"What do you think of them?" she said.

He looked at her evenly. "I do not know what they are."

She studied him for a moment. "You were sent here to be married and no one told you the terms."

"It would appear not."

"I know what they are," she said.

"Then you have the advantage of me."

She was quiet for a moment, considering. It had not occurred to her until this moment that she might be in possession of information he did not have, that the imbalance ran in both directions. She had spent three months being the one left out and had not considered that he might have been left out differently.

"The terms are straightforward," she said. "The marriage consolidates the alliance. Aelundra commits naval strength and funding. Drevorn commits military force and knowledge of the eastern terrain. The union is the guarantee that neither kingdom withdraws when the cost becomes difficult."

He listened without interrupting.

"There are provisions for the household," she continued. "Where we will reside, the question of children and succession. All of it decided and signed without either of our names in the discussion."

He was quiet for a moment. "I would like to read them."

"I will see that you have a copy."

"Thank you." A pause. "Is there anything in them you object to?"

"Yes," she said. "All of it. For the same reason as before."

He nodded. He did not push further, which she noted.

"And you?" she said. "Now that you know what they contain. Is there anything you would have done differently?"

"I cannot say fairly," he said. "I have not read them. I only have your summary." A pause. "But the question of where we reside — that was decided without consulting either of us?"

"It was."

"Where are we to live?"

"Drevorn," she said. "Halor Keep. I am to go with you when you return."

He was still for a moment. "That was decided without your input."

"Everything was decided without my input."

He said nothing immediately. She watched him absorb it — not with the practiced neutrality of a man managing a conversation, simply with the stillness of one who had received information and was giving it the weight it deserved.

"You would govern the household with me," he said. "When I inherit the title."

"Yes."

"And you were not consulted on any of it."

"No."

He was quiet for a moment. "I would have wanted you consulted."

It was a simple thing to say. He said it simply. She looked at the fig tree and then back at him.

"Is there anything about those terms that you object to?" she said. "Now that you know them."

"No," he said. "But I would have liked us to arrive at them together." A pause. "There is still time to discuss how they are carried out, even if the terms themselves are fixed. How the household is run. What you need. What I need. Those are conversations that belong to us."

She held his gaze for a moment. Three months of being arranged and managed and informed rather than asked, and here was a man treating the logistics of their shared life as something that required her participation.

“If it is your will, my Lord.”

A ghost of a frown appeared between his brow. “Cassius.”

“My Lord?”

“We are to be wed. I am not your Lord, but your equal,” he said. “Call me Cassius.”

She looked at him for a moment. "That is not the convention."

"No," he agreed. "It is not."

She said nothing. He waited, without apparent concern for how long the silence lasted.

"Cassius," she tried. It felt...strange.

Something in his expression settled. Not satisfaction exactly. Simply a calm. A different calm than what he wore before. Perhaps this was real.

"And I will call you Seralyn," he said. "If that is agreeable."

She nodded. "It is agreeable."

They stood for a moment in the cooling afternoon, the wall at their backs and the fig tree holding its ground in the corner, and she thought that she had walked into this garden twenty minutes ago prepared for performance and had found instead a man who seemed entirely uninterested in performing anything. She did not know what to do with that yet. She was beginning to suspect she was going to have to learn.

“There is much to discuss, my Lord,” she said, and caught herself. "Cassius,” she amended. “And yet, I do not feel inclined to attend conversations that will not include their subject.”

He looked at her for a moment. Then: "Nor do I."

"Then we are in agreement."

"It would appear so." A pause. "What do you propose?"

She considered this. “Tell me,” she paused. “Cassius. What things do you partake in for enjoyment?”

He considered the question with the same unhurried quality he seemed to bring to everything. "Riding. Reading, when I have the time for it. I was trained in the sword but I do not find sport in it." A pause. "I am told I spend too much time in conversation with people my station would not typically converse with. Stewards. Groundskeepers. My father considers it an eccentricity."

"And do you consider it an eccentricity?"

"I consider it practical," he said. "A man who only speaks to his equals only ever knows half of what is happening in his own house."

She looked at him. "I read," she said. "Voraciously, according to my mother, who does not mean it as a compliment. I speak four languages and I am learning a fifth. I spend more time in the palace library than anywhere else in the Solathis." A pause. "My father considers this an eccentricity as well."

"And do you?"

"I consider it the only reliable way to know anything," she said.

He looked at her with the same calm, direct quality. "What is the fifth language?"

"Vorrachi," she said.

Something shifted in his expression. "You are learning the language of the enemy."

"I am learning the language of the threat," she said. "There is a difference. You cannot understand a people you cannot read."

He was quiet for a moment. "That is either very wise or very dangerous."

"It may be both," she said. "I do not consider that a contradiction."

He looked at her. The corner of his mouth moved. Her own mouth felt inclined to shift as well.

“My Lord,” she jested. “Is that a smile?”

"It is not," he said.

She looked at him. It very clearly was, or the closest thing to one she had seen from him yet — small and controlled and apparently involuntary, present for approximately two seconds before he brought it back under governance.

"I see," she said. "I must have been mistaken."

"You were," he said. "I do not smile."

"Of course not."

A brief pause in which he did not smile again and she did not comment on it.

"Is it a Drevornian custom?" she asked. "The not smiling."

"It is a personal preference."

"And yet."

"And yet nothing," he said. "You were mistaken. I have said so."

She looked away to the fig tree and back. "Very well. I retract the observation entirely."

"Thank you."

"You are welcome." A pause. "Cassius."

He looked at her.

"It was a smile," she said.

He said nothing. But the corner of his mouth moved again. Then the other. And soon enough, he allowed his teeth to show. He did not appear to make any particular effort to stop it, and she thought that this was perhaps the most honest thing she had seen from anyone all day. She gave him a small one in return.

“I believe it is time for our return,” she said after a moment. “I fear I may be experiencing hallucinations.”

"Hallucinations," he said.

"Yes. I was certain I just witnessed you smile. Twice." She turned toward the gate. "I will mention it to the palace physician."

"That seems unnecessary."

"I disagree. It was quite alarming." She unlatched the gate. "I nearly lost my composure entirely."

"You have my sympathies," he said. She smiled to herself. She quite enjoyed this banter. It fell easy upon her. Even though she’d only met this man an hour prior, it felt as if they were old friends.

They stepped through into the corridor and they walked back toward the hall with her hand in his arm. The light through the colonnade was lower now, the shadows longer across the pale stone. Neither of them spoke, and the silence was easy. Easier than it should have been between strangers. At the hall doors she released his arm. The guard stepped aside.

She set her expression back to where it needed to be. Composed. Correct. The expression she wore in the presence of her family. It settled into place with the familiarity of long practice.

She pushed the doors open.

Her father looked up from across the room. Whatever he read in her face told him nothing, which was the intended result. Whatever he read in Cassius's face she did not look back to check.

She walked in.

She was off balance. She was composed and correct and entirely off balance. Not physically, but inwardly. Cassius Halor had managed to throw her off balance. Enough so that the choreography she partook in daily left a sour taste in her mouth. 

She was going to have to be very careful indeed.