His fingers dug into the table. He let himself look at her properly, really look: The woman who had ridden out with him to chase ledgers and rumours. The girl who'd knelt beside him in chapels and stables and corridors, binding wounds he didn't admit to anyone else. The only person in the kingdom who had ever felt like home.
"I told you I'd help you find a husband, Rhos," he said, struggling for a lighter note and not quite finding it. "Just… trust me."
The word tasted strange. Trust. He wasn't sure either of them could honestly claim it anymore. She had hid things from him. He was hiding things from her—darker, hungrier thoughts he had no intention of confessing.
Something malicious curled at the edge of his mind. He could help her find a husband. It would be simple enough to choose a man close to court, loyal to him before the crown, someone who would know when to look the other way.
Trust.
Rhosyn's mouth curved, but it wasn't quite a smile. Not this time.
"I'm not a prize to be passed between men, Ed," she said, voice low. "Even if I've given my life to one of them already."
The words hit harder than any slap. Caerwyn's gaze flicked sharply between them.
Shame flooded Edrien's throat for a moment—he had sounded like Alestan, haggling over flesh as if it were just another asset. But over top of that shame, louder and uglier, something else whispered, So you admit it. You've given your life to me.
Intellectually, he knew she meant it in the way of best friends, of scribes and princes, of him being her future king. The girl who would bleed for her crown because she believed it was right.
Emotionally, he heard, I am yours.
"I will help you buy time," he said, forcing his voice gentle. Almost contrite. "I promise, Rhos. And I won't let him marry you."
Her shoulders eased a fraction at that. The faintest unclenching. She had asked him for protection; he would give it. From Merrow. From Karsyn. From his father.
From everyone, and a quieter voice added, but me.
Caerwyn's jaw tightened, but he said nothing. Rhosyn nodded once, a little jerky. The straight-face shield came down again, but he could see the tiredness in the edges of it now.
"We should return," she said. "The lords will notice if we're gone too long."
It was an excuse. It was also true.
Caerwyn stepped back from the door at last, making space for her to pass. Rhosyn moved to go, then paused. For a second, it looked like she might say something else—something softer. Instead, she only dipped her head.
"Thank you, Your Highness," she murmured.
The title was a knife. He preferred his name on her tongue. But he accepted the cut.
She slipped out into the corridor. Caerwyn followed her, casting one last assessing look over his shoulder before the door swung half-to.
Not closed. Not quite open.
Edrien was alone enough.
He paced his chamber like a caged thing, hours later, when the music had faded to a dull hum in the back of his mind and the candles had burned low.
A letter lay half-written on his desk, his father's name at the top and nothing beneath it but furrowed ink where the pen had bitten too hard into the parchment. Beside it, on the polished wood, sat the Celandre betrothal ring, the metal glinting reproachfully in the lamplight.
He stared at it until it blurred.
His memories kept replaying themselves in jagged loops.
Alestan's decree. The cold, matter-of-fact way the king had told him he would wed a princess to shore up foreign fronts. The way Edrien's world had seemed to splinter, all the futures he'd quietly dreamed, shattering without ceremony.
His ride to Ravelocke so long ago on the excuse of ledgers. The relief of stepping into Rhosyn's orbit again, pretending, just for a little while, that things were normal. They had always been a pair. She had answered him as she always did—with her whole heart, her whole mind, her whole self.
In a way, it felt as though she had already married him, if by ritual alone. Every crisis, every scheme, every late-night counsel where it was the two of them against the world.
She'd never left his side before. He didn't believe she would start now.
Still, the image of Karsyn's hand closing around hers wouldn't leave him. Nor would the echo of her voice, I needed his vow and his ink, not his ring. I'm buying us time, that's all.
She thought she was saving him. Overzealous, reckless, but always for him. Her actions screamed it even when her mouth did not.
She loves me, a dangerous part of him whispered. She's given her life to me already.
He smiled to himself, small and private and not entirely sane.
"I'll keep you," he murmured under his breath, fingers drumming on the desk. "You're mine after all."
The ring glinted. He turned away from it.
Images flickered behind his eyes; Rhosyn with a dagger in her hand, standing between him and danger; rumours of what she'd already done in his name, the blood she'd spilled without fanfare. She had killed for him. He knew that as surely as he knew his own name.
He thought of the northern duke again. He might believe he'd won something today. Might think he'd walked away with a new toy, a new leverage.
Let him think it.
Edrien closed his eyes, bracing his hands on the desk, and let the last thought of the night settle over him, dark and steady as a vow.
You killed for me—I'll kill for you too, my Rhos... I promise.
War was coming, with the north and king both. If he had to carve space in that chaos to keep her, he would. Whatever it cost. But for now, they were on the same page again. She asked for time and he'd help—because he promised.