.

“To think,” Makiri whispers, words strained through his teeth. “For a moment I believed you! But then I realized, you just had your menses at the start of the month, and couldn’t possibly–”

There is no noise to properly convey her disgust, but Haki certainly tries. “How do you know that? Do you have Ami tell you? I can forgive quite a bit, but spying on my courses–”

He scoffs. “As if I would waste my time on such a thing. Why would I need a spy when all and sundry can see you eat your weight in potato mash?”

The first lesson her governess ever impressed upon her– and one of the last, since no amount of coin or courtship could ever keep a southerner through more than a single winter– was that conversation was an art. The mind is capable of a thousand thoughts, and a woman of wit and grace used only the finest of hers to create the perfect tableau of her meaning. Haki has hardly mastered such an art, but she certainly is proficient.

Case in point: her first impulse is to shrill, I do not. With an effort worthy of song, she stamps it down, just in time to think, but do I? This, of course, is discarded promptly, leaving far too much room for, has anyone noticed? followed all too eagerly by, has Lowen?

She shakes her head, clearing away the clutter until only crux of the issue remains. “Am I really to believe that you came here to claim me from my wayward wanderings?” she asks instead, letting her mouth curve around the words. “Or do you really think I’m stupid enough to not see you’re here for the same reason as I, and only chanced upon me?”

Makiri’s face might as well be carved of stone for all that it moves. Ah, good; a palpable hit. “I belong here.”

“And I don’t?” Distantly she realizes that her tone is more a squeak than a whisper, but she’s too far into her temper to reign it back now. “As I recall, Father–”

With a spirited creak, the door falls out from beneath her hand. She hadn’t put much weight on it– only enough to keep herself still in her eavesdropping– but surprise jolts her back, and Makiri’s grip is only enough to ensure that she travels a horizontal rather than vertical trajectory. Thankfully, she hits an unyielding surface before she can travel far.

An unyielding surface clad in wool, wearing Arleon’s colors. One that rises and falls beneath the palm of her hand. Haki cannot bear to look up, but she hardly needs to; she has spent far too long staring at this set of shoulders to mistake it for any other: Lowen.

“As I recall,” Father rumbles, folding his arms across the forbidding expanse of his chest. “I asked both of you to leave.”

“F-father.” Makiri has always been a shade or two darker than her– a legacy of the long hours he spent with the guard– but he’s paler now. “Haki snuck back here on her own. I was just coming to collect her.”

“Were you.” His mouth twitches, struggling to hold its forbidding line. “And how is it that she slipped from your care?”

Makiri’s teeth grit in a grimace. “Ah…”

“Lowen.” Father gazes down at her, brow raised. “It seems you already have my daughter well in hand. See to it that she is returned to her chamber. Properly this time.”

“Of course, Your Grace,” he agrees flatly. His hand tightens around her wrist. “It would be my pleasure.”

It is a struggle not to speak into this forbidding silence, even more so when she knows only a fool would say, I can explain.

A lady has no need to explain herself to a common man, no matter if he carries the title of sir or no. A peer does not expend herself on apologies to anyone but her betters, and although his prowess with a blade marks Lowen as foremost among her father’s men, her blood always sets her table above his at dinner. Or at least it would, if Father held to such stringent etiquette as the Southern courts required.

Still, she knows well enough: one does not begin a battle without the advantage. One does not start a conversation they cannot control.

All the knowledge rattling around in her skull, and yet: it does not stop her. It merely changes her tack.

“Are you quite well, Sir Lowen?” She speaks to him in only her most solicitous tone, the kind the ladies of Father’s court used when they had more interest in gossip than her well being. “You are looking quite peaked.”

His arm stiffens beneath her palm, but his pace does not slow a measure. “Peaked, my lady?”

Piqued is more like it, and by the long look he casts her from the corners of his eyes, only his good manners keeps him from saying so.

“Are you quite ill?” Haki may refuse to act stupid, but silly remains a perennial choice when trying to draw a stubborn knight out from behind his position. “Should we ask Father to send for one of his scholars? They are well known for their skill with healing herbs, it’s said, perhaps they could–”

“I’m well enough.” There’s steel when he speaks, even if he is so careful to smother it in silk. A true sign she’s under his skin. “My lady has no need to worry.”

“I do believe that is my decision, Sir Lowen,” she informs him loftily, enjoying the small tic near his dimple. He may pretend ambivalence all he likes, but with Makiri for a brother, Haki is an expert in extracting heated words from an icy countenance. “How could I not worry when my very life is cradled in your capable hands? Tell me now, are you eating well? Drinking? Sleeping at night–?”

His hand clamps around her arm, hard enough for both her step and heart to stutter. Lowen is not so uncouth as to lay hands on a lady and yank, but nor is his touch gentle when he turns her to face him.

“I think, my lady,” his voice thrums, thick with annoyance and something that causes her toes to curl in her slippers. “That we both know how well I slept last night.”

Ah-haah. This is certainly not the conversation she meant to draw from him, but as he steps toward her, herding her toward the wall, Haki cannot find a sliver of her that complains. “Sir Lowen–”

“And–” his breath is harsh, ragged as he leans above her– “just whose fault that is.”

Her whole body is flushed, no part of her not radiating enough heat to melt the very walls of Wirant’s keep. Try as she might, there is no way to mistake his meaning, no way to believe he talks of anything but what passed between them– or rather, what didn’t.

“Surely you cannot blame me,” she says, too close to a sigh. “I was not the one who turned in early last night. I merely inquired after a dance.”

His grips gentles, thumb rubbing along the narrow seam of her sleeve. There are too many shadows between them to see whether his eyes have followed suit, but when he speaks, his voice leaves little doubt. “Did I say it was yours, my lady?” His gaze drops, watching himself touch her. “And more the fool I.”

She blinks. “Lowen–?”

“My la–ah!” Ami’s hands clap to her cheeks, hard enough that they twist her around, presenting her back. As if somehow, by not seeing the impropriety before her, it might not be there. Or rather, she might not have to report it to her father. “Apologies, my lady, I did not realize you were previously, er, engaged.”

How much she could have seen, Haki can hardly guess; Lowen had stepped back with enough swiftness to chill her, lingering half a hallway away as if his hands had never left his side. Then again, she realizes, watching the blush creep over Ami’s pale neck, the last her lady maid knew, she was leaving them alone, in her chambers, not to be disturbed until morning…

Ah, she’ll have to be straightening that out sooner rather than later. No need for Ami to anticipate stained sheets when all that’s managed to arise between them is a a wrinkle in her sleeve.

“That’s quite enough, Ami,” she mutters, pulling it straight. “Sir Lowen was merely escorting me back to my chambers. Under orders of the duke.”

“Of course, my lady.” Her maid turns, casting a speculative look over her knight. “It’s under his orders that I’ve come to fetch you.”

Haki stares, uncomprehending. “Whatever could you mean? We only just left.”

“Ah, well, we’ve just heard from the outpost, miss.” Her hands clench tightly in her skirts, mouth rucked up in a distressed knot. “And your Lord Father the duke, he says that you must ready yourself.”

Lowen’s blade rattles at his side as he steps forward. “What do you mean?”

Ami hesitates, casting a doleful look between the two of them. “It’s the prince, my lady,” she manages, finally. “The second one. He’s here.”

Chapter Text

Once, when Haki was but a small girl, hardly able to braid her own plaits, Father woke her in the dead of night. Frost clung thickly on her windowpanes, leaving the world a mystery of midnight; a magical hour, one where winged vettes could sweep down from the skies or trolls could peek out from the rafters. Those were the kinds of things that happened to princesses, after all, and here she was, living in a castle that once belonged to a king.

Come with me. His hand beckoned, promising mischief, even while his mouth threatened a lecture. Confused, she traipsed after him on slippered feet, shrugging her furred cloak around her shoulders.

They went up, up, up to the highest parapets, to where only the stray night guard patrolled. Wirant sprawled beneath them, the walls snaking along its edges, leading out to the glistening university at the horizon. Their lands now, with no lord above them. Duke, the letter said that morning, Warden of the North. Father had not looked a pleased as a man should, given such a promotion.

Over there. Father pointed out to the shadows in the distance, the round stone towers that squatted along the roads. Those outposts. In the olden days, when the lords still warred with one another, it would be to those our guard looked. Should any army encroach upon us, they would light bonfires, warning their liege of danger.

She squinted into the distance, blinking away the snow that settled thick on her lashes. Even at this distance, lights flickered through the arrow slits, winking in the dark. A bonfire, set on their roofs– that would light up the sky, clear as any candle

And when those fires called their lords to the battlefield, Father pressed, wind whipping at his words, it was their women who protected these halls.

Haki pictured it, campfires burning like stars on the snowfields. A hundred– no, a hundred thousand men waiting to besiege their walls, rattling their spears as the drums of war sounded across the dark. And the lady of this castle watching it all through the sleepless night, knowing that come dawn, there would be no relief to see them through. Only her men and the steel of her spine.

Haki. Father did not turn to look at her, merely stared out toward the vanished horizon, lost in the dark. Out toward Lilias, and beyond it– The king has asked for your hand. He would like you to marry his eldest, the prince Izana.

Her hand curled around the crenelation, stone cold against her palm. Father did not speak into the silence, but she could hear what he didn’t say all the louder: some women are called to defend their house with blade and hand, and others–

Others protected it another way.

Tell him, she said, her small voice bursting into clouds before her, that it would be an honor.

Haki may ask, “Where is he?” but she is already in motion, skirts swinging around her legs as she pivots, no longer headed towards her chambers, but away.

A guest as esteemed as His Highness should be greeted in the yard, with Father and Makiri waiting at the top of the steps to receive him. He’d be given time to wash off the dust from the road, for his entourage to order themselves before being brought in for formal introductions. That is the way it would be done in the South, complete with berries and champagne and probably a dozen women to sweeten the deal.

Should, should, should. The question is: what does Father mean to do?

Ami falls in three racing steps behind her, huffing hard from even so little exertion. Perhaps she has been letting off her maid too easy, like Makiri says. “The hall.”

Ah, so Father would be sparing the prince no favors. No friendly greeting for the prized son of his liege, oh no; His Highness would be brought in left-footed, forced to make obeisances like any earl’s son might. No time to clean up, no time to rest, not time to prepare.

Her mouth curls, a cruel humor creeping across mouth. This prince may be half a god in the South, but he would learn just where an up-jumped second son stood in the North.

“My lady!” Ami lags behind her, panting now, but there’s no time to wait for her. “Should you not–?”

“Are you going dressed like that?”

The effect is, embarrassingly, immediate. Her heels dig in, body lurching to a halt; her wasted motion turns her, her glare steeped with such derision that a lesser man would shatter to pieces. At least, it should. That’s how it always works for Father.

Lowen simply smirks, his face a mockery of innocence. Curse him, for it is impossible to tell whether her presence needs improving, or whether he is naturally impervious. Either way, he delights in the way she storms to him, not even flinching when she puts herself bare inches away, close enough that a well-timed breath might cause them to touch.

It is, perhaps, a poor position to take on this battlefield, since touch they do, her chest brushing the bottom of his ribs. Her face floods with heat, but still she forges on, demanding, “What do you mean by that, sir?”

“Nothing, my lady.” His smirk slants to a yet slyer angle. “It is only, if you mean to receive the prince…”

Her brow arches, imperious as any queen. She knows; she’s practiced many a time in her mirror. “It there something wrong with how I am dressed? Is it not fine enough for His Highness?”

Certainly not for a formal introduction in Wistal’s court, but that was the point. This prince must learn what little currency his title bought him here. It would make him desperate, lead him to make foolish mistakes–

“Not if you mean to make him love you.”

Haki blinks. “Excuse me?”

“That is what your father wants, isn’t it? A happy–” his gaze rakes up her from slipper to collar, his hooded eyes no barrier to its heat–“husband?”

Her breath catches, knotting tight in her chest. There’s no reasoning when he’s so close, when his warmth mingles with hers in the bare space between their bodies. When the place his thumb traced burns like a brand on her skin still. 

A better hostage than a husband. Even with His Highness’s early arrival, Father’s plan would not have changed. Eager she might be to mark her protest to the king’s plan, a shrewdness demands a more metered response. It was a poor player who tipped his hand early, and a dead one that did it with rebellion on the line.

“Ami.” She tears herself away, palms bunched in the thick fabric of her skirts. “Did Father say he would be in the hall, or to meet him in the hall?”

Ami’s gaze darts nervously, first dancing over her face, then back to where Lowen lingers. Her mouth pinches, as tight as her hands clasp in front of her. “He would meet you in the hall. His lordship means to receive His Highness now, in the company of your brother, and they will meet again for the formal reception once the prince and his party have had time to freshen themselves.”

Ah, Father must not see Prince Zen as a threat, but as a boy to be wooed. A second son to be impressed by a first one’s welcome.

And Lowen had seen it, far better than she.

“Well.” Haki smooths her skirts, composing herself. “That does give us time, then. Come, I must make myself an eager princess.”

Ami hurries after her with no need of further encouragement, but Lowen– Lowen lingers. His mouth smooths to a smirk when she turns to him, brow arched with a temple’s worth of irreverence. “Me as well, my lady?”

She tilts her chin, smile curling with mischief. “You especially, sir.”

There is little fanfare when Haki enters her rooms, but when she makes to lead them through the parlor to her bedchamber, Ami stops Lowen at the door.

“You may stay out here, sir,” she says, hand pressed firmly into his chest. “Where her ladyship entertains.”

Lowen blinks, at a loss. “Ami…?”

To Haki’s confusion, her maid flushes, the tips of her ears an angry red. “Now, sir, don’t make this any harder than it is. You and I know that the seats out here are just as fine.”

His brow furrows. “I don’t see why–?”

“Ami?” Haki wraps a hand around the girl’s arm, forcing her to lower it. “What are you on about.”

“Begging your pardon, my lady. I know he’s supposed to keep his eyes on you, but…” She draws herself up, favoring Lowen with as severe a look as her quarter century can conjure. “I think it’s best that Sir Lowen keep himself where there’s no…surfaces.”

“Surfaces?” There’s a table right by the sofa, a bouquet fresh from Lilias sitting on it, unmistakable. “But there’s–”

It’s unbecoming for a lady to blush, but Haki finds herself hard-pressed to be elsewise when Ami fixed her with that meaningful glance. Only last night she had sent her maid away, telling her that Lowen would help her to bed, and– how foolish she must have seemed, saying such a thing. Then to be caught in the hall with him so close, to have so clearly abandoned reason– a confidante  her maid may well be, but Ami’s pay comes from Father’s pockets, not her own. Last night, she was a foolish girl betrothed to a prodigal prince, and this morning…this morning Father needs her to be above reproach.

A hard thing to be, when even now the memory of his touch lingers on her arm, and the heat of his gaze presses upon her back.

But not for long. With a neat pivot, Lowen surveys the parlor. Or at least, makes a good show of it, running his long fingers over seams and studs as if he has not had the last two years to memorize every inch of them. His interest would even read as natural, a whim of the moment rather than a reaction to it, were it not for the pink dusting at the tips of his ears, or the convenient way it put his back to them.

“Well.” He coaxes a burr clear of his throat, bringing it back to his usual register. “I suppose I could sit. And wait.”

It would be easy to undercut Ami; she is not the lady here, nor even enough authority to act as chaperone. In the south, she would be little more than decoration, one of a hundred replaceable faces. One word from Haki and all her concern could be swept away like ash on the hearth.

But, fortunately or not, Wirant is not Wistal. And even if it were, Haki knows better than to spurn loyalty where she finds it. No matter how much she wishes Ami could have waited at least a few minutes more to announce herself in that hall.

“An excellent idea, Sir Lowen,” she manages, pitching her voice to be fuller, more mature. It comes off somewhere closer to officious. “I think, perhaps, I shall join you.”

“My lady…” Ami’s frown furrows in warning. “Are you sure that’s…?”

Wise. Haki can practically hear the word echoing in the air. “Lowen and I have much to discuss. That is, if he does not mind being pressed.”

Both his brows lift, though not far. Surprise, but not shock. A measured response, a controlled one.

She hates it already. Lords above, save her from this man being restrained. “I think you know full well that I could not deny my lady anything.”

Besides a dance, of course. But that’s hardly a conversation she wishes to retread with an audience. Especially one as interested as Ami would make.

“But I must admit,” he continues, entirely too cordial for her liking, “that I do not see what help I could be to you.”

“Why, sir,” she does not purr, running her fingers along the spine of her sofa. “You are our expert on what our young prince likes.”

Haki is no stranger to knights; Wirant has its own circle, one her brother joined only a few years past. One he will doubtlessly run, once society– and, she must begrudgingly admit, his skill– drags him up the ranks. She is no stranger to the restless energy pent up behind their livery, the polite words that merely gild their rougher opinions.

So when Lowen’s ease hardens, when his idleness turns to vigilance, she knows: he is bracing for a hit. No, for a fight; one he does not expect to limp from without a wound. “I beg your pardon?”

He has not been so formal with her since those first, disastrous weeks. The ones where she’d been so desperate to drive him away, and he’d clung to her nape like a mother cat does her kitten.

There is little she would like less than to go back to those days. “You have met him, have you not? While you were working in Wistal with your mysterious lord.”

“Lords,” he replies stiffly, stressing the plural. “A few times. He was but a child then, hardly out of the nursery. Not someone who looked at…women.”

“It is a fair sight more than anyone else in Wirant,” she informs him with equal warmth. “It will take an age if Ami must pull out every gown in my wardrobe, and we have very time to waste. Perhaps if His Highness had not been taken with the whim to race the post…” She shrugs, elegant. At least, so she hopes. “Surely you must have some idea about what a boy like that might want in a wife?”

He grits out woodenly, “I could not possibly venture a guess, my lady.”

Were her blood any less blue, Haki would let her eyes roll, but as it is, she merely sighs, shaking her head. “If this were the first prince, it would be far easier.”

Some life leaks into her knight’s expression, an eyebrow edging flirting with a bid toward his hairline. “Would it, now?”

“Of course.” A forelock tickles her collarbone; with a single hand she straightens it, sending some wayward strands over her shoulder. “A profligate dandy such as that might make noise about wanting a demure woman for a wife, but he does not take those to bed. Tempting him would require something bold, a dress to draw the eye. Something that might inspire a fire in him.”

Lowen’s mouth twitches, though she cannot tell in which direction he means it to trend. “Is that a fact?”

“So you see my trouble,” she continues, ignoring him. The last thing she needs are his pithy comments about her attempts at seduction. “If he is like his brother, I will go bolder, but if not–”

“He is nothing like his brother.”

Haki blinks, as wide-eyed as the man that sits across from her. “Is that so?”

“It…is.” Lowen speaks as if the words ails him, as if both of them might as well be cut from his own flesh. With a harsh breath, he is calm again, his tone as still and as smooth as a pond iced over, “I heard it remarked upon often in the castle. He learned all his politics from knight’s tales and fairy stories, and that foolishness breeds true in the way he approaches the court.“

“But you said he was a child, surely–”

“Idealism takes root root early, and is a…challenge to weed out.” His lips flirt with a grimace before settling into their customary line. “He believes in goodness the way some men believe in gods. Were we in a story book, he would be the perfect prince, but in reality, he is only–”

Lowen’s teeth snap shut. “I mean to say,” he begins again, the heat gone from him, “that he puts a great deal in appearances. First meetings. Fate.”

Fate. He says the word with such venom, as if he would find the women himself and tear their weaving asunder. As if he would break their loom in both hands were he given half the chance. It is easy to forget with all his pretty speeches, that Lowen is first a mercenary, a man of fortune; the sort, Father had said, too many times to count, who has been burned by luck and lived to tell the tale.

Oh, how she wish he would tell it to her as well. But by the distant look in his eyes, she doubts there’s a man living who has.

“So I must be a vision,” she concludes, clearing her throat. No need to let him know that she squints to read between his lines. “A perfect princess, ready-made for his pleasure.”

“Perhaps the rose taffeta, my lady?” Ami prompts, hovering at the door. “Or the white organza?”

Both are a little fussy for her tastes, but then, there are few princesses who are not. “Yes, fetch those first. And perhaps the yellow silk?”

“As you say, my lady.” Still, Ami hesitates at the threshold, hovering as if she has yet more to suggest. Haki nearly asks– there is no one alive who knows the contents of her wardrobe quite as well as her– but then her dark eyes dart to where Lowen sits, far too pointed.

“And keep the door open,” she concedes, generously. “There may be more requests forthcoming should Lowen–”

Lowen makes a noise Haki can only call undignified.

She turns to him with one brow arches, censure in every inch. “Is there something amusing, sir?”

“It’s nothing,” he assures her with a smile that is anything but. “I was only thinking that the prince was known for being more…simple in his tastes. Humble, even.”

“Humble?” she murmurs like a thunderstorm. “Are you making a joke of this, Sir Lowen? Does this all amuse you?”

“I promise you,” he says, smirk ceding to serious. “There is nothing that amuses me less. I only mean to say that he is hardly impressed by royal trappings.”

Heat simmers beneath her skin. Already the king has made a mockery of her, passing her from one son to another; the last thing she needs is for Lowen to make her into a laughingstock, a plate for all the peerage to titter at over the front page. “And so I must arrive to the meeting looking like I am some girl he met in the woods? A secret princess he must kiss to relevance?”

Lowen does not flush, never in anger, but she sees the steady ease in his shoulders and knows it is practiced, not natural. “I said only that simplicity would impress him more than decoration.”

“Should I greet him in tweed?” she asks, every word a barb. “Perhaps a plaid one, so that he feels as if he is truly in the country–”

His mouth curls, half a sneer. “It would certainly be better than looking like a confection–”

“Men eat confections!”

Her words echo back to her ears, too loud, too heated. Again, she’s let him rile her, the way he did in those early days. The way that drove her to distraction again and again, until–

Haki settles back on her cushion, spreading her skirts to lay flat. It’s silly to act this way now, two years on and nearly a woman grown, knowing that all she’s arguing for is his attention. She certainly won’t impress him flushed and fussed as she is.

“If you have some suggestion,” she begins again, measured. “Then I would be happy to–”

“The blue.”

Her eyes flutter, confused, but there he sits, shoulders carefully relaxed, gaze fixed upon the flowers between them. “I beg your–?”

“The blue silk,” he repeats with precision. “With the lace fall at the collar. I think–” his tongue snakes out wetting his lips– “I think he would like that most.”

“I…” Her jaw closes, so carefully. It had been a favored dress of hers, years ago. She’d been wearing it the night father told her of her new guard, the young knight who would be her shadow at the soiree, and he– she–

“It’s not quite Wisteria blue,” she murmurs, “but it is very…youthful.”

“It brings out your eyes.” Lowen hums, shifting in his seat, and oh, how she wonders if he meant to say so much. “It would be easy for a man to fall in love with a lady in a dress such as that.”

Did you? she doesn’t ask, though her lips itch with it. It’s impossible; she’d been terrible then, losing him around every corner and cursing when he appeared at her side, not at all the young lady her father had told him of. But still, still, the look in his eyes–

“Fine,” she says, too breathless. “The blue it is.”

Chapter Text

Blue silk settles over her like an estranged acquaintance; two years ago it had fit like a second skin, but now it squeezes at the bust and requires far fewer petticoats to pad out her hips. The hem, however, settles perfectly— a finger’s breadth above the the floor, just as it always had. A terrible way to learn she hasn’t grown a single, vertical inch since seventeen. Makiri will be practically unlivable.

“Such a pretty color, my lady.” Ami’s hands smooth over the skirt, coaxing out the creases that linger at her waist. Haki is half-tempted to tell her not to bother; it’s a fabric that begs to be rumpled, the furrowing above her hips only serving as a reminder of how hands might sit there, silk wrinkled in their grip. Of how easily it might crumple beneath the slightest pressure, like petals plucked from a flower’s stem.

The last time she had worn this dress, she’d been more concerned about whether her prince might find her singing voice pretty, or hear rumors of her fair face and be tempted to sneak north simply for a glimpse of it than what an enterprising young man and a willing young lady might get up to in Wilant’s dark corners. But Lowen had been her age now– older, if she does not mistake her figures, though not by much– and more than ready to contemplate such arrangements. Had he thought of it even as he knelt before her, head bowed in deference, swearing to protect her body with his own? Had he gazed up at her with that that placid mask of his, still as a lake’s surface, and felt the first ripples of–?

“His Highness will surely think it suits.”

Haki’s secretive smile sours to a pout. “I look young.”

Feels young is more like it, fingering the fall of lace at her décolletage. She’d been little more than a child the last time she donned this particular frock, and it’d been a season out style even then, the seamstresses of the city unable to keep up with the rush to raise bust lines and drop hemlines and overhaul sleeves altogether. But she had been proud of this one, so unlike the other gowns father had gotten for her— practically modern and made with silk bought off Tanbarunian traders instead of salvaged from one of Mother’s old gowns. A fairy tale of a dress, a dream, and…

And she’d put it away with all the others when the first prince had made clear he was in no rush to settle down with a lady wife. Yet here she was now, trotting it out to spin another story for a child even younger than she. There was poetry in that, perhaps, even if it was only the sad kind.

“Boys like His Highness do prefer a youthful lady,” Ami muses, gaze meeting hers in the mirror. “At least, if he’s naught but sixteen, as your father’s man says.”

Haki hardly misses the stress on that— your father’s man. As if she could not lay the same word’s at Ami’s feet– her father’s maid, paid to make sure all of her most embarrassing escapades ended up in the duke’s ear.

“A pity there’s no time to have me done up in ringlets.” Fine hairs flyaway from the loose braids behind her ears; she smooths them down. “It would have made for a much more convincing ingénue.”

Ami is not the sort to smirk or sneer, but there is a twitch at the corner of her lips, a wryness that not even her scrupulous good manners can smother. “You are hardly old enough to need tricks for that, my lady. Sir Lowen is right” —as much as she is loath to admit it now, her sigh says— “it would be little hardship to fall in love with you in this dress.”

She doubts that this prince will be moved to devotion by a frock near three years out of date or by the older woman wearing it, but she must admit– there is some charm left to it. The blue brings out the palest shades of her eyes and complements the most honeyed tones in her hair; a far cry from the humble damsel awaiting her rescue, but a fairy tale princess nonetheless.

“One can hope,” she breathes, hand splayed over the fabric at her belly. “Or at least fair enough to inspire some foolishness.”

Ami hums; a melody that swings between agreement and agitation with every note. “Certainly more reasonable men have made themselves fools for you.”

It’s a pointed remark, for all that she can’t think of a single one. The men who frequent Wilant are friends of her father, old enough to have children her own age. Few of them spare her a glance, save if they have a son her age, though those have been few and far between since her betrothal. There are soldiers of course— guardsmen who care more about Makiri’s skill than her conversation— and servants, but none that—

“Is there anything else I’ll be needing to take care of, my lady?” Ami asks, solicitously smoothing out the lace at her shoulder. And yet her gaze fixes elsewhere in the mirror, somewhere over Haki’s shoulder. The door to the sitting room, as if she’s waiting for someone to walk through. A ridiculous worry with Lowen guarding the door. “Anything that needs an extra cleaning?”

Her gaze cuts towards where the dressing screen sits, toile covered in scenes of young ladies picnicking and small dogs running over picturesque stone ruins. There’s not a stain on it, as cream-and-teal as it was the day she’d had it brought it, hoping that it might help keep the heat in around her—

Her bed. A pertinent question for a maid to ask after she had been sent away for the night, assured that there would be another set of hands to help her charge undress. Who had only seen a rumpled mess of sheets when she arrived in the morning, fire lit by an expert’s hands. And now with whatever she had seen in the hall…

Well, if she had thought her reflection young before, her flush makes it positively childish now. “N-no. There’s no need to—”

It’s mortifying to try to put the night into words. How close she had trod to impropriety, only to be rebuffed. How sure she was of his interest even so, only for yet another prince to put himself between them. Oh, if that Bergatt boy put himself before her right now and asked if she would like to see the end of the Wisteria reign, she could hardly be responsible for the answer she might give.

A practiced breath draws her upright, shoulders square as her father had taught her— you are my daughter, he would grunt, holding them straight in his hands, there are few to whom you must bow, and none to whom you must bend. It is not a sweet young princess that looks back at her in the mirror, but a lady of the North, ready to defend her walls.

“There is nothing with which you must concern yourself with,” she says with all the ice her blood can summon. “I think you will find your hands full already, trying to find more dresses that will please His Highness during his stay.”

“As you say, my lady.” Ami bows her head, as a servant ought, but it does little to conceal her smile— or her relief. “Though I’m sure there will be quite a few, if I look among some of your older wardrobe.”

It takes a concerted effort not to grimace. She too had been a more whimsical girl once, as taken with fairy stories as she was with the old lays, dreaming of knights and their ladies. Of princes disguised and true love’s kiss. “They will need to be retrimmed.”

“Of course.” There’s a fondness as Ami lays her hand on a trunk, a wistfulness Haki cannot quite understand. “I’ll see to it.”

“Good.” She steps down from the mirror with a sigh, her dress rustling after her like leaves in the underbrush. “I’ll need all the help I can get.”

Lowen is on his feet when she sweeps into the parlor. Odd; for all his much vaunted skill in the ring— a beast with a blade in his hand, Makiri had always told her, like he’s fighting for his life— her guardsman always seemed more apt to lounge than lunge outside it. And yet as he stands there, attention drawn to the angle of her entrance, his weight shifts in a way that implies movement rather than repose.

“Come.” It would be simple to brush too close as she passes him, to let their eyes meet in a gaze so heavy it might well be a caress, but she bustles past instead, careful to keep even the barest hint of ruffle from slipping over his boots. “My father calls.”

It is not until her toes cross the carpet’s edge that she realizes their are no footfalls behind her, that Lowen has not fallen into step, using that rangy stride of his to eat up the distance between them. No, when she glances over her shoulder, he is still where she last left him, hands curled to fists at his side.

“Sir.” There is a layer of reproach as she speaks, covering the concern beneath it. “He is waiting.”

His fingers twitch, the barest flinch. “Are you certain?”

Haki does not turn to him— that would be a concession too far, a confession with a dearer cost than she can afford— but her shoulder does lower. “That Father waits?”

“No.” Lowen hardly allows a thought to stray across his face, let alone wears his heart on his sleeve, but there is something that lurk beneath the gaze he fixes on her, a castigation and a plea all in one. “That it is wise to bring me.”

A princess does not allow her mouth to thin, does not let her eyebrows angle to imply impatience; a good thing, then, that Haki is not one yet.

“Sir, if there is anything that I am certain of, it is that.” She shifts— not a ceding of ground, but a firming of resolve. A planting of her feet, gaining better leverage to yank on his leash. “Come. You would not have your lady go to battle without her knight.”

Still, he remains unmoved. Not even the barest sway to show he’s heard her.

“Is that what this is?” he says after a long moment. “A battle?”

Her mouth works for a moment, uncertain. “What else can it be? If my father were to bend any more…”

Then the North would be broken. On one side would be the ones who still clung to Father’s prudence, who would see profit in playing Wistal’s games, and on the other—

Well, it had been said once that the stones between Wilant and Oriold would never wash clean. That even now, when the snows melt, the side of the roads run red. The lords of the North may play at civility now, nodding at the southern court’s fashion of love and courtly graces, but that only hides the histories written with bloodied hands.

Lowen breathes, eyes fluttering shut as he takes it in, but when they open—

There is steel there. A resolve that does not waver. “Then let us go to battle, my lady.”

She is too aware of Lowen as they make their way through Wilant’s halls; aware of how his gaze lingers on her, tracing the fall of lace along her collar and dragging down the silken curve of her waist. Aware of the space between them, just enough for an arm to reach across and grab, for the inches to disappear between them and to finally finish the conversation Ami had so unfortunately interrupted.

It’s tempting to turn, to catch his eyes and invite the sort of resolution it would bring. But even though his stare burns hot enough to catch her alight, he does not speak. Not a single word to draw her attention, not a single brush of skin against skin to call her to him. Although her legs tremble effort with the effort to keep putting one slipper in front of the other and her neck aches from keeping it angled straight ahead, he does not stop her, not once.

It is too important, she realizes. For all that she wants to clutch at Lowen’s shoulders and ask just what thought churn behind that stare of his, it is a distraction she can ill afford. Her father’s plans are balanced on a blade’s edge, and it is her who decides which way their fortunes tip.

She will not disappoint him.

It is still Arleon guards on the door to the great hall, and they move aside before she even utters, “My father is expecting me.”

A single step inside is enough to know why: the prince’s party has already arrived. Still covered in the dust from the road by the looks of it, harried and eager to be shown to the privacy of their chambers. By the wary angle of the royal guards’ shoulders, Father and Makiri have resorted to thin excuses to keep them here. Waiting for her.

With a steeling breath, she nods to the footman at the door. “Lady Haki,” he announces, the slightest tremble in his voice. He’s not used to such esteemed visitors, it seems. “First daughter of his lordship, the Duke Arleon.”

If she thought she might have trouble picking out the prince from among all this white and blue and broad shoulders, she is saved the trouble; his party drops to show the deference due to a duke’s daughter, leaving only a single one of them on his feet.

The queen consort had sent her a gift once, during the months in which her father and the king dickered over the finer points of her betrothal of the first prince— a miniature, done fully in oils, of Izana himself. Long engagements may be prudent, she had written in her elegant hand, letters looping across the page, but they often are lonely. Let this satisfy both your company and your curiosity.

He could not have been more than fifteen, maybe sixteen when he had sat for the portrait, but even so, there was a gravity to that narrow face, a piercing quality to the deepness in his eyes. A regal tilt to his pointed chin, a knowing that lingered in this corners of his mouth; strangely serious for a prince who would become more known for parties than policy. Not yet a man, but she could see the one he would make once the last of childhood was stripped from his cheeks.

What they have sent her now is hardly more than a child.

His brother’s portrait might have hinted at manhood, but this boy— his face is still round, baby fat still clinging stubbornly to his bones. Perhaps there is a threat of a heavy jaw lingering there, a promise of something masculine and square opposed to Izana’s more feminine angles, but it is impossible to tell beneath those full cheeks, flushed and flawless as a doll’s. His hair is cut the same way of his brother’s, but instead of falling with a stately sort of grace across his forehead, it is a dandelion’s tuft, baby-fine and untamed.

“Ah, Your Highness.” Father’s gaze holds hers for a long moment before it drops to the would-be heir,  meeting his wide eyes with no hint of his displeasure. “You have yet to meet the reason for all our celebration, I assume. Haki” — his hand sweeps out, beckoning— “come. Greet our honored guest.”

She doesn’t not so much walk as float down the runner of the Great Hall, skirts swaying as if it is only clouds that ruffle their hem, not carpet. It takes hours of practice to turn that which is earthly to the ethereal, but Haki had long shouldered every ache and tumble in the name of causing her prodigal husband to swallow his tongue at the altar.

There is something far less satisfying about inspiring the same reaction in his brother. “It is an honor that you have come for so humble an occasion, Your Highness.”

“Of course.” His voice is reedy, not quite finished changing even if she can hear the man in it. It breaks at her flawless curtsy, flustered. “I mean, the honor is mine. It is hardly every day that we can celebrate such a fine young lady becoming a woman.”

It’s the sort of thing a fond uncle might say, not a boy four years her junior, but Haki smiles nonetheless, hoping it does not sit as stiff as it feels. “You are too kind, sir.”

“Not at all,” he insists with a graciousness that would seem more natural on a man three times his age. “It is its own sort of accomplishment. To be, er…”

“Twenty.” When Makiri smiles it is all teeth, a wolf scenting blood on the snow. “That’s how old my sister is. Old enough to get married now, according to your southerners, isn’t it?”

The prince is too earnest— and his skin far too pale— to cover the flush that blooms up his neck, painting him pink from collar to brow. “T-that is true. But, erm…” His gaze casts about, trying to find a safe place to perch. “Ah, b-but I haven’t yet introduced my party. Sirs…?”

One of the men rises— dark hair shorn short enough that she can see a neck as brown as a laborer’s, far from the lily white of the noble son knelt beside him. He unfurls to a startling height with the same lassitude as the castle’s cats, as if he was only ever on his knees because it pleased him to do so. There’s a cant to his mouth that only supports the implication, but when she raises her eyes to meet his eyes—

She flinches. There’s a scar there— a gouge, badly healed, that stretches from cheek to cheek.

“Sir Zakura Shidnote, my lords— and lady.” He nods at her, mouth tilting toward a smirk. “Lately of the Royal Knight’s Circle. And this is Sir Mikaze” — his hand cuts toward the noble son getting to his feet, a boy just about Makiri’s age, though he carries it better— “one of the more promising squires from our last bout of new blood.”

“I’m a knight, really,” the young man insists, pushing back the hair that’s flopped over his eyes. “Though I am, ah…new, my lord.”

“Just earned your accolades, is it?” Father may not be a man of smiles, but his eyes crinkle at the corners, warm. “My son—”

“Earned them two year ago,” Makiri interjects acidly, brows bent in his most surly scowl. As if that would help him look any older than his scant years.

Practically a veteran, she almost says, but there is not enough wide-eyed sincerity in her to cover the bite. As much as she might like to tease, she hardly needs to be reminded: they are not among friends.

“Just so.” Father squints the way he does at their accounts, tallying up the men before him. “Did you not have another man in your party?”

“Ah, yes, Sir Mitsuhide.” The prince’s mouth pulls thin before he recollects himself, grimace turning to boyish grin. “My apologies, I had hoped for all of us to be here to greet you, but time was short, and there was an issue with our…baggage. We left him to sort it out with your staff.”

Father’s mouth turns stern. “Then should it not be I who apologies to you, Your Highness? If there was some issue, then surely—”

“Ah, no no! This was, er…our fault,” His Highness insists, oddly guilty. “I’m afraid my mother insisted on one last gift, even after all the carriages had been packed tight! It changed…quite a lot of our travel plans.”

“I see,” Father murmurs, though it’s quite clear he does not. He is not a man of last-minute anythings, let alone travel plans.

“But he will be here for the formal reception, of course!” The prince smiles, bright. “He wouldn’t miss it— he’s a northerner, trained at your very own Sereg.”

“Sereg.” Now her brother straightens in his seat, an excited sheen in his eyes. “So he’s skilled, then?”

“Some,” Sir Zakura drawls, a corner of his mouth creeping up his cheek. “Enough that the king requested him by name.”

“By name…?” Now it is her father who leans in, brow furrowed. “You cannot mean— Mitsuhide Lowen?”

The prince nods, pleased. “The very same.”

“I’ll be damned.” Father settles back in his seat. “I nearly asked him here, before His Majesty snapped him up. He was one of Sereg’s finest swords. ”

Sir Zakura smirks. “And now he is one of Wistal’s.”

“Lowen?” Haki keeps her voice low, pitched for only her and her shadow to hear. It’s a curious coincidence, considering how closely her knight has always played his card to the chest. “Is there any relation to…?”

Her chin tilts, hoping to catch his eye– or at least the angle of his mouth, but–

But when she slants her eyes to his usual place at her shoulder, there is nothing behind her but empty air.