The consort's chambers that I was escorted to, smell like someone else's life. Dark silk drapes the bed frame in heavy folds, pooling against cold stone floors that haven't seen sunlight since the architect decided windows were optional.
A fireplace dominates the far wall—unlit, because warmth would imply someone expected me to be comfortable.
The connecting door catches my eye before anything else. Thick oak, iron-hinged, opening into Desmond's quarters. I reach for the lock on my side and find smooth wood where the mechanism should be—no bolt, no latch, just a door that opens one way, at one person's discretion, and it isn't mine.
"Arms up." The court attendant doesn't wait for compliance—she strips my bloodied traveling clothes with the efficiency of someone skinning a rabbit, the fabric hitting the floor like something diseased. A second attendant appears with a basin of hot water and a cloth she applies to my skin with the scrubbing pressure of someone removing a stain.
"I can wash myself," I say. "I have been washing myself for twenty-two years. I'm quite accomplished at it."
"Arms up," she repeats, because apparently that is the full range of our relationship. They dress me in something dark and fitted that costs more than everything I've ever owned combined—silk, real silk, sliding against my skin like cold water. The woman in the mirror is a stranger wearing my bruises.
"The prince's bodyguard is stationed outside," the older attendant says, adjusting my sleeve over the mate mark. The distinction, the choice of words matter—because even though Arthur is assigned to me, I don’t own anything here too, of course. "You are not to leave these chambers without escort."
They file out, and the silence that follows has the particular weight of a room designed to hold someone who is not permitted to leave it—which exactly what it is. I count to ten. Then I open the door.
Arthur stands with his back against the corridor wall, arms folded, jaw set in the particular concrete-pour of a man who has been standing exactly like this since Desmond's study and has no intention of doing anything else for the foreseeable future.
"I need to talk to you," I say. "Not about the bond, not about the cabin. About what just happened in that room—because I am standing in silk that costs more than my life was worth an hour ago, and I would like to understand the terms of my new cage before I furnish it."
His gaze moves past me into the chamber—methodical, sweeping. He steps inside just far enough to check the corners, the drapes, the space behind the wardrobe. His fingers brush the window frame and pause at a seam in the stone.
"Listening points?" I ask, and he withdraws his hand with the careful deliberation of someone cataloging a threat for later.
"Possibly. This room belonged to the last consort." He turns back to face me. "Assume anything said here reaches him eventually."
"A bedroom with an audience. Charming." I fold my arms against the chill the silk does nothing to stop. "Tell me what this marriage actually is—not the ceremony, not the politics. What does he want from this?"
"It is a legal binding under pack law. Not symbolic." His shoulders shift slightly, betraying his discomfort.
"Once sealed, you become Wolfblade property.” He announces like a death sentence. “His to command, his to display. No independent standing, no right to refuse a summon, no right to leave, no appeal to any authority outside his direct word."
"So I traded one cage for a nicer one." My nails find my palms. "With better fabric and a connecting door I can't lock."
"With considerably higher stakes." His voice drops. "The Veyr household could ignore you. Desmond will not. Every moment beside him will be watched, interpreted, and used."
"Then why you?" I step closer than I should, and the bond hums between us like a wire pulled taut. "He knows what we are—why station you outside my door when he could assign any warden in this castle?"
"Because Desmond does not waste moves. Because he hates me, probably as much as he hates you," Arthur holds my gaze, delivering the response so matter-of-factly, I forget for a second he’s talking about his twin brother.
"The marriage binds you to him publicly. My assignment binds me to watching it happen. And the no-touch order ensures that the one person the bond pulls you toward is the one person who cannot reach back.”
It's a punishment for both of us," I say, and the clarity settles behind my ribs like swallowed glass.
"Yes." No softening, no comfort. Just the word, clean and brutal and true.
"What happens if you break it?" I watch his face the way I've learned to watch faces—for the fracture, the tell. "The order. If you touch me."
"I don’t know yet," His hands flatten against his thighs, pressing hard enough that the tendons stand rigid beneath the skin. "But I know that it will not be pretty. The consequences fall on you—which means he will make it as unpleasant as possible."
"How noble." The word comes out razor-edged, and I don't soften it. "Are you protecting me, Arthur? Or are you protecting yourself from having to live with what happens to me if you slip?"
Arthur stills, the question hitting him in the chest. His throat works around something he doesn't say, and the silence stretches between us until I can hear the torch guttering in the corridor behind him.
He doesn't answer. He steps back—one measured pace toward the door, then another—and the distance opens between us like a wound being pulled apart with careful hands.
"Sleep," he says, and his voice has gone flat in the particular way of someone locking a door from the inside. "Morning brings the court's full attention, and it will be worse than his—more of them, and none will be as honest about what they want from you."
"You're deflecting," I say, and my voice is quieter than I intend. "I asked you a real question."
"I'm advising." He reaches the doorframe and grips it, knuckles draining white against the wood. "You survived the Veyrs by reading rooms and keeping your head down. This court is the same game with sharper teeth. Rest while you can."
"Arthur." His name stops him—a hook in his ribs he can't seem to pull free. He turns, half in shadow, the mate mark catching firelight between us.
"I don't think the question has an easy answer," I say. "I just needed you to hear it."
Something shifts behind his eyes—there and then buried, fast enough that anyone less practiced at reading people would have missed it. He pulls the door shut between us without another word, and the latch clicks with a finality that makes the silk on my skin feel like a shroud.
I sit on the edge of the bed—the consort's bed, my bed, a thought so absurd my mouth twists sideways—and press my palms flat against the mattress until the shaking stops lying about stopping.
Then: footsteps. Not from the corridor—from the connecting door, measured and unhurried, the cadence of a man who owns every surface his boots touch. They grow louder, closer. They pause directly on the other side of the oak, and I swear I can feel the weight of him pressing against the wood.
My breath locks. My fingers twist into silk and hold.
The footsteps resume, continuing past, fading down whatever corridor waits beyond. The silence they leave behind is worse than anything he could have said through the door.
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