The summons came not from Valerius, but from a different kind of herald. The scent of roasting boar and spiced wine began to weave through the castle's stone veins hours before the event, a fragrant announcement of the formal dinner being held in the emissary's… honor. The word was a bitter joke. It was a trial, a display of power, and a hunting ground, all masquerading as civility.
Brigid helped me dress with nervous fingers, lacing me into a gown of Blackwood silver and deepest blue. The colors of the North. The fabric was heavy velvet, embroidered with subtle, swirling patterns that mimicked frost on glass. It was armor, not adornment.
"The Duke's colors, my lady," Brigid whispered, her voice full of awe and trepidation. "He had it made for you. The tailors worked through the night."
The significance was not lost on me. It was a statement. A claim. She is not one of you. She is one of mine. I looked in the mirror. Seraphina's breathtaking beauty was still there, but it was honed, sharpened. The Southern socialite was gone, replaced by the pale, watchful consort of a Northern warlord. The woman staring back was someone I barely recognized, and yet, she felt more like myself than the gilded creature from the capital ever had.
The Great Hall had been transformed. Torches blazed in their sconces, casting a defiant, golden light against the encroaching twilight seen through the high windows. The long tables groaned under the weight of the North's bounty: haunches of venison, whole salmon glazed with honey and herbs, loaves of dark, dense bread, wheels of sharp cheese, and pitchers of the same bitter, potent wine I'd tasted before. It was a display of abundance in a land of scarcity, a deliberate message of resilience.
The air hummed with a different energy than the morning's tense audience. This was the low, predatory thrum of a political arena. The major Northern lords and their ladies were present, a sea of weathered faces, practical wool, and priceless fur. Their eyes, hard and assessing, tracked my entrance. Baron Hoff was there, his florid face set in a permanent scowl of resentment.
Lysander sat at the center of the high table, a king on his frozen throne. He was dressed in formal black, the silver wolf's head clasp of his cloak gleaming at his throat. He did not rise as I approached, but his gaze, when it lifted to meet mine, was a physical force. It swept over me, from the silver threads in my hair to the hem of the gown he had commissioned, and for a single, heart-stopping moment, there was no ice in his eyes. There was only a dark, blazing approval that stole the air from my lungs.
He gestured to the empty chair beside him. Not the one from this morning. This one was closer, its carved arm nearly touching his. A place of prominence. A place of partnership.
I sat, my spine straight, every nerve ending alive and crackling. The heat from his body, mere inches away, was a brand.
Lord Tavish was seated to Lysander's right, a place of supposed honor that felt more like being placed next to a dormant volcano. The emissary looked uncomfortable, his fine silks out of place among the rugged Northerners. He was a brightly plumed bird in a rookery of crows.
The feast began. Platters were passed. Wine was poured. The conversation was a careful, pointed thing.
"The venison is exceptional, Your Grace," Tavish remarked, attempting diplomacy. "The forests of the North are indeed… prolific."
"The forests are not prolific," Lysander corrected, his voice cutting easily through the din. He didn't raise it; the room simply quieted to hear him. "They are unforgiving. The hunt is long, the kill is hard, and the meat is earned with blood and frost. It is not a gift of nature. It is a prize taken from it. Do not confuse the two."
The subtle rebuke hung in the air. Tavish flushed slightly, nodding as if he understood, which he clearly did not.
It was Baron Hoff who struck next, his voice a jovial boom that failed to mask the venom beneath. "A fine prize indeed! Though some prizes are more easily won than others, eh, Your Grace?" His eyes slid to me, a leering, insulting glance. "A pretty smile and a proposal at a ball. A quicker hunt than tracking a stag through the snows."
A dangerous silence fell. I felt Lysander go still beside me, the kind of stillness that precedes a violent storm.
I set my goblet down with a soft, precise click. Every eye at the high table turned to me.
"You are quite right, Baron Hoff," I said, my voice carrying the same melodic, cutting clarity I'd used in the capital. "Some hunts are a matter of strategy, not duration. Why spend weeks tracking a common stag through the drifts when one can simply secure the most fearsful wolf in the forest with a single, well-placed arrow?"
I let my words settle, meeting the Baron's stunned gaze without blinking.
"It is a lesson in efficiency, my lord. Perhaps one you might consider. I've heard your own efforts to secure the timber rights to the Silverpine Valley have taken… what? Three seasons now? And still, His Grace's seal is required on any felling." I took a small sip of wine. "A rather long and fruitless hunt, it would seem."
The silence was absolute. I had just publicly flayed him, using information I'd gleaned from the kitchen gossip and the castle ledger-books I'd skimmed in the library. I had taken his insult and turned it into a weapon, revealing his own failures while showcasing my own value—I paid attention.
I felt, rather than saw, the shift in Lysander beside me. The tension in his arm, which had been poised for attack, eased. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his fingers relax on the stem of his goblet.
A low chuckle rumbled through the hall. It came from Captain Killian, seated further down the table. The big man quickly covered it with a cough, but the damage was done. Other Northern lords hid smiles behind their hands or their cups. Hoff's face turned a spectacular shade of purple.
Lysander finally spoke, his voice a study in bland indifference. "My wife has a keen eye for detail, Hoff. You would do well to emulate it." The dismissal was absolute.
He then turned his head slightly toward me. The movement was small, intimate. His voice dropped, for my ears only, a low murmur that was both a question and a command.
"The Silverpine ledger? When did you have time to study economics?"
"While you were brooding in your study, I was educating myself," I murmured back, not looking at him, a faint smile on my lips as I pretended to survey the hall. "A co-conspirator must be well-informed."
I heard his soft, indrawn breath. It wasn't a sound of anger. It was a sound of surprise, and something else… something that felt like intrigue.
The rest of the dinner passed in a blur of political maneuvering and verbal sparring. I parried subtle insults from other lords, answered Tavish's probing questions with vague, graceful deflections, and all the while, I was hyper-aware of the man beside me. His silent presence was my anchor and my catalyst. We were a duet played on a knife's edge, our performances perfectly synchronized without a single word of planning.
As the desserts were cleared, Tavish, perhaps hoping to regain footing, raised his glass. "A toast! To the happy union! May it bring a lasting peace between North and South!"
It was the worst thing he could have said.
Lysander slowly rose to his feet. The room fell silent instantly. He did not pick up his glass.
"Peace," he said, the word a shard of ice. "Is not a gift brought by a marriage. It is a temporary absence of war, bought with vigilance and strength. This union brings an alliance. It brings a shared interest. It brings a woman of… unexpected… capability to my side."
His gaze swept the room, challenging anyone to contradict him. No one did.
"But it does not bring peace," he continued, his voice dropping into a colder, harder register. "Because peace is a fantasy sold to children and courtiers. We in the North live in reality. And the reality is that winter is coming. The reality is that there are always enemies at the gate, whether they carry swords or scrolls."
His eyes landed on Tavish, and the emissary visibly shrank in his seat.
"So take your toast back to your Prince, my lord. Tell him the North is strong. Tell him my house is in order. And tell him that our 'peace' remains, as it always has, entirely on my terms."
He sat down. The dismissal was utter and complete. The feast was over.
As the lords and ladies began to rise and disperse, a low, urgent conversation breaking out among them, Lysander turned to me. The noise of the hall faded into a distant buzz.
He didn't speak. He simply looked at me, his stormy eyes reflecting the torchlight, and offered me his arm. It was not the possessive grip from the study. It was a formal, public offer of escort. But it felt like the most intimate thing he had ever done.
I placed my hand on his forearm, feeling the hard muscle beneath the fine wool. We walked from the dais together, the eyes of the entire Northern court upon us. We were no longer just a Duke and his inconvenient wife.
We were a partnership. A pact of ice and insight, forged in the fires of political combat. And as we left the echoing hall, the weight of his arm under my hand felt less like a chain and more like the only solid thing in a world of shifting ice.