Three days since I told Father yes. Three days of letters flying between our estate and Dimgrove, of servants polishing silver that hasn't seen daylight in a decade, of the house lurching into motion around me like a machine I started and cannot stop.
Claire, the seamstress Father hired from the village, has her mouth full of pins and her hands full of my waist, and she will not stop talking about how fortunate I am. A queen. Imagine. The Winthrope girl, a queen.
I stand on a wooden block in the morning room while she measures me for a gown I did not ask for, in a color I was not consulted on, for a man I've met twice and felt nothing for either time. The pins scratch my ribs through the muslin. I don't flinch. Flinching requires caring, and I am fresh out.
"Arms up, my lady. We'll need to take the bodice in—you've lost weight." Claire's eyes flick to my face with careful pity. "The silk arrived from Dimgrove this morning. Gold thread, Erdor's crest. It'll be stunning."
Stunning. I will be stunning for Alastair—pleasant, polite Alastair, who made perfectly adequate conversation at the harvest summit and whose face I cannot quite recall without effort.
Jasper once told me he'd build me a house with seven gardens. I didn't need gold thread from Dimgrove. I needed a kitchen table and a boy who thought I was worth growing old beside.
"The neckline will sit here—" Claire traces a line across my collarbone with a chalk-dusted finger, "—and the sleeves will be fitted to the elbow, then belled. Very fashionable at court this season.”
"And the veil?" Margaret hovers in the doorway with lace samples. "His Majesty's letter specified a pearl crown, traditional Erdor style."
"Of course it did." I hold my arms out while Claire pins the sleeve. "Did his letter also specify how I should breathe, or is that still at my discretion?"
Margaret's face crumples. Claire's pins pause. They don't deserve my bitterness—they're just doing what Father asked, dressing the doll for the market. "I'm sorry. That was unkind. The pearl crown will be lovely, Margaret."
She nods, blinking too fast, and retreats. Claire resumes pinning in tactful silence. Through the window, the eastern road stretches bare beyond the gate, same as yesterday, same as always.
I look because I can't stop looking. Because hope is a weed through flagstone, and I am a fool who still believes they got the name wrong, and—
Hoofbeats. My body goes rigid. Not the measured trot of a messenger—a desperate, flat-out gallop.
A horse tears through the gate, lathered and heaving. The rider swings down before the animal stops—battered armor, exhausted precision—and pulls off his helmet.
Brown hair damp with sweat. That scar on his upper lip from the wooden sword when we were twelve. Brown-green eyes scanning the courtyard until they find my window. Jasper. Alive.
I'm off the block before Claire can grab me. Pins scatter across the floor. Muslin tears. And then I am running—barefoot down the corridor and through the kitchen and across the courtyard gravel with my shift above my knees, because dignity is for women who haven't just watched the dead come home.
He sees me coming. His face crumples and opens at the same time, like a fist unclenching after years. He steps forward, arms lifting, and I slam into him so hard his armor rings and he staggers back before catching us both.
"You're alive." I'm sobbing and hitting his chestplate and grabbing fistfuls of leather and pressing my face into the hollow of his throat where the armor doesn't reach and his pulse hammers against my lips. "You absolute bastard, you're alive—"
"I'm here." His voice cracks clean in half. Arms locked around me, one hand cradling my skull, the other banded across my back so tight my ribs creak. He's shaking—the great terrifying knight, shaking like a leaf—and his face is buried in my hair.
He keeps saying it. I'm here, I'm here. Like a prayer he's afraid to stop, like the words are the only thing holding him together, and I grip him tighter because they might be the only thing holding me together too.
I wrench back and grab his face. Stubble scrapes my palms. Road dust on his cheeks, eyes red-rimmed and wet, and he leans into my hands like a man who hasn't been touched kindly in five years. My chest splits open at that thought.
"Tell me you're real." My thumbs press his cheekbones hard enough to leave marks. "Tell me this isn't grief playing tricks."
"I'm real." He covers my hands with his, holds them against his jaw. "They didn't wait long enough to send that letter. I was unconscious on the field—rode the moment I found out. Didn't sleep. Didn't stop."
"Three weeks." The words tear out ragged. "I lay on your cot in the stables and I couldn't breathe, and every future I'd built in my head—" My voice shatters. The cottage. The table. The four words I never said.
His whole body flinches. He pulls me against his chest, chin on my head, jaw working. "I'm sorry. I would have done anything to get here sooner."
"You're here now." I fist my hands in his armor straps. "You're warm and breathing and your heart is beating against my face and you are permanently, explicitly forbidden from dying. Ever. Do you understand me?"
Something between a laugh and a sob escapes him. His fingers curl into the hair at my nape. "Understood. Explicitly forbidden."
I pull back, wipe my face with my wrist, and reach beneath the muslin for the dagger. Hold it up between us. His breath catches, color flooding his face—a blush climbing through road dust, absurdly sweet on a man in armor.
"I found this in your cot. Wrapped in a letter you never finished." I press the blade flat against his chestplate. "You faced armed men, but my bedroom door defeated you."
His mouth twists. "You were always more dangerous than armed men." His fingers settle over mine on the hilt, warm through the glove. "You kept it."
"It warmed me." Steel catches winter light. "The only thing that could." For a moment we stand there, his hand over mine, and the courtyard is quiet.
The manor doors open. Father's boots on stone. Jasper steps back instantly—spine locking, face blank, soldier replacing the boy in one practiced motion. "Sir Jasper." Father's voice carries thick across the courtyard.
Jasper bows. "My lord." Father crosses to him, studies his face, then grips his shoulder with white knuckles—gripping like the boy might vanish again.
"You look better than dead, boy." The roughness gives him away. "Welcome home."
"Thank you, my lord." Jasper's throat bobs. Father clears his own, glances at me—barefoot, tear-streaked, standing in torn muslin—and has the extraordinary grace not to comment.
"Eat, wash, then come to my study." He turns back toward the manor. Jasper stays rigid, but his hand flexes at his side.
I watch him in the winter light. The scars, the breadth of him, the simple miracle of his chest rising and falling. If he's alive, then the cottage isn't a fantasy. The kitchen table isn't a dream. The four words aren't wasted.
And the wedding dress upstairs—the gold thread, the pearl crown with its traditional veil—that is a problem I can solve.
I tighten my grip on the dagger until the hilt bites my palm. For the first time in three weeks, what's behind me matters less than what's standing right in front of me. I can fix this. I can change everything.
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