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“Political utility. Stable bloodline. No immediate claim upon Morwen’thir territory.”

“Temperament?”

“Capable of understanding rank.”

Sarveth inclines her head. “I will have the record prepared.”

She leaves.

The door closes behind her with a soft wooden thud.

I return to the window. Darkness gathers early over the ridge, swallowing Lowtown first and climbing toward the stronghold. Servants move through the courtyard below, lighting lamps along the covered walkways. The walls I built and strengthened stand firm against the winter.

Varrus calls them evidence of decline.

He wants me dragged into a contest shaped by his values. Martial display. Public fury. Blood offered to the Warrior before an audience eager for spectacle.

I will not give him the response he expects.

The three names on my desk offer the beginning of a counterattack. Trade pressure will divide his allies. Court influence will restrict his access to the king. His boundary dispute will occupy his attention.

None of those measures closes the weakness he has exposed.

I have treated marriage as an inconvenience because it has never been necessary. Varrus has made necessity public. Every delay now strengthens his claim that House Morwen’thir lacks a future.

The choice is no longer whether I want a wife.

The choice is which marriage best protects my house, produces an heir, and deprives Varrus of his most effective weapon.

I place my ringed hand against the cold window glass and look toward the roads leading south.

The marriage question can no longer be ignored.

3

FIONA

Nessa straightens a row of imported spices that no one in Lowtown can afford.

She lifts each glass jar, wipes its base with the corner of her apron, and returns it to the narrow shelf behind her stall. Red powder from the southern plains. Pale yellow curls of dried bark from the eastern valleys. Black seeds from a coast most humans at Vesper’s Peak will never see.

The jars are beautiful.

They have also remained untouched since the last merchant caravan arrived.

Nessa adjusts the red powder for the third time.

“You’re going to wear a groove in the shelf,” I say.

“It’s crooked.”

“It wasn’t crooked the first two times.”

She turns it by the width of a fingernail. “Now it’s correct.”

Light-brown hair escapes the pins at the back of her head and curls around her flushed face. She normally tucks loose strands away whenever she serves a customer. Today, she appears not to notice them.

Her hands return to the ledger lying open on the counter.