Morning in Aurelia arrives differently.
The light comes softer — filtered through sea mist that clings to the tower windows, turning sunrise into watercolor. The city wakes gradually beneath me, voices drifting up from the harbor in a language I understand but don't quite recognize the cadence of yet. Somewhere below, a bell rings three times in slow succession.
Different. Everything here.
Eira appears at my door precisely when she said she would, already familiar enough with the palace layout to navigate it with confidence — a skill I'm still acquiring, since the eastern tower connects to the main palace through corridors that seem designed to confuse outsiders.
"Good morning, Your Highness." Brief curtsy, then she straightens. "The seamstress is expecting us. Princess Alina will join us there."
"Of course she will."
The words come out quieter than intended, but Eira hears them anyway and something sympathetic moves across her face before she turns to lead the way.
The fitting rooms are in the western wing — naturally — and we walk through corridors lined with portraits of people I don't recognize wearing crowns I've only seen in history texts. Eira maintains appropriate distance behind me, and I'm grateful for her instinct for knowing when to fill silence.
Servants press themselves against walls and bow — deeper than they would for their own princess. Someone's given instructions about receiving me. Good. Let them look. They'll find exactly what I want them to find.
The fitting room doors stand open.
The space beyond is excessive.
Galadrian fitting rooms are practical. Good light, enough mirrors to check seams. This is different. The ceiling soars three stories high, painted with dragons in flight. Sunlight floods through floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the sea. Mirrors everywhere, framed in gold leaf. Designed to overwhelm — to make whoever stands here feel small and awed and appropriately grateful.
I step inside like I own the place.
Alina is already there, draped across a velvet settee in a way that manages to look both elegant and completely casual, like she was born knowing how to make furniture look better just by occupying it. When I enter, her expression shifts toward something like assessment before she unfolds herself and stands.
"Valeria." Not Princess or Your Highness. Just my name, testing the edges of formality. "The seamstress will be here shortly. She's very particular about timing."
"I'll try not to disrupt her schedule."
Alina's mouth curves. Point scored, though I'm not sure whose.
The seamstress arrives in a flurry of assistants and fabric samples — older than expected, grey-streaked hair pulled back severely, hands moving with the economy of someone who has spent decades doing this and stopped wasting motion years ago. She looks at me the way a sculptor looks at marble: raw material with potential.
"Your Highness." Brief curtsy. "We have much to accomplish. If you would stand here, please."
The please is decorative.
The platform sits in the center of the room, positioned so every mirror reflects it. Standing there means being visible from all directions — no hiding, no favorable angles.
Fine.
They bring out the dress.
Ivory silk. The kind that catches light like water. The bodice will require architectural support. The train needs three people to carry. Seed pearls line the neckline — weeks of hand-work, probably. The sleeves are barely there, delicate lace that will make my arms look frost-wrapped.
The most stunning thing I've seen.
I hate that I notice.
"The color suits you," Alina observes, watching with more interest than she's letting on. "Ivory instead of pure white. Good choice."
"I didn't choose it."
"No, but Mother did, and she's rarely wrong about these things." A pause, weighted. "How does it feel? Being fitted for a wedding dress to marry someone you met three days ago?"
The question lands hard.
Eira goes very still behind me. The seamstress continues pinning like she heard nothing.
"How does it feel watching it happen?" I counter, meeting Alina's eyes in the mirror.
"I asked first."
Fair.
"It feels like something happening whether I have feelings about it or not."
"Not an answer."
"The only one you're getting."
Alina studies me for a moment, then nods slightly. "The court is hosting a ball tonight. Formal introduction to the nobility. Mother thought you should know." A pause. "There's a dress in your rooms. White. You'll be expected to wear it."
Expected. Not asked.
"How considerate."
"Isn't it." Alina stands and crosses closer, stopping just near enough to make her next words feel private despite the audience. "They're going to test you tonight. The nobles. Polite about it — but testing nonetheless, trying to determine what kind of queen you'll make, whether you're worthy of their prince, if you're strong enough to hold your own in Aurelian court." A slight tilt of her head. "Thought you should know what you're walking into."
"I appreciate the warning."
"Not a warning." Her smile is small and sharp. "Information. What you do with it is your concern."
Then she's gone, leaving jasmine perfume and the uncomfortable awareness that I've just been evaluated by someone who missed nothing.
The seamstress breaks the silence. "Arms up, please, Your Highness. I need to check the sleeve placement."
I comply, watching in the mirrors as the dress takes shape — fabric transforming into armor that will make me look like I belong here, like I chose this. The bodice fits perfectly now, pulled tight enough that breathing changes. The skirt pools around my feet. The sleeves sit just off my shoulders, delicate and precise.
I look like a bride.
A bride marrying a stranger for politics. A bride in a dress that costs more than some people earn in a year, in a palace that makes her own castle look provincial, preparing to enter a court that will spend tonight deciding whether she's acceptable.
My face shows nothing in the mirror. Years of training.
The seamstress consults with her assistants. Eira examines fabric samples. No one watching.
Just for a moment, I let my expression slip.
The girl in the mirror looks alone.
Then the seamstress returns with more pins and the mask goes back on.
"The hem will need adjustment," she announces, making notes. "And I'll add additional support here —" a gesture to the bodice "— so you can breathe and move. You'll want to eat before the ceremony, which means the waist needs to accommodate that." She steps back, assessing. "Good. This will do beautifully."
"When will it be ready?"
"Three days before the ceremony, for final fitting. But you have tonight's ball to prepare for, and the dress for that is already in your chambers." A small gesture, and assistants begin the careful work of extraction. "The white gown with the open back. Very elegant. Very Aurelian."
Very revealing, she means.
Once I'm back in regular clothes — absurdly simple by comparison — Eira and I leave the fitting rooms.
"That was..." Eira begins, searching for words.
"Excessive?"
"I was going to say thorough, but yes." She falls into step beside me, close enough now to speak without being overheard. "Princess Alina seems... direct."
"She's testing me. Trying to figure out what I'm made of."
"And what will she find?"
"Whatever I decide to show her." A pause at a window overlooking the training yards — soldiers running drills with the methodical efficiency of people who do this every morning without needing to think about it. "Nothing more."
* * *
We walk for an hour. Casual exploration, technically.
Actually: reconnaissance.
The corridors are too wide for defense. Windows too large. Every surface carved or painted or inlaid — master craftsmen, years of work. Magnificent, and completely impractical for siege defense. But when you have the largest dragon force in the known world, maybe walls don't matter.
We pass through a gallery lined with portraits of previous Aurelian monarchs. I pause at each one — noting family resemblance, progression of fashion, small details suggesting which rulers were beloved versus merely tolerated. The current king's portrait hangs at the end, Queen Valencia beside him, and Ignis slightly behind — younger in the painting, but wearing the same unreadable expression he had at the banquet, at the landing, every moment since I arrived.
"He's difficult to read," Eira observes quietly.
"Yes."
Nothing more, because anything else requires admitting I've been trying and failing.
We continue until I have a working mental map of the main corridors, the quickest routes between wings, which areas carry the most traffic and which run quiet. Father's tactical training — always know your terrain, always understand the landscape, always have an exit strategy. Old habits, probably useless now.
By the time we return to the eastern tower, it's past midday and the dress Alina mentioned is waiting in my chambers, draped across the bed for maximum visual impact.
Eira's breath catches. "Oh."
Yeah.
White silk — they weren't joking about the theme. The front is modest enough, neckline passing even Mother's scrutiny. But the back has almost nothing there. The fabric drapes from the shoulders and dips low enough that most of my spine will be on display, the cut so precise it manages elegant rather than scandalous — but only just. The skirt falls straight to the floor, simple and unadorned except for how the silk catches light like liquid.
Striking and revealing and clearly chosen to make Aurelian nobility look at me and see someone worth having.
I hate that it will probably work.
"You could wear something else," Eira suggests, reading my expression.
"And give them the satisfaction of knowing they rattled me? No." My fingers run over the fabric — silk that costs more than furniture. "I'll wear what they provided. I'll look how they want. I'll smile while doing it."
"And what will you be thinking while you smile?"
The question catches me off guard. I look at her.
"That I'm here, and I'm standing, and that's enough," I say, which is almost true.
Eira doesn't push. "I'll prepare a bath. You'll want time before tonight."
She's right.
* * *
The bath helps — hot water and steam and twenty minutes of silence where I can let my guard down and simply be tired. Not physically, but the kind of exhaustion that comes from maintaining perfect composure constantly, from being watched every moment, from knowing tonight I'll be introduced to people who will smile while deciding whether I'm good enough.
When I emerge, Eira has laid out everything — dress, shoes, jewelry, all the small components that transform person into presentation.
Getting ready takes longer because the dress demands it. Eira helps with the back with quiet efficiency, and when I finally turn to the mirror —
Striking.
The white silk makes my skin look warmer by contrast, and the exposed back transforms elegant into something more — deliberately memorable, the kind of entrance that people discuss afterward. My hair is pinned up, a few strands loose at the temples. The jewelry Eira selected is minimal: thin silver chain drawing attention toward the low back, small diamond drops at my ears. Anything more would tip from striking into trying too hard.
"You look lovely, Your Highness," Eira says quietly.
"I look like someone they'll remember." More accurate.
"Those aren't mutually exclusive."
Fair point.
On the balcony, Lysara lifts her head as I step outside, eyes gleaming in the early dark.
Well, she says. They won't know what hit them.
"That's the idea."
The walk to the ballroom takes ten minutes. Every person we pass stops to look — servants and nobles alike, tracking my progress down the corridor. Word has spread about tonight's introduction, and none of them are subtle about it.
Eira maintains her position just behind me, close enough to be supportive but far enough to make clear I'm walking into this alone.
The ballroom doors stand open when we arrive, light and music and voices spilling out into the corridor. Inside — half of Aurelia's nobility in formal dress, crystal glasses, laughter that carries the particular ease of people who've been doing this their whole lives.
I stop at the threshold.
One breath. A reminder that I've done harder things. Walking into a room full of people who want to assess me is nothing compared to leaving my family at dawn, nothing compared to agreeing to this in the first place.
I step forward.
* * *
Every eye in the room turns.
I don't stop. Don't hesitate. Just keep walking — measured steps across the distance between the doorway and the center of the ballroom while my face holds the expression I've been practicing for twenty years: pleasant, composed, untouchable.
The crowd parts without being asked.
And at the end of it —
Ignis.
He's watching me. Has been watching since the moment I appeared, his attention fixed and absolute in a way that registers across the distance still between us. He's in black tonight — formal cut with silver embroidery at the cuffs that catches candlelight as he moves toward me through the parted crowd, and something about him looks less guarded than he did in the daylight hours of the journey here, or maybe it's just that the candlelight is kinder.
He stops in front of me.
Extends his hand.
Our eyes meet. Green, as always — but the look carries weight tonight, moving across my face like he's reading something he hasn't decided how to interpret yet.
I place my hand in his.
His fingers close around mine and he draws me toward him in one smooth motion, his other palm settling at my waist — just taking up the space like it was already his to occupy. The distance between us disappears. His hand makes contact with my bare back where the dress opens, skin to skin with no barrier, and warmth radiates from the touch point up my spine.
The ballroom watches. I can feel it — all that attention pressing in from every direction.
The music starts.
We move.
Each breath carries cedar and wine, closer and more saturating than the brief drift of it I'd caught at the landing. His thumb rests against my pulse at the wrist he's holding, and I concentrate very hard on not letting my heartbeat say anything I haven't decided to say.
"You're tense," he says. Quiet. Just for me.
I turn my head to look at him — a mistake, because now we're eye to eye and close enough that I can see the dark rim around his irises — and manage, "No."
"Your shoulders." The hand at my back shifts slightly, reading the tension there. "Relax."
I pull my mouth into something that might pass for a smile.
His grip adjusts — fingers spread wide across my spine, thumb settling into the hollow just above my waist, holding me exactly where he wants me. Not painful. Just present. Insistent.
We turn. The room spins gold and amber at the edges, faces blurring, and all I can focus on is the heat of his palm against my bare skin and the way his chest expands with each breath close enough that I feel it.
We're dancing too close. This isn't how formal dances work in Galadria. There's distance, propriety, space to breathe. Here, there's none of that.
His hand at my back flexes once — fingers pressing in, then releasing slightly, like he caught himself mid-thought and pulled back from wherever it was going.
"Look at me." Almost inaudible under the music.
My eyes lift before I've decided to let them.
He's already looking. He has been looking. His gaze holds mine for one long moment, and whatever he sees there makes the line of his jaw tighten, just slightly, before his hand at my back loosens by degrees — not releasing, just no longer insisting.
The final note holds. We stop. Center of the floor, his hand still against my back, his body still not far enough away.
I step back.
His grip doesn't release immediately. His fingers stay where they are for one beat, two — and then loosen and slide away from my skin, leaving cool air where there was heat.
The ballroom erupts into applause, and couples flood the floor as the next song begins.
Ignis extends his arm. I take it. We walk toward the edge where Queen Valencia and King Brennan stand watching our approach with matching expressions of satisfaction.
I curtsy while Ignis bows.
"Lovely," Valencia says, her gaze moving over me in slow assessment before returning to my face. "You dance well together."
Her smile knows more than it's saying.
Ignis's hand at my waist presses once into my spine — just his thumb, just briefly — as he leans down until his mouth is near my ear. "I'll be back shortly."
His breath is warm against my skin. Too close for the setting, for the people watching.
Then he pulls back and looks at my face, waiting.
I nod. Small. Controlled.
His grip releases and he turns and disappears into the crowd with the ease of someone who knows every person in this room and exactly how to move through them.
I watch him go.
Good performance, I think. We're both very good at this.
The music swells around me. Dancers spin past. I stand at the edge of the royal platform where Valencia and Brennan have moved off to speak with other guests, and I want nothing more than to walk out those doors and not stop until I reach the eastern tower.
Instead I stay. Smile. Watch the dancers.
Minutes pass.
Footsteps approach from my left — Alina, and behind her a young woman I don't recognize, dark-haired, with the kind of steady gaze that suggests she's been watching the room carefully and forming opinions.
"Vesper," Alina says, gesturing between us. "She's been wanting to meet you since the landing."
"High praise from someone who watched the whole thing from a window," Vesper says, without particular apology.
"And what did you conclude from your window?" I ask.
"That you didn't look at him once while you were walking away." Her mouth curves. "Which means you were very aware of him."
Accurate, and I'm not going to say so.
I turn my attention back to the dance floor, scanning the faces automatically, and —
Stop.
Ignis stands near the far windows. Two men flank him, both older, nobility based on the cut of their jackets. And beside him — close, too close — a woman with fair hair wearing a blue dress that probably cost more than my first horse, beautiful in the way that suggests it's never required effort. Her hand rests on his arm. She's half-facing the men, responding to something one of them said, but her body tilts toward Ignis in the way bodies do when they're not thinking about it.
I look away.
"Princess Valeria?"
The voice comes from behind me — male, familiar — and I turn to find Caspian approaching, reading me with that particular expression he gets when he's gauging how much he can say without causing a scene.
"Lord Caspian." The relief that moves through me is uncomplicated and real. "I'm glad you made it."
He stops beside me, close enough that his next words stay between us. "I'm not going to ask how you are. It's visible."
I turn my head to look at him. "That visible?"
"No one else will notice. You're playing the role correctly." A pause. "But I know you."
My gaze drifts, against my better judgment, back toward the far windows.
Ignis is still there. The woman has moved closer. Her hand on his arm again, her fingers light and familiar.
And then — as if he knows I'm looking, which is impossible, which is a thing I'm going to stop thinking — his eyes come directly to mine across the distance.
He doesn't look away.
The woman says something beside him. He doesn't turn toward her. Just holds my gaze with the same quality of stillness he brought to the courtyard on my first night, that careful, measuring look that gives nothing back and takes everything in.
I break contact first. Look at Caspian.
"Tomorrow," Caspian says quietly. "Afternoon. Let's talk."
"All right."
"Smile," he murmurs — and then he's gone, dissolving into the crowd before I can respond, which is probably intentional.
Vesper and Alina are still beside me, speaking to each other in the low, practiced way of people who've spent years having private conversations in public rooms. I catch fragments — didn't expect and surprisingly well — before someone new peels away from the crowd and comes toward us.
Tall. Fair-haired. A smile that arrives easily and stays a beat too long, the kind that reads as genuine until you've spent enough time around people who've rehearsed theirs.
He says something to Alina and Vesper in passing — familiar, easy, the shorthand of people who've known each other a long time — and then turns to me like that was always where he was headed.
"Andrea." He extends his hand. "And you're Princess Valeria. Obviously."
"Obviously." I take it briefly. "Subtlety seems scarce tonight."
He laughs — short, surprised, like he'd braced for something more careful. "You're the most interesting thing that's happened in Aurelia in months. Hard to be subtle about that."
"Interesting," I say. "That's a diplomatic word for it."
"Would you prefer another?"
"I'd prefer to know something about the room I'm standing in. Everyone here seems to have formed opinions about me already. The balance feels off."
Something shifts in his expression — a small recalibration, the same quiet reassessment I'd seen move across Alina's face in the fitting room, like he'd prepared for a different kind of conversation and is privately revising his approach. His gaze moves past me toward the ballroom, scanning with the ease of someone who knows every face in it.
"Prince Ignis has found company," he observes, and there's something measured in the way he says it, like he's offering information and waiting to see what I do with it.
I follow his gaze before I can stop myself.
Ignis is still near the far windows, the two older men still flanking him, and the fair-haired woman has moved closer in the time since I last looked — close enough that her hand rests against his chest now, fingers spread over the silver embroidery at his lapel with the ease of someone who's done it before and doesn't think twice about doing it again.
I look back at Andrea. "And she is?"
"Octavia Senne." He says it carefully, watching my face. "Old family. Good standing in court." A pause weighted with something he hasn't decided whether to say. "She and Ignis have a history. Though I'm sure you've already gathered that."
I hadn't gathered it. I'd suspected something — the angle of her body toward him, the familiarity in how she touched his arm — but suspected and knowing are different things, and knowing lands differently than suspecting does.
"History," I repeat, keeping my voice light. "Most people have some."
"Most people's history doesn't attend their engagement balls."
My glass is empty. I don't remember finishing it.
Across the room, through the shifting bodies of dancers and the soft blur of candlelight, Ignis's gaze finds mine with the directness of someone who knew exactly where I was. Octavia says something beside him, tilting her head toward his shoulder, and he doesn't turn toward her. Just holds my gaze with that steady, unreadable quality he brings to everything — measuring, patient, giving nothing back.
I'm the one who looks away.
"Appearances can be misleading," Andrea says, and I realize he's been watching this exchange with quiet attention, filing it away behind that easy smile.
"They usually are," I agree, and turn to Vesper and Alina. "Good night."
Then I'm moving — one foot and then the other, the same measured pace I'd used walking in because the room is still watching and I won't give it the satisfaction of seeing me leave any faster than I arrived. The crowd parts around me. The music swells and then fades as I reach the doors, and the corridor beyond opens up cool and quiet and blessedly empty.
My heels strike marble. Each step echoes a little too loudly in the silence.
I keep walking.
* * *
The corridor is quieter than the ballroom — cool marble and the distant sound of music fading behind me. I let my breath out slowly. Just a few more turns and I reach the tower stairs.
"Princess Valeria."
I turn.
Ignis is crossing the corridor toward me — not hurrying, but purposeful, the way he moves through every space as though he already knows exactly where everything in it is.
He stops. Closer than courtesy requires.
"Why are you leaving early?"
"I stayed long enough."
His gaze moves across my face — reading the way he does everything — with the patience of someone who's never in a hurry to reach a conclusion. "Did something happen?"
"No. Everything is fine." The words come out level. "You should get back to your guests."
I turn.
His hand closes around my wrist — not hard, not demanding, just — there. Stopping me.
"The man you were speaking with," he says. "The one who stood close."
I look at him over my shoulder. "Lord Caspian. He's been a friend of my family for years."
Something works in his jaw. A muscle tightening and releasing. "You looked relieved to see him."
"I was." I face him fully. "He's the only person in that room who knows me."
The words land somewhere. I watch them land — watch his expression do the thing it does, that controlled minimal shift that in anyone else might be nothing and in him means something is happening underneath.
"He knows you," he says. Quiet.
"I know how you take up space in a room. That's not the same thing."
He doesn't answer immediately. Just looks at me with that particular quality of attention — the kind that makes it hard to remember what you were going to say next.
"The woman by the windows," I say, before I've decided to. " Octavia .Who is she?"
His jaw sets. " Someone I knew before."
"She doesn't seem to be aware it's past tense."
"What she's aware of isn't my concern."
"It looked like your concern from where I was standing."
A beat of quiet. The music from the ballroom drifts faintly down the corridor between us.
"I didn't invite her," he says finally — not explaining, exactly, more like he's correcting a record he wants to be accurate. "I don't have any interest in what she came here for."
I look at him for a moment.
"Okay," I say.
He blinks. Whatever he was preparing for, it wasn't that.
"Okay," I say again, and mean it, which surprises me almost as much as it seems to surprise him.
The quiet between us shifts — less charged than a moment ago, but not gone. Nothing is ever quite gone with him; it just changes shape.
"Tomorrow," he says. "We talk. Properly."
I pull my wrist free. He lets me.
"Goodnight, Ignis."
"Goodnight, Valeria."
I turn and walk toward the tower stairs, and I don't look back, and I count each step because counting gives my mind something to do other than replay the way he said my name.
* * *
The tower is quiet. The balcony doors are open, sea air moving through the room, carrying brine and the faint scent of the flowering trees that line the harbor road.
Lysara is on the rail, watching me with eyes that have already drawn their own conclusions.
"He watched me the whole time I was dancing with him," I say finally. "Not the room. Not the guests. Me."
The balcony is quiet for a moment.
I know, Lysara says. Sorin told me.
I tip my head back against the bed frame and look at the ceiling.
And the woman?
"Octavia. Someone from before." I pause. "He said he has no interest in her. He said it like he wanted me to believe it."
Do you?
The question sits in the air.
"I don't know," I say honestly. "I don't know enough about him yet to know when he's telling the truth."
You know more than you're letting yourself admit.
Maybe. Probably. But knowing someone looks at you a certain way and knowing what that look means are two different things, and I've only been here three days, and the ground beneath me hasn't stopped shifting since I left Galadria.
"I'm going to sleep," I tell her.
She makes a sound that means she has more to say and is choosing not to say it.
"Whatever it is, tell me tomorrow."
Fine, she says. Sleep, then.
I change out of the white dress with careful attention, hanging it properly even though part of me wants to fold it into a drawer and not look at it again. I get into bed. I lie in the dark and listen to the sea coming through the open balcony doors.
Tomorrow, he said.
Properly.
I close my eyes.
The cord on my wrist settles against my pulse — brown and gold, the small pale stone — and I think about mountains visible on a clear morning, and count the sound of the waves until sleep comes.