Iona
Four months after the bond, the throne finally gets its repair.
“Higher on the left.”
The mason shifts the gold band around the broken throne arm.
“Your other left,” I tell him.
He glances at Torgan.
Torgan stands behind the throne with his arms folded.
The mason turns back to me.
“This left, Majesty?”
“Yes.”
He adjusts it by the width of a fingernail.
The crack runs from the top of the arm to the carved base. Torgan bit through part of it. His claws did the rest over the weeks before the bond.
The masons wanted to replace the stone.
He refused.
I wanted the repair visible.
We compromised on replacing the temporary underbrace with black iron braces and a line of poured gold. The old gouges remain visible above it.
“Set it,” Torgan says.
The mason reaches for his hammer.
Torgan catches his wrist.
“Not there.”
The poor man freezes.
“The old gouges stay.”
“I would not touch them, Majesty.”
“You were about to.”
“I was moving the cloth.”
Torgan releases him.
The mason moves the cloth from somewhere else.
I bite the inside of my cheek.
Through the bond, Torgan feels the laugh I am holding.
His eyes narrow.
“Something amusing?”
“No.”
The bond exposes me.
He has become offended by this feature only when it works against him.
The great doors open.
Perr enters carrying a leather case and trying not to run.
He has remained in the black country as Serath’s acting treaty clerk. The title is temporary. His rooms are not. The kitchens know how he takes his tea. He is not leaving.
“The Vessel account,” he says. “First spring quarter.”
I leave the mason to survive Torgan and meet Perr at the table.
The report is forty-three pages.
Of course it is.
Perr has added tabs.
“Road labor,” he says, pointing. “One third of the winter tribute worked off. Irrigation cut ahead of schedule. Child ration rolls reconciled against the garrison books.”
“How many losses?”
“None.”
I look up.
“None?”
“No child on the winter roll died.” His mouth twitches. “The Lady of Vessel has included a note stating this does not make His Majesty kind.”
Torgan grunts from the throne.
“Correct.”
Perr turns the page.
“Her elder grandson corrected two of the crown auditors in red ink.”
Torgan takes the report from me.
He reads the corrections.
Once.
Again.
“Send him a better pen.”
Perr writes it down immediately.
I look at my husband.
He looks back.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
The bond carries my satisfaction into him.
He dislikes being caught doing something decent.
The gold band rings under the mason’s hammer.
One clean strike.
The sound travels through the hall.
The throne is repaired by noon.
The southern delegation reaches the hold three days later with twelve orchard saplings, a priest, a new minister, and an alarming quantity of ceremonial ribbon.
I meet them in the sheltered court.
The winter cherries are in bloom. White petals scatter over black stone. Beside them, twelve open holes wait in two straight rows.
Torgan has assigned forty soldiers to guard the planting.
He claims they are carrying soil.
Six of them are carrying soil.
The new minister dismounts carefully. She is younger than Callas, older than Perr, and looks directly at the horns over the gate before she looks at me.
Good.
Her name is Maren. Orchard district. River mother, coast father. A deliberate compromise sent north in a blue wool coat.
“Majesty.” She bows. “Serath sends congratulations.”
“Only four months late.”
“The council required time to arrest itself.”
I like her immediately.
Torgan does not.
He dislikes everyone from Serath until they prove otherwise.
The bond carries his assessment: armed guards, wagon weight, priest’s sleeves, distance to my body.
I touch his hand.
He stops counting exits.
Maren notices.
Her gaze moves to the bite at my throat.
She looks away before staring becomes rude.
“The coast inquiry has taken Speaker Reth’s house, three warehouses, and two ships,” she says. “The unpaid companies have received their first repayment. Callas testified for six days.”
“Did he tell the truth?”
“He tried to explain it on the first day.”
“And after?”
“Perr’s copies were read aloud.”
Perr looks pleased.
“Then he told the truth,” Maren says.
“Where is he now?”
“Retired to the coast. He says he is writing a history of the negotiations.”
“Burn it,” Torgan says.
Maren blinks.
“He is joking,” I tell her.
“No.”
“He is mostly joking.”
The bond says he is not joking at all.
The priest clears his throat.
He has been staring at the soldiers, the horns, Torgan’s claws, and the visible bite with increasing concern.
“I understand there is a southern civil rite still outstanding.”
Torgan looks at him.
The priest nearly steps backward.
I squeeze Torgan’s fingers.
“No one is going to eat the priest,” I say.
“I did not suggest it.”
“You thought it loudly.”
Maren makes a small choking sound.
The priest opens his book.
Perr places the civil register on a stone bench and uncaps his ink.
The priest begins with Torgan.
“Do you enter this marriage freely, without order, debt, or compulsion?”
Torgan looks offended that anyone needs to ask. “Yes.”
“And will you honor the envoy Iona as wife, household, and lawful representative—”
“Wife and equal,” Torgan says.
The priest blinks. Maren inclines her head. “Record the correction.”
Perr does.
The priest starts again, more carefully. Torgan lets him reach the end. “Yes,” he says.
Then the book turns toward me.
“Iona of Serath, do you bind your residence and loyalty, and the lawful issue of this union, to the peace established between—”
“No.”
The sheltered court goes silent.
The words are nearly the marriage annex. Softer in ceremony. Identical underneath. Residence. Loyalty. Children assigned before they exist.
Callas’s ink is gone, but my body remembers the paper trembling once between my hands.
I keep my voice level. “My residence is mine to choose. My loyalty is not collateral. No child of ours will be born owing peace to either country.”
The priest looks at Maren.
Maren removes one glove and holds out her hand for the book. “The council approved a revised civil form after the inquiry. Mutual choice of residence. No claim over unborn issue. The old language should have been struck.”
“Should have been?” I ask.
Her mouth tightens. “Was not. Strike it now.”
Perr draws one clean line through the clause. He writes the correction in the margin, reads it aloud, and turns the register so both delegations can see.
Torgan has not spoken. He has not threatened the priest, the minister, or Serath. He waits with his hand open between us.
I take it.
The priest asks again whether I enter freely, whether I choose this household, and whether I accept no duty not named by my own consent.
“Yes.”
The word belongs to me before it belongs to the register.
Perr witnesses. Maren signs beneath the correction. Torgan’s claws retract fully when I take his hand in both of mine.
The priest ties our wrists with blue ribbon.
Torgan looks down at it.
“It would not hold,” he says.
“It is symbolic,” the priest says.
“Of poor rope?”
“Of union.”
“I have a bite for that.”
The priest goes pale.
I kiss my husband before he can improve the conversation.
The soldiers cheer.
The priest drops the book.
Torgan puts one hand at my waist and lifts me against him in full view of both delegations.
The kiss is not polite.
Neither is the old voice that says mine against my mouth.
I answer where everyone can hear.
“Yours because I chose.”
The black-country court answers by striking fists to armor.
The southern delegation stares.
Maren smiles.
Good. Let the correct story travel.
We plant the saplings ourselves.
Tam arrives from the kitchens with hot cider, a basket of bread, and the opening verse of the goat-and-tax-collector song before Orrick sends him back for cups. He has become a household fixture.
At least, I plant the saplings. Torgan follows me from hole to hole and corrects the soldiers’ depth measurements.
“They grew in southern soil,” I tell him. “They know how to be trees.”
“They do not know frost.”
“They will learn.”
“The third one leans.”
“The third one is alive. Living things lean.”
He adjusts the stake anyway.
Maren kneels at the last hole beside me, blue coat folded back from the mud.
“The eastern courts are asking about the bite,” she says quietly.
“They should ask him.”
“They are afraid to.”
“Sensible.”
“They want to know whether the stories are true. That he waited while it hurt.”
I press soil around the roots.
Across the court, Torgan turns his head.
He hears us. Of course he does.
“Yes,” I say. “He waited.”
Maren glances toward him.
“For how long?”
“Long enough.”
“And he truly could not take it?”
“He could have taken a bite. It would have destroyed what the bite was meant to make.” I wipe soil from my hands. “So he did not.”
Maren is quiet.
“The coast used to say the danger was that he took whatever he wanted.”
“They misunderstood him.”
“What should I tell the council?”
I look at my husband.
He stands among southern saplings in the black country, one hand on a crooked stake, glaring at the sky as if winter has personally challenged him.
“Tell them he waited,” I say. “The rest is politics, and they can read the treaty.”
Torgan feels the words through the bond.
His gaze meets mine.
Only the truth between us.
Maren nods.
“I will write it carefully.”
“Perr will check.”
“I assumed.”
The final sapling goes into the ground.
Torgan tests the stake.
“It leans.”
I throw a handful of soil at him.
It strikes the front of his black coat.
The court goes silent.
Torgan looks down.
Then at me.
His claws extend.
Maren takes one quick step away.
I run only around the first row of saplings, laughing while he comes after me at a pace deliberately slow enough to keep the trees standing.
He catches me beside the winter cherries.
One arm around my waist. Mud on both of us. His mouth at the bite.
The soldiers look at the sky.
The priest looks at the gate.
Maren laughs into both hands.
The new trees stand in two untidy rows, southern roots packed into northern ground.
All twelve survive the first night.
The following dusk, I find Torgan in the nursery wing.
The corridor has been shut for a century. Dust lies thick at the edges, but the windows are newly glazed. Fresh iron fastenings. New mortar around every frame.
He stands in the largest room with his back to the door.
No furniture. No fire.
Only the last light across the floorboards and the bond carrying a hope he has tried to hide from me for weeks.
I lean against the frame.
“The masons said you ordered this work before the southern delegation arrived.”
He does not turn.
“The windows were unsound.”
“No one uses this wing.”
“They may.”
“When?”
Silence.
I cross the room.
His shoulders are tight.
The Black King can face an army without a change in pulse. This frightens him.
I put my arms around his waist from behind.
His hands cover mine.
Through the bond, I show him what I want without giving it a face or pretending certainty.
A small bed near the fire. Sera arguing over blankets. Ghenn teaching someone to hold a wooden sword. Torgan on the floor with a child climbing one horn despite every law he tries to make against it.
Hope surges through the bond so sharply that his hands tighten over mine.
“Iona.”
“Not now,” I say. “Not because the country needs an heir. Not because the old blood expects one.”
He turns in my arms.
“Then why?”
“Because I want more of this.” I press my palm to his chest. “You. Me. A life that keeps growing.”
Fear moves through him.
So does joy.
The two are tangled too tightly to separate.
“You are mortal,” he says.
“I know.”
“Pregnancy is dangerous.”
“So is riding beneath your gate.”
“That was not an argument for repeating danger.”
“No. It was an argument for letting me choose what I risk.”
His jaw tightens out of old habit. There is no ache beneath it now.
“I will not lose you.”
“You do not control that.”
His claws extend.
I take one hand and place it flat against my belly.
“Neither do I. We choose anyway.”
He looks down at his hand.
Nothing is there yet.
Only possibility.
The bond opens around his hope.
It is enormous. Tender enough to hurt.
“When?” he asks.
“I stopped taking seedward this morning.”
His eyes lift to mine.
“Soon,” I say.
“How soon?”
“Do not start issuing schedules.”
“I require information.”
“You require patience.”
“I have demonstrated patience.”
“For four months.”
“A significant four months.”
I pull him down by one horn and kiss him.
He lifts me, turns, and sets me on the broad windowsill.
The new glass is cold at my back. His body is not.
“Here?” I ask.
“No.”
His answer is immediate.
I laugh.
“This is a nursery.”
“It is an empty room.”
“It is already a nursery.”
The certainty in his voice reaches the bond.
My throat tightens.
He touches the bite gently.
“Tower,” he says.
“Four hundred steps.”
“I will carry you.”
“Of course you will.”
He takes me into his arms.
As we leave, I reach back and push the nursery door wide enough that it will not catch on the latch.
Torgan looks at it, then carries me through.