He finished the third clause.
I looked up.
The magic let me read them, now. I saw the English overlay, as if the silver letters had unfurled a second set of wings, invisible until you knew what to look for.
I will not wear another’s face in your presence.
I will not take a shape to please you.
I will speak my own thoughts and never echo yours.
I will provide for you, defend you, clothe you, feed you, and refuse, on your behalf, every other appetite of mine.
I will not envy you.
Each clause, as it completed, sealed itself with a small vertical sigil at the end. The sigil was not a period, not a full stop, but a stamp of something deeper—an icon that looked like a stylized eye, or a small flame, or a wound. Each time he wrote the sigil, it flared bright silver and cooled, hard as solder, into the page.
He paused at the end of the sixth line.
He set the stylus down.
He looked at me.
“This is the Sovereign’s side of the bond,” he said. The voice was low, steady. “It is what I promise. Not what I command.”
He let that sit, the way he let every word sit, until the air had time to absorb it.
He picked up the stylus again.
This time, he wrote slower.
He wrote each word as if he was reading it from my face, the way a person might copy a poem out of a book he has only just discovered. The ink, when it came this time, was not silver.
It was gold.
She will eat at every meal I lay before her.
She will sleep when I tell her to sleep.
She will not deflect my praise.
She will not minimize her work.
She will wear her own face in my court.
She will, on my command, look at her own reflection until she can hold her own gaze.
Each clause, when it sealed, stamped itself with a gold sigil at the end. The sigil was different every time. The first looked like a stylized mouth; the second, a closed eye; the third, a crown. I watched them burn into the page, watched the gold run and cool, watched the surface of the parchment take them in as though it had been starving for this.
He paused when he finished the last Sovereign clause.
He did not look up at me right away.
He set the stylus down, and the bone of it clicked against the table in a sound I knew instantly I would remember until the end of my days.
He put his hands flat to the table again, bracketing my body.
He leaned in, but not to my face.
