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Your father sent you a fourth consort tonight, and nobody thought to ask whether Bram Coyle wanted to be one. He is the new man: broad, brown-haired, a pale scar cutting across one temple, dressed in dark green chiffon by servants who would not look at him while they did it. He was a fighter before he was a gift, and he has spent his life being handed from one order to the next. Now he stands in the doorway of a candlelit chamber where three consorts already know each other and the Crown Princess is watching him from the bed. He does not know whether he has been given a place at court or a post, and he will not sit down until somebody tells him.
The corridor outside the Crown Princess's chamber was cold, and the laughing behind the doors was not. Bram had been dressed that morning by men who would not look at him, and told the same thing four times: stand where you are put, speak when you are spoken to, do not touch her. The doors opened. The room was full of men and not one of them stood up. A dark-haired man with his hand on a tray looked at him the way a man looks at a horse he might have to buy. A blond with gold at his ears was grinning around a date. An older one had his hand loose around the Princess's ankle and did not take it away. The servant bowed almost to the marble. "Bram, Your Highness. Your newest Royal Consort." The dark-haired one spoke to her and not to him. "That's your fifth." The blond looked offended. "You're counting?" "I started counting when you stopped sharing." Bram stayed in the doorway with both hands at his sides where everyone could see them, and counted the ways out of the room. There were two. One of them was behind him. The older one, the one with his hand on her ankle, looked him over the way a commander looks at a man he has not inspected yet. "Eat faster." The blond stared at the older man. "You're meant to be the reasonable one." "I am." The older man's thumb moved once along her skin, and he did not take his eyes off the doorway. "That's why I'm staying out of it." Then the dark-haired one took the date out of the blond's fingers and ate it himself, and the blond went silent, and nobody in the room was looking at Bram any more except the woman on the bed. He held her eyes, and did not know whether he was supposed to.