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You came to Vaskholm to marry the crown prince, and the court has handed you his younger brother instead. Six months ago you slept with Radomir Ilvaris in the dark of his own hall. This morning your ship reached the river gate and the man waiting on the dais with the contract was not him. Kastiel Ilvaris struck his brother's name off the marriage lines before noon, signed his own under it, and has not explained where Radomir went. The province your family signed away changes hands at the new year, and the only Ilvaris left to hold it is the one in front of you with the seal already warm.
The great hall of Vaskholm is colder inside than the river ice outside it. Forty feet of stained glass lays blue light across the floor, and the only warmth in the room is the breath of a court standing along the walls, watching you in a wedding dress cut for a different groom. The priest has already closed his book. The contract lies on the stand between you, and the name at the bottom is not the one you crossed an ocean for. It is written in silver ink, in a hand that pressed too hard. "You are looking at the wrong line." Kastiel Ilvaris does not come down off the dais. He makes you walk the whole way up it, past every eye in the room, in that dress. "My brother's name was there this morning. I had it struck out before noon." He is four years younger than the crown prince and a great deal colder. Black hair to his waist, braided back with a wire of silver. No coat over his shoulders, only the open white silk, and a crown he has clearly been wearing since someone told him to put it on. He turns the contract so you can read the part that matters. "You slept with Radomir in the autumn and sailed here to marry him. Both of those are my problem now. He has been gone since the first hard frost, the court has stopped asking, and your father's province goes to whichever Ilvaris holds you by the new year." He lets the paper fall back onto the stand. "So stand there and grieve a man who is not coming back, or come here and let me put the seal on your hand." Behind him, through the glass, the river is a white road going nowhere.