Terms in the Snow

Nobody breathes.

Somewhere behind you a goblet tips and rolls along a table, and the sound is enormous. You keep your eyes on the duke because if you look anywhere else you'll lose your nerve.

He doesn't laugh. That's the first thing. He doesn't laugh, and he doesn't look past you to see who put you up to it. He looks at your face as if he's reading a letter in a hand he half knows.

Then Auberon's voice rings out from the high table, warm as a hearth.

"Lady Merriden has a gift for theater. We'll have to put her in the Midsummer masque." Laughter, a ripple of it, grateful and nervous. "Come back, sweetheart. You've made your point. The north is very frightening."

More laughter. Your face burns. Your father is on his feet, white to the lips.

The duke stands.

He's taller than you thought, much taller, and the laughter dies under him the way grass flattens in wind. He doesn't look at the prince. He looks down at you.

"The lady asked me a question," he says. His voice is low and northern and unhurried. "I'll answer it where she's not on display."

He offers you his arm. Not his hand. His arm, formal and correct, like any lord at any dance.

You take it. His sleeve is rough wool and under it he's warm and very solid, and you walk out of the Great Hall of Corvanne on the arm of the Butcher of Emberfell while two hundred people watch you go.

The cloister garden is white and silent. The fountain in the middle has frozen mid-splash, a crown of ice. Your breath smokes. You're in silk slippers and a gown cut for candlelight, and the cold bites at once.

He notices. Before you've said a word, he unclasps the gray fur from his shoulders and holds it out.

"I'm all right," you say.

"You're shaking." He waits. He doesn't put it on you. He waits until you take it, and then he steps back to a polite distance and folds his hands behind him.

The fur is heavy and still warm and smells of pine smoke. You pull it tight.

"First question," he says. "Are you safe tonight?"

Of all the things you expected him to ask, that wasn't one. Why. What game. Who sent you. You stare at him.

"Tonight, yes," you say. "I think so."

"And after tonight?"

"That depends on your answer."

He's quiet a moment. The torches along the cloister throw his face into planes of gold and shadow. Up close the scar through his eyebrow is old and white. His eyes don't move off you.

"Then tell me what you're offering," he says, "and what you need. Plainly. I'm bad at riddles."

So you do. You've been building it all afternoon, in the bath, in the carriage, in the mirror while Lisbet pinned your hair.

"The Northmarch is starving," you say. "The crown's grain toll has doubled in two years. You can't buy grain in the south at a price your people can pay, and the river lords won't sell to an exile. My father owns the salt pans at Saltreach, the port and eleven ships. My dowry is a third of all of it. Marry me, and the grain ships sail north under the Kilbane flag, at cost, for as long as I live."

His face doesn't change. But something in his shoulders does.

"And you get?" he asks.

"Your name."

"My name," he says, "is the worst one in Aldrain."

"It's the only one the crown prince can't touch."

That lands. You see it land. His gaze goes past you, to the lit windows of the Great Hall, and comes back harder.

"Why do you need a name the prince can't touch?"

You knew he'd ask. You still aren't ready. Because he killed me. Because I tasted honey and metal and watched the cup go black. If you say it, he'll think you're mad, and he'll be kind about it, and he'll leave at dawn.

"Because if I marry Prince Auberon," you say carefully, "I'll be dead before midsummer. I can't prove it. I can't tell you how I know. I'm asking you to believe me anyway."

The silence goes on so long you hear the fountain's ice creak.

"Who else knows?" he says at last.

"No one."

"Your father?"

"My father wants me to be queen."

He nods slowly, as though that answers something. "And your friend. The one in violet who looked at you like a cat looks at a bird."

You can't help it; your breath catches. Nobody has ever seen Melisande clearly. Not even you, until a month from now.

"Especially not her," you say.

He takes a step closer. Not touching. Just closer, so you have to tip your head back.

"Here are my terms," he says. "A marriage in name. You'll have your own rooms, with a lock, and the only key. I'll never come through your door unless you ask me. If in a year you want to leave, you leave, with your dowry and my name to protect you and no one's permission needed, including mine. The grain comes north whether you stay or not." A pause. "And you tell me, whenever you're ready, who wants you dead. Not before."

You blink hard. The cold must be getting into your eyes.

"That's all?"

"That's all I'll ask. The north will ask more." Something moves at the corner of his mouth. It isn't a smile. It's where one might go. "It's cold, my lady. And poor, and far, and nobody at court will speak to you again. Think on it."

"I've thought on it."

"Think on it more."

"Your Grace." You step closer, too. Now there's almost no room between you, and his breath clouds with yours. "I've been thinking on it for longer than you'd believe."

He looks at you for a long moment. Then he says, quietly, "Torsten."

"What?"

"If you're going to marry me, you may as well use my name." He offers his arm again. "Yes, Lady Merriden. I'll marry you. Now let's go back in before your father has the guard drag me out, and before you freeze in my cloak."

"Ava," you say. "If you're going to marry me."

He says it once, low, as if he's testing whether it will hold his weight. "Ava."

The hall afterward is a blur: your father's fury hissed through his teeth, Auberon's smile that doesn't reach his eyes, Melisande clutching your hands and asking if you've lost your mind, darling, and you saying, "Maybe," and laughing too brightly. Torsten bows to you at the door at midnight and says he'll call on your father at dawn, and walks out into the snow without looking back.

Lisbet undresses you in silence. When she's gone, you sit on the edge of your bed in your shift with his fur still around your shoulders, because no one thought to take it from you, and you let yourself shake.

You did it. You changed the first thing.

Then you see the box on your dresser.

Long, flat, wrapped in crimson velvet, tied with gold cord. The Vaillant seal pressed into the wax. A card tucked under the ribbon in a looping hand you know as well as your own.

You open it with numb fingers.

Nested in white satin lies a silver cup. Chased with vines and little birds. Two lips, one for the groom and one for the bride.

The card says: For our wedding feast. A.