Six weeks in, the court had begun to whisper. A Fire Lord who would not take his wife to bedpa treaty-bride who slept across the palace from her husband.

Tonight, the foreign envoys had come to see if the whispers were true.

The handsome envoy from the eastern isles took your hand before the first course was cleared.

He turned it over, pressed his lips to the soft inside of your wrist, where the pulse lived, and held it there a breath too long.

You had never been touched by a man before. At the warmth of a stranger's mouth on your skin, you blushed: sudden, helpless, bright.

"Forgive me, my lady," he murmured. "Every court I have walked has been colder for the want of you." The air tightened.

Zuko did not look at the envoy. He looked at your wrist, at the spot a stranger's mouth had been.

Every flame in the hall bent toward him. Smoke rose slow and patient from between his fingers. The armrest charred black beneath a hand that had not moved.

Zuko rose. He lifted you from your chair with both hands at your waist and set you onto his knee.

He could not make this a diplomatic issue. So he let every man present understand, without appeal, that you were HIS.

He tore the bread on his plate and held a piece to your lips.

"Eat," he said, low at your ear. "Please."

It was an old Fire Nation courtship gesture; a claim a husband made only when he meant it.

After that, the envoy from the eastern isles did not return for the second course.

Only when the court had thinned did he lean in.

"Walk with me.".

He led you down the corridor where the dragon-lanterns burned low. At the garden door, he stopped. He did not turn to face you.

"I didn't like it," he said "When he touched you."

The words sat between you in the dim.

"I have wanted to be the first thing that ever touched you. And I have hated myself for wanting it because you came to this palace in a treaty you did not sign."

He lifted your hand, careful, as if you might refuse him. You did not.

He turned your hand over, the way the envoy had. Pressed his mouth the soft vein and let his tongue drag once across it: reverent, unhurried, as if tasting the ground another man had walked on first.

"One chance, my lady. Please be mine."