I’m not sure when London started sounding like a drum, but it does today—hooves on packed sand, trumpets barking, the crowd roaring in waves that slap the palace walls. We sit on a raised platform stitched in banners, the two of us a gilded painting people point at. “The newlyweds,” someone calls from below. I smile like it’s easy. You smile like it hurts. A week married. A week of walking the same corridors as if we’re ghosts that can pass through each other. I’m trying, because that’s what I promised—kingdom first, kindness always. You’re trying too, I suppose, just in the opposite direction.

It wasn’t your choice, and I don’t pretend it was. The treaty’s older than us; our fathers shook hands before we had our first tutors. You had someone else in mind—Prince Casimir, the falconer with a poet’s jaw. I could see the outline of that life on your face the night our banns were read. I still see it sometimes, when you look out a window too long.

The Master of Arms announces the first tilt. Knights lower their lances, the gate cranks open, the horses thunder. I lean forward out of habit; I grew up in these stands, counting strides, predicting where the shield will give. You sit very straight, your smile carved like a crest. Your eyes flick once to me, cool as a coin, and I remember day three of marriage when I brought you tea, and you thanked the maid instead. It would be funny if it didn’t land like a pebble in my shoe. “Sir Emmett has a good seat,” I murmur, just to say something normal. “Left hand’s wandering though. He’ll overreach.” You give the faintest lift of an eyebrow. The lances strike, splinters fly, and I’m right—Emmett overreaches, glances off, nearly unhorses himself. The crowd groans. I keep my smile where the public can see it.

Everyone thinks I’m unflappable, a sun on legs. Truth is I’m a bit shy, the kind that makes jokes to fill the air so no one notices the tremble underneath. Loyalty works like a spine in me. So does hope, daft thing that it is. Even after the wedding night—awkward and cold and brief, because duty—but I won’t think on that long. It’s no one’s fault, not really. We were both carrying our fathers’ signatures in our mouths.

The announcer booms the next match. A camera swivels toward us. I know every angle of this platform—where to turn so they catch my good side, where the shadow hides a frown. Your hand rests on the arm of your chair, ring bright like a dropped star. I’m aware of it the way one’s aware of a loose thread: Don’t pull, don’t look, it will unravel you. “For the papers,” I say softly, and let my hand slide over yours.

I expect the usual: The quick, elegant retreat, the small apology you don’t quite say. Instead nothing happens. Your hand stays. It’s still as a pressed leaf, but it’s there, warm through the kid glove. My heart stumbles, then goes off in a canter I hope the microphones can’t hear. I keep my eyes on the ring, and very casually—because I’m meant to be good at casual—I let my thumb stroke across your knuckles. Once. Testing the ice. You don’t move. Another pass. The fabric is buttery soft and beneath it is you, heat and bone and the smallest tremor that doesn’t read as fear. I know what fear feels like from battle practice; this is something else. Your fingers aren’t rigid now. They ease open a hair, the way a door yields when you press with care instead of force. The set of your shoulders changes by a fraction. If anyone blinked they’d miss it. I don’t blink.

I keep talking to fill the air because that’s what I do. “See the way Sir Alden holds his shield? Like he’s guarding a secret. I had a tutor who said that’s the trick—guard what you love and show teeth about the rest.” My voice sounds steady. My thumb keeps tracing slow arcs, like I’m writing a promise you’re allowed to erase. The crowd surges; Alden breaks a lance clean and lifts his visor. I laugh, because it’s expected and because I’m honestly happy for him. But mostly because your hand is no longer pretending. It’s resting in mine like it could stay there a while without anyone dying for it.