"Your Majesty. May I present Her Royal Highness, Princess Seralyn Duskengrove, eldest child of His Majesty King Orath Duskengrove and Her Majesty Queen Lissavel Solvane of House Duskengrove."

She stepped forward.

Cassius Halor turned to face her and she had, for the second time in the space of twenty minutes, the specific experience of being looked at by someone who was not performing the act of looking. He bowed — the correct degree, neither more nor less — and straightened, and his eyes returned to her face with the same directness they had carried across the room, and she thought, with the part of her mind that catalogued things whether she asked it to or not, that he had very good posture for a man who did not appear to be thinking about it.

"Your Highness," he said. His voice was low and even.

"Lord Halor," she said. "I trust your journey was not unpleasant."

"It was entirely pleasant, thank you." A pause, brief and untroubled. "Aelundra is a very beautiful country."

It was the correct thing to say and he said it without the quality of a man reciting a correct thing, which she noted and did not respond to visibly. Around them the room continued its choreography — her father exchanging formal words with the Drevornian steward who had accompanied Cassius, her mother speaking with the chamberlain, Orren doing what Orren always did in formal settings, which was stand in the correct position while appearing to be somewhere else entirely.

She made a decision.

It was not an impulsive decision. She had been making it, in some form, since she had watched him cross the courtyard that morning and found herself constructing a taxonomy of small observations about a man she had been prepared to resent on principle. The decision had been assembling itself quietly all day and it arrived now, fully formed, in the space between one formal exchange and the next.

"Lord Halor," she said, at a perfectly conversational volume. "I find I would prefer a stroll to a reception. Would you care to join me?"

It was not a question, quite.

The room did not go silent — it was too well-trained for that — but she felt the shift in it, the slight recalibration of attention that moved through a space when something had occurred that had not been on the program.

"Seralyn." Her father's voice carried the particular quality he reserved for moments when he wished to communicate an instruction without appearing to give one. "There is a great deal yet to be discussed this afternoon."

She turned to him with the composed expression she had been wearing since she walked through the doors. "There is," she agreed pleasantly. "And there will continue to be, after a short stroll. I do not imagine twenty minutes will throw a considerable wrench in the afternoon's proceedings."

A beat. Her father looked at her with the look he used when he had decided that the cost of pressing the point in present company was higher than the cost of conceding it.

He said nothing further.

She turned back to Cassius. "Lord Halor," she said.

"It would be my pleasure, Your Highness," he said, and offered his arm. She took his arm and they walked.

The receiving hall did not go quiet as they left. It was too well-trained for that. But she felt the room's attention follow them to the doors all the same. She did not look at her mother. She did not look at her father. She kept her eyes on the doors and walked at the correct pace.

The south corridor was cool after the hall, colonnaded, open on one side to the upper terraces. Their footsteps fell into an unplanned rhythm on the pale stone.

"The palace is remarkable," Cassius said. "I had read descriptions. They were insufficient."

"They generally are." She glanced at the terraces as they passed. "People tend to describe either the cliffs or the light. It is the combination of the two that constitutes the thing."

"The light here is unlike anything in Drevorn."

"I imagine so. I have not been to Drevorn."

"The light there is grey more often than not," he said. "It has its own quality. But it is not this."

A brief silence. Neither of them moved to fill it.

The garden gate appeared at the end of the corridor. She unlatched it herself and stepped through, and he followed, and the wall cut the sea wind to almost nothing and the sounds of the palace receded behind them.

"I had intended," Cassius said, "to discuss the marriage terms with you directly. Before any formal proceedings advanced further. It seemed to me that the two people being married ought to have some hand in determining them."

"The terms have been agreed upon," she said.

He looked at her. "I am sorry?"

"The terms. They have been agreed upon and signed." She held his gaze. "Three months ago."

A pause. "Between whom?"

"Between my father's advisors and your king's representatives. Neither of us was present. Neither of us was consulted."

He was quiet for a moment in a way that told her he was revising something. "I was not informed of this."

"No," she said. "I do not imagine you were."

"That is not how I would have done it," he said.

"No," she said. "I do not imagine it is."

He was quiet for another moment. Not brooding — simply thinking. "Is there anything in the terms you object to?"

She had prepared for a great many versions of this conversation. She had not prepared for this one. "I object to not having been asked," she said.

"That is a reasonable objection."

"I am aware."

"I share it," he said.

She held his gaze. "We cannot renegotiate the terms. They are agreed and signed and the alliance rests on them."

"I know." A pause. "I would still like to know what you think of them. We are the ones being married. We ought to at least know what the other actually thinks, separate from what we have been required to say about it."