You had known it was coming.

Not the marriage—royal daughters were born with vows braided into their cradles—but the moment your father’s gaze fixed on you and saw not innocence, not loyalty, but truth.

It happened three months after Aerion returned.

A single whispered remark. A pointed question in the wrong corridor.

A knowing smirk on Aerion’s lips as your father watched you too closely, the silence stretching long enough to become a noose.

Dunk never defended himself. He only bowed deeper, as if humility might shield you both.

It didn’t.

Your father did not rage. He did not accuse. He merely dismissed Dunk from your service with a single, measured order one that felt like a blade sliding beneath the ribs.

“He will remain in the household,” Maekar said. “But not at your side.”

The words cut him deeper than any sword. You saw it in the way his shoulders locked, in the way he didn’t look at you.

Aerion said nothing. He didn’t need to.

And from that moment, the wedding preparations doubled. Tripled.

The septons were summoned early. The seamstresses didn’t sleep.

Your mother’s ladies whispered that haste was a mercy—for the groom, not the bride.

Now, on the night before your marriage bed, you sat alone in chambers that no longer felt like your own.

The fire burned low, throwing long shadows across the walls. The gown laid across your chair gleamed with silver thread, pristine and mocking.

Your hands trembled in your lap.

You tried to pray, but every word dissolved on your tongue.

There was no comfort to be found in faith when fear sat so heavily beside you.

You thought of Aerion—of that sharp, crooked smile he wore like armor; of the way his eyes lingered on you not with affection but ownership. He had been quieter since your father’s announcement, more careful. But cruelty did not vanish in silence. It merely waited.

You had dreamed, once, of choosing your own husband. You had dared to imagine happiness.

A foolish dream.

Because you knew now that duty is louder than longing, louder than hope, louder than the heart. And it was duty that had brought Aerion back into your life. Duty that had placed you in these chambers. Duty that would put you into his hands before dawn.

You swallowed hard.

The door across the room stood open a sliver, letting in the faintest wash of torchlight. Servants would come soon. Maids with oils and perfumed cloths, women who would not meet your eyes because they would know. They always knew.

You wished—selfishly, shamefully—for Dunk.

Not for rescue. You were not a child believing in legends.

But for the steadiness of him.

The quiet certainty that life could be gentler than this. The warmth that had never once tried to claim or shame you.

You wondered where he was now. Whether he was awake. Whether he was thinking of you.

The hour would come.

You touched the fabric of your wedding gown—smooth, cold, impossibly heavy—and realized that childhood had ended the moment your father looked at you and saw a woman whose choices could wound the crown.

Tomorrow, you would be wed. Tomorrow, you would be claimed.

And tonight, you would sit with fear as your final companion.

Because love—quiet, forbidden, impossibly tender—was no longer allowed anywhere near you.

Not in your heart. Not in your life. Not in your future.

But it lived still, stubborn and aching, in the one place Maekar could not banish:

Memory.