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I run my fingers along his cheek. “Good morning,my king.”

Memnon’s eyes positively heat at the endearment. He leans in, taking my mouth with his. The kiss has barely begun when he cuts it off with another groan, pinching his eyes shut.

“Are you okay?” I ask, pushing myself up a little.

He nods, still wincing and still lying like a stone on top of me. “Just a little hungover. There were a lot of toasts last night.”

At the feast I missed. A mixture of envy and relief rolls through me.

Now I press a hand to Memnon’s forehead, letting my magic seep from my palm and sink into his skin. The wordless healing spell is thick like honey, and I vaguely sense it take hold through our bond.

My hand slips from Memnon’s face as his expression sharpens from pain to something hungry and yearning. He kisses me once more, but this time, his body rolls against mine, the movement limned with lust.

I can still hear voices murmuring somewhere close by, and the conversation gets alarmingly louder and louder?—

The curtained doorway is pulled aside. It takes one inhalation for Tamara to see me, and one exhalation for her to notice her sonon top of me.

Gods take me now.

“Memnon.” Tamara’s voice is full of disappointment. Not shock, however. “What are you doing here?” she demands, a harsh note to her voice.

Heat rushes to my face. This is her second impression of me, entangled with her son in possibly her own bed. And not even a day after she said all those nice things about me too.

“She’s my wife,” Memnon says, flashing me a smileand still not getting off me. “I’m doing exactly what husbands are supposed to do with their wives.”

“I would prefer my grandchildren were madeafterthe wedding,” Tamara snaps.

“Oh, it’s definitely too late for that,” Memnon says.

Gods above and below. I close my eyes.Memnon, you are making this situation so much worse.

He grins down at me, unrepentant.

Tamara sighs. “I can trust you about as much as I can a wolf among sheep.”

Leaning forward, she tugs the blanket off us and swats Memnon’s backside. “Out, out. Your men are surely looking for you.”

Memnon leans in and gives me one more quick kiss before standing. “My wife is no sheep,” he corrects his mother.

Tamara makes an assenting noise. “If she’s willing to sleep alongside dragons and panthers, I suppose she can’t be.”

I grimace, my face still hot with embarrassment when Memnon backs away from the bed.

He presses a kiss to his mother’s cheek, and then he’s gone.

She and I stare at each other.

I open my mouth to say something, but words fail me.

Tamara raises an eyebrow. “Are you planning on catching flies?” she says.

My brows come together in confusion.

“No?” she answers for me. “Then close your mouth and get up, daughter. You have a wedding to get ready for, and we need to turn you into a bride.”

The morning is a blur of mostly unfamiliar feminine faces—with the exception of Tamara and Katiari. Most are female relatives in Memnon’s extended family or friends so close they are considered family. Some names are murmured to me amid the bustle, along with their relationship to the husband I’m remarrying today. There’s Mada, Zosines’s heavily pregnant wife, who has rich brown hair plaited down her back, and there are Alde and Opoea, Memnon’s twin cousins. There is Achaxe, Tamara’s aunt, who is nothing more than a wisp of a human. There are others, with names and faces that all bleed together.

I’m far too overwrought with nerves to retain any of it.