Maybe it was better to go south.
The duke Below needed an Avenko to keep the magical pact between our realms. But he had my father and the rest of my family to do that, sleeping though they were. Kylma wasn’t lost yet. And Farhod was the cleverest person I knew; if this curse had a cure, he’d find it.
“Aino?” I went into the bedroom.
Aino stood at my wardrobe, fiddling with my jewelry drawer. Silver and gold flashed in her hands. She tried to shove the door shut as I approached, but it was too stuffed. She threw up her hands as I nudged her aside.
Diamonds, pearls, sapphires, and amethysts clustered haphazardly within the drawer. I frowned at the mess. “This is all Mother’s jewelry.”
“Well, she’s not using it,” Aino grumbled.
“Aino,” I gasped.
She crossed her arms in a pose of motherly severity. “If we need to flee without warning, those jewels might buy the bread that saves your life.” When I only gaped at her, her scowl deepened. “You’re the grand duke, you can take what you want.”
I rallied myself. “When she discovers that you—”
“If she wakes up, she’ll never notice they’re gone.”
They were incredible pieces. If we left with them now, I could buy my own palace in the South and never think about Kylma again. Some of the stones were rough, while others were so polished they sent firelight bouncing off the walls. I saw chains with links the size of my little finger, and chains so thin they must have been spun like silk. I picked up an electrum ring with a sapphire the size of my thumbnail. It was cut in a faceted oval, with leaves and roses worked around it. It was the ugliest, most impressive ring I’d seen Mother wear. Bridal quality, I thought, and shuddered.
Then I stopped.
I didn’t have to run. There was one other thing I could do to keep Sigis from marrying me.
I slid the ring onto my finger.
“What are you doing?” Aino said from behind me.
I turned and put a hand on her shoulder. “Can you distract Sigis and Eirhan for me? Keep them from wondering what I’m up to.”
Her brow knitted. “What are you up to?”
“Please.” I leaned forward to kiss her on the cheek. Then I made for the door. It was an old trick, and one I felt bad for playing, but if I told her my plan, she’d try to talk me out of it.
The doors of the bridal wing were flanked by two guards. I half expected them to make me stop while they asked permission from Eirhan to let me in. But they stood smartly to the side, and I passed without a word.
Fear swelled in my throat. I could do this. The candidates were only people, like me. People had ten pints of blood, could run maybe sixteen miles per hour and lift about seventy-five pounds. And they were here on the sufferance of the grand duke.
I pushed on the ice doors and went in.
The antechamber was a mess of clothes and luggage. I tripped over someone’s lap harp and nearly slipped on a silk overcoat when I tried to right myself. For fifteen people who had been so refined in public, the princes and princesses looked like they were having a private competition to see who could be messiest. The antechamber itself was empty of people, but I could hear whispering behind a door. As I bumbled my way through the room, the whispering grew more pronounced.
At last, a door swung open, and one of the brideshow candidates stuck his head out. “Finally,” he said. Then he called over his shoulder, “Servant’s here.”
“Excuse me?” My protest was lost as candidates all but tumbled into the antechamber.
Before Father and Lyosha, they’d been cloaked in manners as fine as their clothes and jewels. Now they formed a wall of outrage. More doors opened as people came out, brandishing books or instruments or pieces of imported fruit.
“This is unbelievable,” said one with pale skin and hair the color of walnut. They wore purple, with a white buck dancing on their shoulder. I ought to recognize the sigil. “Some of us have been up for hours while you imprisoned us and stationed guards outside our quarters,” Dancing Buck said.
“If my father were here, he’d declare war on this miserable little country,” said a candidate who bore a lily sigil.
“Lucky me,” I said.
Dancing Buck folded their arms over their purple tunic. “Don’t take that tone with me. Your masters have trapped us in here without a word of explanation. What’s going on? Are we hostages?”
Complaints began to tumble out, as if irritation were a group exercise they’d practiced for the brideshow. Their faces ranged from bored to angry—except for one girl, the girl who’d smiled at me last night. Her muscle-toned arms were bare under a green wool vest, and her dark hair had little light streaks in it, as if it had caught pieces of the foreign sun and spun them into gold. I frowned at her crest, a serpent wound in a knot. She didn’t speak—she just drummed her fingers on her belt, where two ax loops sat empty.
She smiled at me again, and my stomach flipped. She had fresh kohl around her eyes, pink on her cheeks, and red on her lips. She looked like she was enjoying herself.
She looked like she was laughing at me.
I clapped hard for attention. The candidates fell silent, though more than one curled their lips, daring me to do something so insolent again. “Let me introduce myself,” I said when only one or two grumbling candidates were left. “My name is Ekaterina Avenko, daughter of Kamen Avenko of Kylma Above.”
The sneers vanished. A few candidates looked a little embarrassed. No one tried to simper or look happy, and I was strangely glad of that. I’d rather have the honest loathing.
“I am… unhappy to say that I am now the grand duke.”
More silence greeted this pronouncement. A few of them exchanged looks; a few of them squeezed hands. “What does that mean, exactly?” said the girl Lyosha had liked last night, the one I’d mentally compared to a snowdrop.
I took a deep breath. “It means that I’m in charge of the brideshow now. And I…” The knot in my stomach grew. I didn’t need ministers around to know this was a terrible idea. What was I getting myself into?
Whatever it was, marrying Sigis would be worse.
“What happened to Lyosha?” Snowdrop said.
“If he’s dead or something, can we leave?” asked Lily Sigil. Inconsiderate offal heap.
I fumbled for words. Most of the candidates looked some variation of curious. A few were incensed. But one girl—that girl. Her brown eyes were fixed on me, and the curve of her mouth—like the whole thing was a joke—
I’ll give you something to joke about, I thought, and stepped up to her.
I was supposed to say something. We’d been taught the brideshow ceremony as part of our lessons, but I’d been daydreaming about the properties of wild garlic and buckthorn bark.
Then again, how would any of them know I was doing it wrong? I pushed my shoulders back and adopted my Father voice. “As grand duke, I invoke the right to choose my bride.”
“Excuse me?” said Dancing Buck.
The sapphire ring stuck to my glove until I yanked. “I offer you this as a token of my—” Love seemed ridiculous. “Affections. And interest. And… and an alliance between our families and nations.” I seized the girl’s hand before she could pull away from me. “Please do me the honor of exiting the bridal wing as my”—no time for second thoughts, NO TIME for second thoughts—“wife.”
Her mouth dropped open in a wide O of surprise. But somehow, the smile was still there.
Did she have a choice? Had she acquiesced as soon as she’d come to the palace as a contestant?
I slid the ring onto her finger, and she didn’t resist. That was good enough for me.
The sounds of outrage spread. “You can’t do that,” one girl burst out. “The brideshow hasn’t even started yet.”
“It started two days ago,” I murmured. Or was it yesterday?
“Our delegations haven’t arrived,” protested Snowdrop.
“That makes no difference,” I
said. One of my ancestors had picked a candidate weeks before the brideshow had even started. “I’ll see about moving you out of the bridal wing and into your delegations’ rooms.”
I took my new bride’s arm. Her shock had given way to a grin so wide it looked as if it were going to split her face.
She still looked like she was laughing at me.
“Are you serious?” someone shouted.
“Uh…” I reached for the door handle. “Thank you for coming.”
I pulled my new wife out and shut the door before someone could think to throw something at us. My ring glinted on her finger, and she didn’t look displeased. It helped to dispel the feeling that I was no better than Sigis.
I hooked my arm tightly through hers and began to walk. I expected her to say something, but the only sounds were of footsteps on ice. My servants and ministers stopped to stare. The news would be all over the palace by dinner.
Good.
I chanced a look in her direction once more. She looked as though this was the best joke she’d ever been part of. Her arm pressed against mine, and she didn’t seem to mind.
At the door of the Rose Room, I straightened my coat and checked her ring. “I, um, don’t know your name,” I admitted. Heat flushed my cheeks.
Was it possible for her grin to grow? “Inkar,” she said in a low voice that, if anything, made me blush harder.
“Great. I mean, I’m Ekata. Which you already knew.” Were people’s mouths normally this dry when they got married?
I opened the door myself and led her in. The couch was bare and showing off its hideous pattern. Aino sat behind it. Sigis was at the table with Eirhan, frowning at a sheet of paper. A pounding started up in my chest.
Sigis and Eirhan stood. When they spotted Inkar’s arm linked through mine, they forgot to bow. The fat sapphire on her finger caught the light of the fire.
I hadn’t thought this through.
“Minister, my bride.”
CHAPTER SIX
Inkar’s newly ringed hand tightened over my wrist. Her other hand drifted toward her belt to drum on an empty ax loop. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance,” she said in precise, carefully enunciated Drysian. She sounded like someone who’d perfected the language through booklearning but hadn’t yet learned the art of conversing with contractions.
Eirhan tried to rally himself. “I—ah.”
“Is this some sort of joke?” Sigis said. Fury was written in every line of his body, from his hand, whitening around his clay wineglass, to his face, flushed and wrathful. The last time I’d seen him so angry had been on a hunt, when Velosha’s favorite hound had brought down a polar bear he’d been stalking for hours. He’d severed the hound’s head in one blow, and it looked as though he wanted to do the same to Inkar now.
He turned to Eirhan and said in an icy voice, “You said Her Grace didn’t want to start the coronation trials.”
To my relief, Eirhan spoke for me. “Her Grace has the right to—”
“Her Grace is a child.” Sigis’s hand squeezed the wineglass. The clay shattered. Like you’re the epitome of maturity at twenty-one. “And it’s your job to keep her from doing things like this.”
I felt Inkar’s muscles stiffen. Anger clashed with my sickening fear. Grand dukes looked after their own. “You can’t speak like that to him,” I said.
Sigis jerked toward me. “Or what?”
I stepped back before I could stop myself. His eyes shone with something worse than hate: the fury of a powerful man hearing no.
Show no fear. I took a breath, focusing on where Inkar’s fingers dug into my arm.
Eirhan cracked the fragile silence. “The coronation trials have technically begun, but the first trial is only officially complete when the grand consort accepts her duke’s increased responsibility—and it would be unwise to do so until the trial marriage is over,” he added hastily. I narrowed my eyes. For the next eight days, my marriage to Inkar could be called off by either one of us. Eirhan was clearly hoping that Sigis would hold off on challenging me in the coronation trials until after the trial marriage failed.
Eirhan’s gaze settled back on me, sharp and unforgiving. “I would appreciate the chance to speak with Her Grace alone.”
Sigis couldn’t resist having the last word. He leaned in until I could smell the lingering sweat on his coat, his sour-bitter breath from drinking wine and coffee. “Don’t forget whose army is sitting at your door, little Ekata.”
He stormed out, slamming the door behind him. We all jumped. I resisted the urge to giggle in hysterical relief.
Inkar’s smile disappeared. Solemnity sat well on her, making her dark eyes look wide and deep and intelligent. “Do you make all your guests so happy?”
“Her Grace the consort rivals Her Grace the duke for humor, I see,” Eirhan remarked dourly. “Ekaterina, what could have possessed you?”
“The prospect of waking up next to Sigis every morning for the rest of my short life,” I replied. I felt like hiding behind my new wife.
Inkar laughed in a series of soft exhales. Eirhan didn’t smile. “Your Grace has just infuriated the most powerful man in the North,” he said through gritted teeth.
That was the problem, wasn’t it? The most powerful man in the North had decided he and I should be married, and so many scrambled to do his bidding that they hadn’t stopped to think about whether I’d wanted to be married to him at all.
“Aino, will you see the grand consort to a suite? Her Grace has much settling in to do.” Eirhan bowed to Inkar, low and graceful.
I almost pulled Inkar closer. She and Aino felt like armor that Eirhan was trying to peel away from me. I could say something grand, like, Anything you say to me, you can say to her. But I hadn’t even known her name five minutes ago. It wasn’t exactly the romance of legends. “Aino, please make sure she has everything she needs.” I disentangled myself. “I’ll escort you to dinner.”
“Someone will escort you to dinner,” Eirhan corrected me.
Aino gave me a strange, bewildered shake of the head before curtsying to Inkar. “Please come with me, Your Grace.”
Inkar turned her smile on me one last time as Aino led her out. Her mouth was red and full and inviting. I opened my mouth to stammer out a goodbye, then shut it.
I heard Inkar laugh softly as the door closed.
Eirhan folded his hands and let the silence draw out. Finally, he said, “Does Your Grace have any idea whom she has chosen as a wife?”
Only a man made of arrogance would speak to a grand duke that way. I fought to keep my voice neutral. “I was under the impression that any candidate in the brideshow was an eligible match.”
“In theory,” Eirhan snapped. “But this is not theory. This is politics. Inkar is the daughter of Bardur Erlyfsson and the mistress of the Emerald Order.”
Bardur Erlyfsson, one of my father’s great enemies. The raider who’d attacked our shipping routes, and the last big threat to Kylma before Sigis. I remembered, now, that Eirhan had said his daughter was part of the brideshow. “You should have mentioned her by name.”
“Inkar’s attendance is an experiment—a test of trust after the peace. She’s his twenty-fifth daughter, so if she dies here, there will be no lasting effect on his kingdom. But he’ll still be able to legitimize war.” He rubbed at his face. “Do you understand the dangerous pieces you’ve brought into this game?”
All I could think was, twenty-fifth daughter? “Were Erlyfsson and my father competing to have the most children?”
Eirhan growled his frustration. “This isn’t the time for jokes. We’ve spent all day claiming you won’t compete in the coronation trials. We hinged an offer of marriage around it.”
“You hinged the offer,” I corrected him, folding my arms. “I said no, and you ignored me.”
“Your Grace can’t say no to every little thing she dislikes. Ruling means compromise.”
“Not about him.”
We stood for a moment, f
acing each other, readying our verbal arsenals. Eirhan and I both struggled for power. And while I didn’t have enough to completely defy him, I couldn’t give in. Grand dukes were unquestionable, even to their prime ministers.
“The trial marriage lasts for eight days, right? I’ll just call it off. Then we are where we were before, without coronation trials.” And I didn’t have to marry Sigis.
Eirhan rubbed at his temples. “No one’s going to believe that you’re not trying to steal power. We’ll frame this to the council as you against him: you trying to preserve the throne through necessity, him trying to steal it. And don’t call off the trial marriage. If you proclaim yourself dissatisfied with Inkar, you need a damn good reason. Erlyfsson could call it grounds for war if he thinks you’ve slighted his daughter.”
“Maybe I can annoy her so much she’ll try to kill me,” I said.
I meant it as a joke, but Eirhan nodded decisively. “That’s exactly what you need to do. Convince Inkar that being grand consort is worse than going home. If she declares herself dissatisfied, you bear the shame alone, and her father will no doubt feel exceedingly smug. He will likely give you a consolation present, and that will be that.”
“So be irritating.” I could do that. No one could stand me besides Farhod and Aino anyway.
“And don’t let her get used to the idea of being grand consort,” Eirhan advised me. “Once people get a taste for power, it’s hard to persuade them to let go of it. Now, maybe we should discuss the coronation trials further, since you were so eager to begin them.”
According to Eirhan, most of my court would expect the coronation trials despite my declaration (Eirhan’s declaration, I thought darkly) not to have them. The four trials were usually held among the children of the grand duke, but as my siblings were indisposed, a stand-in would be found. Normally, stand-ins were ministers who lost deliberately. But I knew who would volunteer.
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