Levana cinched the belt tight, then stood there, shaking with anger, as she watched him pull on his boots.
“You will marry me.”
He paused briefly, before snapping the last buckle at the top of his boots. “Princess. Please. Not again.”
“Tonight.”
He stared at the floor for a long time. A painfully long time.
She didn’t know what she expected to see when he finally lifted his head, but the nothingness surprised her.
They stared at each other for a painful, hollow moment, until it occurred to Levana that he had not said no.
She gulped, pressing forward. “I will find an officiant and we will meet in the sun chapel at nightfall.”
His gaze again fell to the floor.
“Bring your daughter if you’d like. She should be there, I think. And the nanny to watch her.” She pulled her hair over one shoulder, feeling better about their argument already. How many of his annoying points this would solve.
She would be his wife—he could no longer say that she wasn’t.
She would be the mother to his child.
And the rumors would stop, for no one would dare speak ill of the princess’s husband, the queen’s brother-in-law.
“Well?” she said, daring him to say no. Already she was feeling for the energy that surrounded him, ready to bend him to her will if he denied her. This was for his own good. This was the only way to solidify their family. Their happiness.
Releasing the top of his boot, Evret slowly stood. His absent expression had turned sad.
Sad?
No, sympathetic. He felt sorry for her.
She frowned, casting a wall around her heart.
“You have a chance to find love, Princess. Real love. Don’t throw that away on me. I beg you.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “I have already found love. I have shared my bed with him, and tonight, he will be my husband.” She attempted a smile, but her confidence was waning. He had bruised it so many times, and she didn’t want to face rejection now. She didn’t want to force him into this.
But even as she thought it, she knew that she would, if that was the only way.
Evret pulled his weapon holster over his head, his knife hanging on one hip, his gun on the other. A guard. Her guard.
“Well?” Levana demanded.
“Do I have a choice?”
She sneered. “Of course you have a choice. It is yes or no.” Levana ignored the twist in her stomach that told her she was lying. He would not say no, and it wouldn’t matter.
But still, she was surprised at how vulnerable she felt as the seconds ticked past. He wouldn’t say no. Would he? She held her breath and sent—just a subtle tenderness into his thoughts. Just a warm reminder that they were meant to be together, forever.
He shuddered, and she wondered if he knew she was doing it. She stopped, and watched his shoulders relax.
“Evret?” She hated the whine in her voice. “Marry me, Evret.”
He did not meet her eyes again as he crossed to her bedroom door. “As it pleases you, Your Highness.”
* * *
The officiant wrapped the gold ribbon around Levana’s wrist, explaining the significance of their union, the magnitude of the occasion as he tied a knot. He then moved to Evret, taking a second ribbon from the dish on the altar and knotting it around Evret’s wrist. Levana watched closely as the shimmering ribbon settled against his dark skin. His arm was so much broader than hers, making her bones seem bird-like in comparison.
“Knotting the two ribbons together,” said the officiant, taking them into his fingers and tying them once, then twice, “symbolizes the unity of bride and groom into one being and one soul, on this, the twenty-seventh day of April in the 109th year of the third era.”
Releasing the ribbons, he let the knot dangle between their arms.
Levana stared at the knot and tried to feel connected. Unified. Like her soul had just merged with Evret’s.
But she felt only a yawning distance between them. A black hole of silence. He had barely spoken since arriving at the chapel.
In the second pew, the baby began to mewl. Evret turned and, annoyed at the distraction, Levana followed the look. The nanny was shushing the child, bouncing the girl gently in her lap, and Levana recognized the embroidered blanket that the child had been swaddled in, the pale snowscape, the red mittens. Sol’s handiwork. Her teeth ground against each other.
“You will be exchanging rings?” asked the officiant.
Levana turned back and realized that neither Evret nor the officiant were still paying the fussy child any attention.
Evret nodded, though the action was curt. Levana glanced at him from the corner of her eye, surprised. She had not brought a ring.
Turning, Evret held his palm out toward the only guests other than the nanny and little Winter. That guard friend of his, Garrison Clay, who was there with his wife—a plain girl with strawberry-blonde hair—and their own child. A towheaded toddler boy who had spent the ceremony bobbling down the aisle while his mother hissed for him to come back, gave up, chased after him.
Although their presence seemed to indicate that Evret was taking this ceremony with some levity, Levana couldn’t help but be annoyed at everything about this family.
When they had first arrived, Garrison had pulled Evret aside. They’d seemed to be arguing about something, and she was certain he’d been trying to persuade Evret not to go through with it.
The intrusion had not endeared the guard to Levana.
But now, he stepped forward without hesitation and pulled a hand from his pocket. In his palm rested two wedding bands, each carved of black regolith polished to a fine gleam. They were as simple as Levana had ever seen, and had never dreamed she would wear. A wedding band made for a guard’s wife, not royalty.
Her heart snagged, her eyes misting.
It was perfect.
Garrison did not look at her as he put the rings into Evret’s hand and returned to the pew beside his family.
“Please take hands and face each other for the exchange.”
They turned, almost robotically. Levana inspected Evret’s face, and his handsomeness warmed some of the chill from her bones. She tried to express, silently, how much she loved her ring. That it was everything she wanted. That he was everything she wanted.
His dark gaze settled on her.
She smiled, a little shy.
His inhale was sharp and he opened his mouth to speak. Hesitated. Shut it again.