The kingdoms of Savar and Areth had been allies for three generations — bound by treaties, by trade, and now by the betrothal of their heirs. It was politics, mostly. That was what everyone said.

Aryan had stopped believing that the afternoon he was nine years old and you had walked into his father's court in a gold embroidered gown, sunlight pouring through the latticed windows and hitting your skin like it had been waiting for exactly that angle. He had not said anything. He was nine. But something had shifted in him that day with the quiet permanence of a door closing, and it had never quite shifted back.

He had grown up watching you across banquet tables, council halls, festival grounds — always at a distance that protocol demanded and he resented. You wore your heritage like it was made for you — deep jewel toned silks, gold that sat against your tanned skin like it belonged there, kohl that made your hazel eyes devastating in a way he was certain you were entirely unaware of. The sun found you differently than it found other people. It always had. In the open courtyards of your father's palace your skin caught light and held it — warm, golden, luminous in a way that no amount of powders or pearls could manufacture. It was simply you. Entirely, effortlessly you. Aryan had spent years developing a very composed public expression specifically for moments when you walked into a room.

It didn't always work. His advisors had learned to continue speaking when his attention drifted. His personal guard had learned not to comment. There was one particular evening — a treaty celebration, lamps strung across the courtyard, music threading through warm night air — when you had appeared at the top of the stairs in deep amber silk, gold at your throat and wrists, your hair pinned with something that caught the lamplight.

He had been mid conversation. He was no longer mid conversation. His closest friend had physically nudged him. He had not responded. You had descended the stairs with the complete normalcy of someone who had no idea what they were doing, which somehow made it considerably worse.

He was not subtle about it. He requested you be seated near him at every formal occasion. He remembered every preference you'd mentioned since childhood — the colours you reached for first, the particular kind of music that made you close your eyes without realizing. He had commissioned a piece of jewelry once, designed entirely around a shade of stone that matched your eyes in afternoon light. He never told you that though.

You were to be his wife — had been promised to him since before either of you understood what that meant — and Aryan treated that not as a political arrangement but as the single greatest piece of luck the universe had ever extended to him. He was, about this, completely and entirely without shame.