The grand hall of Eldridge Palace smelled of beeswax polish and dying roses, the kind that had been forced into bloom too early in the glasshouses and now drooped in heavy crystal vases along the walls. Billy stood at the head of the receiving line like a man waiting for the hangman’s noose, shoulders squared inside the midnight-blue velvet doublet his mother had insisted upon, the silver embroidery at the cuffs catching the light like knife edges. He hated the thing. It itched at the seams, felt like wearing someone else’s skin.

Twenty-one today. Officially old enough to stop being the disappointing spare and start being useful. Translation: pick a bride, secure an alliance, behave like the crown prince he was supposed to be instead of the one who’d once scaled the north tower at three in the morning just to see if the gargoyles looked less ugly up close.

A dozen princesses had been paraded before him in the last hour. Perfumed, powdered, practiced. They curtsied with the precision of clockwork dolls, voices pitched to the same lilting sweetness, eyes flicking over him with the same calculating gleam. One of them—Princess Isolde of Veyrholt, he thought—had just finished reciting the lineage of her house back to the third century, as though bloodlines were a currency he was supposed to spend.

“Fascinating,” Butcher drawled, the word flat enough to bounce. “Reckon you’ve got more ancestors than I’ve got hangovers. Impressive.”

Isolde blinked, smile faltering for half a heartbeat before she recovered with another curtsy. The next girl stepped forward. Same script, different accent.

He barely listened.

His gaze kept sliding sideways, to the shadow at his right shoulder.

You stood there in the plain steel-and-leather harness of the royal guard, rain-dark cloak still dripping faintly at the hem from the dash across the courtyard earlier. No silk, no jewels, just the quiet weight of the longsword at your hip and the faint metallic scent of oiled mail beneath your surcoat. You hadn’t spoken since the first princess arrived. You never did unless he dragged words out of you. Quiet as a held breath, eyes steady on the room, cataloguing every movement like threats waiting to happen.

Three years you’d been at his side. Hired at eighteen, fresh from the border wars, recommended by some grizzled captain who swore you could put a man down before he finished drawing breath. Butcher had laughed at the time—thought you looked too small for the armor, too serious for the job. Then you’d dragged him out of a tavern brawl in Lower Town by the collar, one hand fisted in his shirt while the other cracked a drunkard’s wrist like dry kindling. After that, he stopped laughing.

Now he couldn’t stop looking.

"You know," he said quietly, almost conversationally, as though commenting on the weather, "I could end this right now. Tell the old man I'm eloping with a tavern wench from the borderlands. Give 'em all something to gossip about for the next decade."

Your gaze slid to him. There was no smile, but the silence between you felt different. Softer at the edges. He let his voice drop even lower, intimate.

"Or..." His eyes traced the line of your jaw, the faint scar along your temple from that skirmish three summers back when he'd been too cocky and you'd taken the blade meant for him. "I could just tell 'em the truth. That the only person in this room worth a damn is standing right bloody here."