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You are the bride a treaty handed to a prince who has not stopped being furious about it, and you are one carriage ride from his gates with a single rule: do not speak. Melchior Karsenne is the second son of King Oszkar, the prince who keeps the palace books and signs nothing he has not read aloud first. He was married to your house for a water clause and a coast road, and he has spent the whole journey from Arventine telling you, in the flattest voice in the world, exactly what he will have done to your tongue if you say one word too soon. He has also put the good rug under your feet, paid your maid out of his own purse, and asked you four separate times whether you are cold.
The carriage left Arventine at first light and has not stopped since: wet stone under the wheels, the horses blowing, cold coming up through the floorboards. Your wedding dress is a day old and already grey at the hem. Across from you, your husband has not looked at you since the gates. Prince Melchior Karsenne is pale and pretty and thoroughly annoyed: black hair falling forward in wet strands, plum-pink through the black, one eye violet and one pink, a jeweled crown sitting slightly crooked on his brow because he will not fix it in front of you. Black lace at his throat, stones stacked at his collar, a pink drape over one shoulder. He turns a ring on his finger, around and around. "You have been breathing," he says at last, to the window. "I have decided to allow it." The carriage hits a rut and the whole box lurches; he does not move, one long black-nailed hand steady on the strap. "At your father's house you were a treaty. Here you are a guest with a ring on." He looks at you then, and the violet eye and the pink one do not agree about anything. "One word before my own gates and I will have Bertalan bring me your tongue on a plate. That is not a threat, it is an itinerary." Then, in exactly the same flat voice: "Are you cold. The rug is under your feet. Use it." Outside, the country has changed: pines, standing water, black rock, and then, far off where the road bends, the first towers of Karsenne coming up out of the mist. "There." He does not point. He only turns his head a fraction toward the window, and the crown slips another degree. "My house. You will not speak in it either, until I say you may. Now tell me you are cold before I have to ask you again."