Spring arrives in a single night.
One morning the snow is knee-deep on the battlements; the next, the mountain passes are dripping, the first courier in four months staggers half-dead into the courtyard, and the world remembers that the war still exists.
The king is alive.
The northern campaign drags on.
He will not return this year either.
The letter is sealed with crimson wax and the royal stag. I read it first, as always, standing behind her chair in the solar while she sips watered wine and watches my face.
When I reach the line that matters, she does not flinch. She only smiles (slow, feral, relieved).
Another year bought.
She sets the goblet down, turns in the chair, and pulls me into her lap like I weigh nothing. My knees bracket her thighs; her hands slide under my tunic with practiced greed.
"Then we have time," she murmurs against my mouth. "All the time in the world."
The letter flutters to the carpet, forgotten.
We celebrate the only way we know how.
I lift her onto the desk, shove her skirts to her waist, and sink into her in one stroke. She is wet the instant my fingers brushed her thigh (has been wet since the courier was spotted on the ridge).
She wraps her legs around me and bites my shoulder to muffle the moan that would carry through three corridors.
"Hard," she breathes. "Remind me who I belong to before the court fills my ears with noise again."
I give her hard.
The desk is ancient oak (meant for treaties and tax ledgers). It protests loudly as I fuck her across centuries of royal correspondence. Ink pots topple. A quill snaps beneath her spine. Wax seals crack like bones.
She comes twice before I let myself follow, burying my face in her neck and spilling deep while her nails score bloody lines down my back.
After, she keeps me inside her, arms and legs locked tight, as though the world might try to pry us apart the moment we separate.
It tries.
Within the hour the palace erupts. Ambassadors demand audiences. Generals need funds. The council chamber swells with voices that have been silent for months.
She dresses in emerald silk and the high collar that hides my teeth marks. I dress in black, as always (her shadow made flesh).
In public she is ice and steel again.
But every time our eyes meet across a crowded room, the ice melts for a heartbeat. A promise. A threat. A vow.
That night the court holds a feast to celebrate the king's continued victories.
She sits at the high table, radiant and untouchable, while minstrels sing of valor on distant fields.
I stand behind her chair, the perfect silent prince.
Under the cover of the long tablecloth, her hand finds mine. Guides it beneath layers of silk and velvet until my fingers slip inside her.
She is bare beneath the gown. Soaked. Ready.
I keep my face blank while I stroke her slowly (two fingers curled just so) through the entire third course. She never falters. Never spills a drop of wine. Only her pulse flutters wildly at her throat, and once, just once, when the roasted swan is presented with a fanfare of trumpets, her thighs clamp around my wrist as she comes silently, beautifully, in front of three hundred people who believe their queen is merely bored.
Later, when the feast staggers toward dawn and the corridors empty, she drags me into the little anteroom behind the dais (barely larger than a confessional, meant for private whispers during long ceremonies).
She drops to her knees on the cold stone, frees my cock, and takes me to the root in one practiced motion.
I brace one hand against the wall and watch her through the crack in the door while half the court mills ten feet away, drunk and oblivious.
She sucks me mercilessly (eyes locked on mine, cheeks hollow, throat working) until I come with a stifled groan, pulsing down her throat while a duke laughs at some jest on the other side of the tapestry.
She swallows, licks me clean, tucks me away, and rises with perfect composure.
"Welcome back to the world, my shadow," she whispers, wiping an imaginary speck from my lower lip. "Try not to miss the snow too much."
I smile, slow and dangerous.
"I don't miss the snow," I answer, voice rough. "I only miss the way you screamed when there was no one to hear."
Her eyes flare.
She takes my hand and leads me out through the servant corridors, past sleeping guards, up the hidden stair to her apartments.
The door has barely closed before she is on me again (gown half-unlaced, mouth hungry, nails tearing at my clothes).
Spring may have come to Valeria.
But inside these rooms, winter never truly left.
And it never will.