Arthur looks like something the night chewed up and decided wasn't worth swallowing. He is standing exactly where I left him—back to the wall, hands behind him, jaw set in stone.
The only evidence that hours have passed is the bruised darkness beneath his eyes and the way his collar sits wrong, like he gripped it at some point and forgot to smooth it back.
I step into the corridor and his gaze finds the marks on my throat before it finds my face. Teeth-shaped, turning violet above my collarbone, visible above the neckline I didn't bother adjusting.
The bruises on my wrists sit like twin bracelets beneath the silver band—Desmond's fingerprints in purple, framing his claim in color. I don't cover them, because covering them would be a performance, and I am fresh out of performances.
"The consort is permitted daily exercise on the grounds." If either of us acknowledges what his face is doing right now, something in this corridor will shatter and neither of us will survive the shrapnel. "Walk with me?"
He nods once and falls into step beside me. We pass through the eastern corridor in silence so complete I can hear his boot leather creak, and neither of us fills it, because there is nothing to say about last night that our bodies are not already screaming into the space between us.
The outer wall catches morning wind off the valley—cold, sharp, tasting of pine and wet stone. Below us, the Obsidian Reach spreads in dark timber and darker stone, beautiful the way a blade is beautiful.
"The court has fourteen seated noble houses," Arthur says, and his voice has the careful flatness of a man choosing solid ground. Presumably to fill the silence, although he doesn’t seem like the type. More likely—to help me survive whatever this is.
"Nine opposed the marriage publicly. Three stayed silent, which is worse. Two expressed support—both of whom owe Desmond debts they'd rather settle through loyalty to his new consort than gold."
"So my fan club consists of two people who can't afford the alternative." I tuck my hands into my sleeves. "Inspiring."
"Lord Ashworth chairs the old council and considers any bride beneath Desmond's station a personal insult. Lady Maren controls the eastern grain supply and called you an ornamental wound at last night's reception." His gaze sweeps the wall ahead—professional, automatic.
"An ornamental wound. That's almost poetic." I turn that over. "I'd be flattered if she weren't clearly plotting to remove me from the display case."
"And then there is Lady Seren." He says the name differently—quieter, with the weight of someone handling something that might be fragile or might be explosive. "I noticed her watching you at the ceremony. Not with hostility. She was reading you."
"Old blood?" The wind catches my hair and I push it back, noticing how his gaze tracks the motion before snapping forward.
"The oldest still breathing. She served our father, and our grandfather before that. No love for what Desmond has become." He pauses. "But careful people are the hardest to read. Her interest may be genuine, or an investment she hasn't decided to cash."
We walk in silence for a stretch, the wind filling the space between words. The rhythm settles into something almost comfortable—boots on stone, cold air, two people who have stopped requiring the silence to justify itself.
"What do you do?" I ask. "When you're not standing outside doors and cataloging nobles who want me dead."
His stride falters—a half-step's hesitation corrected immediately, but I catch it. The question landed somewhere he wasn't braced for. "I read," he says after a beat.
"You read. That's the whole answer?" I wait. He sighs through his nose with something that might be embarrassment.
"Defensive Formations of the Third Northern Campaign. Cavalry Logistics in Mountainous Terrain. Principles of Fortified Retreat." He recites.
The laugh escapes before I can catch it—short, startled, punched out of me by the sheer absurdity of this scarred, enormous man curled up with a book about fortified retreats. The sound bounces off the wall stones and surprises us both, his head turning, silver eyes catching mine.
"I also had a dog once," he says, completely deadpan, eyes forward again. "But it preferred Desmond. So I consider that chapter of my life closed."
The second laugh hits harder—my ribs protesting against something my body has forgotten how to do. I press my hand over my mouth and his expression does something extraordinary: it softens. Not a smile. The geological pre-tremor of one, a shift in the bedrock that might, given time, produce something seismic.
"What was its name?" I manage.
"Brutus," he says, with the tragic dignity of a man eulogizing a betrayal. "Terrible judge of character."
"What else?" My cheeks ache from something other than clenching for the first time in weeks. "What do you eat when no one's watching?"
"The kitchen makes a black bread with rosemary that the court considers beneath them." His shoulders have dropped a full inch from their usual position near his ears. "And there's a courtyard on the north side—overgrown, cold, faces the wrong direction for sun. Nobody uses it."
"Sounds miserable. Why go there?" I match his stride without thinking about it, close enough that our sleeves brush.
"Because nobody uses it." He glances at me, and the simplicity lands like a palm pressed flat against my sternum—a man who has made himself small his whole life, finding the one place where smallness feels chosen rather than imposed.
"Are you offering to share it?" I ask, quieter than I plan.
"I suppose I am." He holds my gaze one beat too long before looking away, and the tips of his ears have gone pink against the cold. A Wolfblade prince blushing over a garden invitation.
The north courtyard is exactly as described—stone walls thick with ivy, a cracked bench beneath a bare-branched oak, light thin and grey.
Arthur leans against the wall and I stand beside him closer than I intend, still carrying his dog story in my chest—a warmth that has nothing to do with the bond and everything to do with the simple, stupid miracle of laughing with someone who made you want to.
The laughter fades. The wind drops. He is looking at my mouth—I know because I'm looking at his, the lower lip, the way it softens when his jaw unclenches, a whole different geography from his brother's identical face.
His hand comes up to my jaw, slow and deliberate, his thumb tracing the bruise Desmond left on my cheekbone with a tenderness so precise it might undo me faster than anything his brother has done. I tilt my face toward his palm and the distance between our mouths closes like a sentence finishing itself—unhurried, inevitable.
Footsteps shatter it—stone-on-stone, echoing through the corridor arch like a gunshot through glass.
Arthur's hand drops and the distance snaps open between us—three feet, four—the wire cut clean. By the time the guard rounds the corner, Arthur is regulation distance away, arms folded, face carved from professional stone. The guard glances at us, glances past, and continues walking.
My heart slams against my ribs. Arthur's breathing has gone mechanical—four counts in, four counts out—the battlefield rhythm of a man holding himself together with arithmetic.
I press my back against the cold stone and stare at the bare oak, and what settles in my chest is not the bond, not heat, not desperation—it's quieter than all of those, and infinitely more dangerous. Whatever we are building has stopped asking permission, and neither of us knows how to make it stop.
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