Evelyne’s eyes narrowed. “If they test us anyway, then we remind them that we may dress for peace, but we are not unarmed. We have the largest army; we have nothing to fear.”
He gave a small grunt of approval, studying her over the rim of his cup.
“Who would’ve thought I’d be marrying you off to Varantia, of all places?” he murmured with a dry huff. “From rival to ally—our ever-charming neighbors.”
Evelyne tilted her head.
“Polished, talkative,” he continued. “They’ll spill half the kingdom’s secrets over a bottle of wine and a well-placed compliment.”
“And we’ll pretend not to listen,” she remarked, “while writing it all down.”
“Still,” Rhaedor added, fingers drumming lightly against the carved armrest, “they are not our enemy. Nor our kin.”
“No,” Evelyne agreed softly. “But they’re what we need. And we are what they fear.”
“You know,” he admitted after a pause, “I nearly turned them down.”
That drew her eyebrows up. “Truly?”
“Mm.” He leaned back. “Their prince may be golden, but their grain is the only thing keeping half the southern coast from starving. And there are whispers about him. About both of them—him and that old raven of a grandfather. Constantly poking holes where things ought to stay sealed.”
Evelyne reached for the platter, adding a few spoonfuls of food to her plate she had no intention of eating. The motion gave her hands purpose while her mind worked.
“You mean… forbidden arts?”
“Yes. Enough to make certain allies nervous. Enough to make me wary.”
“And yet you agreed.”
“Because we need grain more than comfort. And because I’d rather have the prince close than guessing his motives from a continent away.”
She hesitated. “So, you offer me, as the cost of insight.”
He didn’t flinch. “I offer you because I trust you’ll see what others won’t. And because they won’t expect that of an Edrathen’s bride.”
Something turned in her stomach. He had ruled with quiet severity, his wives soft-voiced and ornamental, fading into thecastle drapery. He had never treated a woman as an equal in court, not once asked Ysara’s counsel. Yet now he offered her not only permission but expectation.
Evelyne finished loading her plate to full, then turned her head and caught Isildeth’s gaze. The maid gave a near-imperceptible nod and rose to begin their quiet ritual. She would take the plate under the familiar pretense that Evelyne would finish her meal in her chambers.
But it wouldn’t go there.
Three times a day, the food was carried elsewhere—down the winding halls and out the servants’ wing, to the kitchens and out again, where a child might smile over something still warm. It wasn’t much. She didn’t have the power to send packages or casks of flour. But it was something.
She glanced back to her father just as Isildeth vanished behind the dining room doors. “Let’s hope they’re as careless as their wine-soaked conversations suggest.”
“This alliance is the most consequential act our house has taken since King Adravan signed the Treaty of Ashenfell, in the final days of the Sundering,” he said, his voice lower now. “Trade routes are failing. Famine creeps from the borderlands. We can’t afford pride.”
He rested one hand on the table, the light catching in the deep lines of his knuckles. “People held on to crumbs of what was left—fragments of cities, scraps of trade, pieces of the old laws. We’ve survived thousands of years because our people believed in order.”
He exhaled slowly, eyes still on the horizon. “But it’s not enough anymore. War is brewing again in the west. We sign trade agreements one month and watch them dissolve the next. The Council ofThirteen,” he knocked on the table, “in Rhuhn’Fjel stopped all fish shipments to Zharesh over a singleborder skirmish. It collapsed their market in a week and left three provinces starving.”
She dabbed at her mouth with the linen napkin. “I know. That’s why we’re trading grain for iron.”
“And for what it’s worth…” Rhaedor hesitated, afterward added in a voice so rarely touched by warmth it startled her, “You are the finest envoy I could have sent.”
Evelyne did not smile.
He had said something similar the last time—when she’d been sewn into another alliance. Only then, it had been about coins, not crops. Dasmon had been the ideal match on parchment. And still, he had bled like anyone else.
