She turned and walked through the door.

Her chambers were three corridors and a staircase from the eastern gallery. She walked back through the Solathis at the pace of a woman who was not hurrying, which was not the same as the pace of a woman who had nowhere to be.

Thessaly had the ivory gown out by the time she arrived. Of course she did. She was standing beside the dressing chair with her hands folded and the particular quality of stillness she adopted when she had something to say and was deciding how to say it. Seralyn recognised it immediately. She had been recognising it since she was nine years old.

"The gallery," Thessaly said.

"Yes."

"You were there for some time."

"I was aware of the time." Seralyn crossed to the dressing chair and looked at the gown. Ivory silk, simply cut, the kind of thing that asked nothing of the room and everything of the person wearing it. "It is a good choice."

Thessaly did not respond to this. She began unfastening the back of Seralyn's morning dress with the careful efficiency of long practice, and for a moment the room was quiet except for the sea wind off the Vethian coast pushing at the south tower windows.

"Your mother's lady came," Thessaly said.

"I know."

"She was very clear about the green."

"She is always very clear. It is one of her less endearing qualities." Seralyn stepped free of the morning dress. "The ivory is correct. It is composed and it is mine and there is nothing in it that anyone can reasonably object to."

Thessaly said nothing to this. She began unwinding the linen binding from Seralyn's upper torso with the same careful efficiency she brought to everything — slow enough to be gentle, practiced enough to be quick. The strips came away in her hands and she set them aside, folded neatly, without comment.

Seralyn exhaled.

It was not a dramatic thing. It never was. Simply the specific relief of a pressure releasing that had been present so long she had stopped consciously registering it. She reached up briefly and pressed her fingers to her shoulder blades, feeling the muscles there unknot by degrees, and then she let the wings unfold.

They emerged slowly, with the unhurried certainty of something returning to its natural state. Large relative to her frame, extending well past her shoulders on both sides, semi-translucent in the morning light from the south tower windows. The veining within them caught the sun in thin lines of pale gold. At rest they were nearly colourless, carrying only the faintest suggestion of warmth at their edges. She stood with them fully extended for a moment — one moment, two — and simply breathed.

Thessaly watched with the composed expression of a woman who had long since made her peace with the extraordinary and filed it under things that required her discretion rather than her commentary.

Then Seralyn folded them back. Thessaly stepped forward without being asked and wound the linen strips back into place with the same careful precision with which she had removed them. The pressure returned in increments. By the last wrap it was simply the permanent condition of her existence again.

The gown came next. Thessaly lifted it with both hands and settled it over her in a single smooth movement, and for a moment neither of them spoke. The ivory silk fell into place — fitted close through the bodice, following the line of her waist and the curve of her hip, then releasing into skirts that swept to the floor in one clean unbroken line. The neckline sat precisely where it should. The narrow trim at the collar caught the light without demanding it. It was not an ornamented gown. It had no need to be.

Seralyn looked at herself in the glass while Thessaly worked through the fastenings. The ivory gave her complexion a warmth that the green would have flattened. The simplicity of the cut made no apologies for her figure and required none.

"It suits you," Thessaly said quietly, from behind her.

"I thought it would."

A pause. The last fastening closed. Thessaly's hands stilled at her back and did not immediately withdraw, which was unusual enough that Seralyn watched her face in the glass.

"Are you all right, Your Highness." It was not quite a question.

"I am perfectly well."

"Yes." A pause. "You are doing the thing where you say you are perfectly well."

"That is because I am perfectly well."

Thessaly stepped back and moved to the dressing table, gathering pins. "He is said to be an honourable man. His family has a considerable reputation."

"I have read the reports."

"I know you have." Thessaly gestured toward the dressing chair and Seralyn sat. Thessaly began dressing her hair with the economy of long practice — no unnecessary pins, no excessive construction, the kind of arrangement that looked effortless because the effort had been placed correctly. "I only mean that it could be worse."

"It could," Seralyn agreed. "That is not quite the same as it being good."

"No." A pin, placed with precision. "No, it is not."

The room was quiet for a moment. Through the windows the morning light moved across the pale stone of the inner courtyard, and somewhere below, in rooms she had not yet entered, Cassius Halor was being settled and attended to by people whose job it was to make him feel welcome in a palace that was not his.

"I am not afraid," Seralyn said, to the mirror.

Thessaly met her eyes in the glass with the steady directness she was permitted and no one else was. She did not respond immediately, which was its own kind of answer.

"I am not," Seralyn said again, and heard, with the detached clarity she sometimes wished she did not possess, that the second time was slightly less convincing than the first.

"Of course not," Thessaly said, gently. She placed the last pin and stepped back.

A pause followed that was slightly longer than the ones before it. Thessaly's hands were folded in front of her, which was the posture she adopted when she had decided to say something she had been carrying for some time.

"Your Highness."

"Yes."

"The wedding night."

Seralyn went still.