The fitting room smells of starched linen and the particular exhaustion of being told things you already know, and when Eira and I finally step into the corridor I feel my shoulders drop before I've decided to let them. The morning has been long. There's still a pin somewhere in the back of my hair that I forgot to take out.
We're halfway down the main corridor when I see him.
Ignis is coming from the other end, flanked by two men who are speaking to him with the focused urgency of people who believe the conversation is important. The corridor is wide and the morning light comes through the high windows at a low angle, long and pale, and for a moment I see his silhouette before his face — the line of his shoulders, that unhurried pace that never seems to have anywhere it needs to be faster.
He sees me the same moment I see him.
I keep my expression where it is. I keep my pace where it is. Beside me, Eira's gaze cuts to me for a half second — just long enough to ask a question she doesn't say aloud — and I don't answer it. The two men are still talking. Ignis is still listening, or looking like he is, but his eyes haven't moved from me and we both know it.
When we're close enough, I glance at him and give him the small nod you give someone you know in a corridor when you're not stopping, and I keep walking.
"Princess Valeria."
His voice, behind me.
I turn. Not fast — calibrated, the kind of turn that gives nothing away — and he's stopped. The two men are still there for a moment, and then Ignis says something to them at a register I can't catch from here, and they move off down the corridor with the speed of people who've been quietly dismissed.
I glance at Eira. She's already stepping back, finding a reason to be somewhere else, which is the most useful thing about Eira.
I walk toward him.
"Did something happen?" I ask, when I reach him.
He reads me. "Why did you just walk past me?"
"I was walking past you," I say, which is not an answer, and he knows it.
His hand finds mine — not a question, just his fingers closing around my wrist — and he draws me closer, one step, until I have to look up to hold his gaze. His other hand settles at the small of my back.
"Are you avoiding me?"
"No," I say, and I'm smiling before I've decided to, which is its own kind of answer.
He watches me for a moment. Then his gaze moves down the corridor, considering the doors on either side, and I can see him making a calculation — which one, whether it's unlocked — and the speed of it is faintly unsettling, like he's catalogued the building without particularly trying.
He takes my hand and walks.
The third door opens. We go in.
* * *
The room is small and clearly not used often — the air has that quality of rooms where someone occasionally comes to retrieve something and then leaves. Old paintings on the walls, dark and formal, men on horseback and women in high collars. A row of bookshelves along one wall. Two chairs and a narrow sofa with velvet cushions gone flat at the seat. The light comes from a single high window, the kind that was meant for air more than visibility, and it throws a stripe of pale morning sun across the floor that doesn't reach either of us.
The door clicks shut behind us.
I'm still looking at the paintings when Ignis turns me toward him — his hand at my jaw first, light, just enough — and then his mouth is on mine and there's nothing measured about it, nothing chosen, just the pressure of someone who's been keeping something back and has decided to stop, and the door is solid at my back and his hand is in my hair and my hands go to his chest without my deciding, and I lean into him because that's what you do when you know how this goes.
The taste of him. The sound of my own pulse.
I try to keep up. I don't know if I manage it.
When we finally surface, his forehead drops against mine and we both need a moment.
"I came to your room this morning," he says, still catching his breath. "You weren't there."
"Fittings start early," I tell him. My voice is doing something. I adjust it. "I didn't know you were coming."
"I didn't know your schedule started that early." His hand moves from my waist, down, and the contact makes my breath shift. "That's apparently my fault."
"Apparently," I say.
He looks at me with that expression I've learned is him finding something funnier than he's going to let show. "Did you sleep well?"
"Very well," I say. "Extremely well. I slept perfectly."
His thumb presses into my hip. "That'll change."
The warmth that moves through me is abrupt and thorough, and I kiss him before I've finished deciding to — not soft, not asking — and he responds the way he always does when I start things, which is immediately and completely, his arms pulling me against him until there's no angle to work with, his mouth opening against mine, and I pull him closer by the lapel because I want to, not because I don't know what else to do.
When we pull back, both of us need a moment.
I trace my thumb across his lower lip and he bites down on it, lightly, not quite gently. I watch him and he watches me and we're both doing a poor job of looking unaffected.
"I can't stand not seeing you," he says.
He said it plainly, without softening it, and it lands that way. I take in the set of his face to make sure I heard it correctly. He meets my gaze without flinching.
"Don't look at me like that," he says.
"How am I looking at you?"
He doesn't answer. He presses his lips to my neck instead — slow, placed exactly at the point where neck meets shoulder — and I feel it travel up to my jaw and I go still and let it.
"You changed your perfume," he says, against my skin.
"It's new," I say. "I got it last week."
He lifts his head. "The first night we met, you were wearing rose and jasmine." He holds my gaze with the steadiness of someone who has checked this information and is confident in it. "Since you arrived here, it's been different every day."
I take that in. I genuinely don't know what to say.
"You were also wearing cedar and smoke," I say, finally, and I lean in toward his ear — rising onto my toes because the height difference requires it — "and I spent the rest of that dinner trying not to notice, which did not work."
Ignis pulls back enough to see my face. "You noticed."
"I noticed," I say. "I also noticed you watching me for approximately the entire meal, which you might have been less obvious about."
His face caught — pleased about it, not hiding that. He takes my hand and draws me toward the sofa, settling into it and pulling me into his lap in one motion, and I catch myself against his shoulder as my balance adjusts. His hand goes to my hair and moves through it slowly, not pulling, just present.
"Dinner tonight?" he says. "Just us."
I turn and press my lips to his cheek — the line of his jaw just forward of his ear. "Yes," I say, against his skin.
His hand slides from my back beneath the hem of my dress and finds the skin above it, warm against warm, and the contrast of that — his palm, my spine — makes my breath change. I feel my pulse adjust. I bring my mouth to his neck and I take my time about it.
The sound he makes is low and involuntary. I feel it more than hear it, a shift in his throat under my lips, and for a half second he goes very still. Then: "Don't," he says. "You're going to start something neither of us can finish right now."
I lift my head. There's color along his cheekbones. I feel mildly terrible about this, which is to say I don't feel terrible at all.
"A few more days," he says, his gaze dropping to my mouth and then returning. "Then you can do whatever you want."
I lean toward his ear. "Don't set expectations you can't meet," I say, just above a whisper.
He laughs — an actual one, short and surprised — and his hands tighten on me for a moment, and then he bites down lightly on my shoulder, through the fabric, and I pull back.
"Did you just—"
His face is completely composed. I have no idea how.
I put my palm over the dimple on his left cheek — I know where it is now, it's become a habit — and let it sit there for a moment. He goes still under my hand. I look at the room over his shoulder, properly this time: the men on horseback in their heavy frames, the books spine-out along the shelves, a small table with a dusty glass on it.
"I want to come back to this room," I say, and I look at him sideways and let him work out the rest of it himself.
He does. I watch him get there.
"What are you thinking about?" he says.
"You'll find out when the time comes," I say, and I hold his gaze and don't blink.
He goes still. Then: "You're doing that on purpose."
"Maybe," I say. "Are you complaining?"
"Never," he says, and his arms tighten around me.
I pull my lower lip between my teeth and lean in until there's about two inches between his mouth and mine, and I look at his lips, and then I look up at his eyes, and I say, "Beautiful," quietly, like a verdict.
He stares at me.
A flush runs up his throat.
"You're red," I tell him, delighted.
He tips me onto my back on the sofa in one smooth motion and kisses me thoroughly, and I feel the full weight of him settle along my side and my body registers it before my mind does — not alarm, not resistance, the opposite of both — and my hand finds the curve of his jaw and stays there. After a while there's no tracking of where anything is, just warmth and pressure and his breath against my neck between intervals.
When we eventually come apart, he rests his forehead against mine and we breathe in the same rhythm, slowly, until our lungs catch up.
We sit up.
"You're unbelievable," he says, looking at me.
"Why?" I ask.
"Because you have no idea what you do," he says.
I put my hand on his hip as I stand, and I press it there for a moment as I move toward the door. "I haven't done anything yet," I say, over my shoulder.
He stares at me. "You are extremely dangerous."
I look back at him, hand on the door. "Maybe." I let him sit with that. "Only to you, though."
He catches my wrist. "Maybe?" His voice has dropped. "Only to you?"
"Only to you," I say, and I meet his gaze and don't look away.
He looks at me for a long moment. Then: "Don't say things like that to me."
"Are you jealous?"
He moves before I've finished the question — one step, and then I'm against the wall and his hand is flat beside my head and he's looking at me from very close. "You don't want to see it," he says.
"The Octavia situation," I say, while his hand moves to rest against my chest, fingers light, "was one where I, notably, didn't react the way you're reacting right now. Which I think makes your response somewhat more interesting than mine."
His jaw tightened for a moment, then released. "She won't do that again," he says.
"It doesn't concern me," I say, and I step sideways and put my hand on the door handle.
His hand closes around mine on the handle. "What do you mean, it doesn't concern you?"
I hold his gaze. "Are you expecting me to keep track of the women you've been with?"
"You think there were so many," he says, and his face closes — the warmth gone out of it, the line of his mouth flat.
"It doesn't matter," I say. I meet his gaze, even. "Does it?"
He watches me. He doesn't answer, which is an answer.
I turn back, and I put my arm around his waist. "Are we going to argue about this?" I say.
A beat. "Tell me what you think of me," he says.
I meet his eyes. "Good things," I say. "When I set the reputation aside."
"The reputation," he repeats, flat.
I reach up and I kiss him — not careful, not soft, the full weight of the choice behind it — and I feel the tension in his frame, all of it, every braced muscle, and then he kisses back and the tension starts to go.
"You don't trust me," he says, when we break apart.
"I want to," I say. "That's different."
He watches me with the focus he gets when he's decided something, then wraps his arms around me and presses his mouth to my hair and holds it there. I let him. I put my hands at his sides and stand there in the dim light of the unused room and feel his heartbeat through his ribs.
I pull back far enough to read his face. "You got angry fast," I say. "I wasn't expecting that."
"You do that," he says. "Everything changes when you're involved."
I take that in, genuinely uncertain what to do with it. Then I lean in and set my lips to his jaw, just below his ear, and hold it there for a breath.
"Is that good or bad?" I ask.
"I don't know," he says.
I ease back and find his gaze, and he's looking at me directly, and I think about the first dinner, him watching me across the table, and I think about the fact that he knew which perfume I was wearing on which day, and I think: I probably should have understood this earlier.
"You should have figured that out from the way you watched me at that first dinner," I say.
"You like making this difficult," he says.
"Maybe," I say, and I hold his gaze, and I blink once, slowly, on purpose.
He watches me. "You have a meeting. You said so."
"And you have one too," I say. "Don't you?"
"I think about you through all of them," he says, and he holds my gaze, and the statement is so direct I don't quite know what to do with it.
"Tonight," I tell him, and I squeeze his hand once, and I open the door.
He's still there, in the corridor, watching. I glance back.
"Come sleep with me tonight," he says, with the expression of someone making a reasonable request.
"No," I say.
"We'd just sleep," he says. "Nothing would happen unless you wanted it to."
"After the ceremony," I tell him. "A few more days."
He looks at me. "I won't push," he says.
"Good," I say, and I take his hand and walk toward the door at the end of the corridor, and I push it open, and Queen Valencia is standing on the other side.
* * *
For one full second, nobody moves.
Queen Valencia's gaze travels from Ignis's hand in mine to my face and back again with the quiet efficiency of someone who has processed many things she wasn't expecting. The people with her have already stepped back — she looked at them, probably, I didn't see it — and now it's the three of us in the widened corridor and the light here is brighter, more open, the kind that doesn't offer much in the way of cover.
I release Ignis's hand.
The reflex happens before I've decided to let it — five years of training and then another year of learning to be invisible, all of it arriving at once — and I step back and incline my head to Queen Valencia the appropriate amount.
Ignis takes my hand back.
He does it without looking at me, without hurrying, just reaches out and closes his fingers around mine, his grip certain, proprietary. I watch the side of his face. He's looking at his mother.
"Did you forget," Queen Valencia says, with the pleasantness of someone who hasn't forgotten anything, "that this is a political arrangement?"
I start to step sideways, toward space, and Ignis draws me back in without apparent effort. "You're the one making the arrangement," he says to her. "We're just the ones in it."
I watch him. I genuinely cannot believe he just said that.
Then I turn to Queen Valencia, expecting something sharp, and find instead that she's taking me in — with an attention that isn't hostile but is thorough — and the slight smile on her face is not quite warm and not quite cold and tells me nothing useful.
"Try not to cause anything dramatic before the ceremony," she says, pleasantly, and her gaze moves over me one more time in the assessing way I've seen diplomats look at unfamiliar territory. "The rest is our responsibility."
Ignis: "Is everything ready?"
"A few more days," she says, dry at the edges, and then she's moving away down the corridor with the particular economy of someone who never wastes steps.
I watch her go.
Then I find Ignis.
"I cannot believe," I say.
"She's my mother," he says. "Of course I talked to her like that."
"She told us to wait a few more days," I say. "Are you aware of what she just said? Because she said it in front of me."
"What's wrong with that?" he says, and he genuinely seems to find this unremarkable.
I turn and pull my hand free and start down the corridor at a pace that suggests I have somewhere to be. He follows.
"Why are you panicking?" he says, behind me.
"I am not panicking," I say. "I have a session to get to."
"You're walking very quickly for someone who isn't panicking."
"Goodbye," I say.
"What did I do?" he says.
"What you said to her," I say, not stopping.
"It's true," he says. "She is arranging it. We are in it."
"That's not—" I stop and turn to him. "That's not the point."
He watches me, brow up, his mouth somewhere between puzzled and entertained, and I want to say something comprehensive about court behavior and the difference between what's true and what you say to your mother in front of the person you're about to marry, but I don't have the words for it right now and my heart is going faster than I'd like, so instead I just hold his gaze for one more second and then I turn and walk.
At the bend in the corridor, I check behind me.
He's still there. Standing exactly where I left him, not following, just watching me go, and the corridor is long and his face is too far to read clearly but I can see that he hasn't moved and I can see that he isn't looking anywhere else.
I stick my tongue out at him.
There's a pause. Then he moves — barely, just enough — and I turn back around and keep walking and I am smiling and I cannot stop it.
* * *
When I'm far enough from everything, I stop.
My pulse is going faster than I've been giving it credit for. I press my hand to the side of my face and feel the warmth there — from the corridor, from the room, from whatever that was — and I stand still in the quiet end of the passageway and breathe.
The window here looks over the south garden. I push it open and the outside air comes in cool and immediate — soil and jasmine and something green underneath both of them, faint and real. I close my eyes for one breath and just take it in.
When I open them, a gardener is moving along one of the far paths below, not looking up. There's a bed of something purple along the lower wall. The harbor is just visible past the garden's edge, pale in the morning light.
I put my hand back against my face and feel the heat still sitting there, and I don't try to make it go away. I'm standing here smiling in an empty corridor and I'm aware of it and I'm not doing anything about it and that, I think, is new.