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“Not at all.” I fisted my skirt and started toward the stairs. “Excuse me.”

“Wait.” He took a tight step closer, a gentle hand raised up in offering. “May I be of assistance?”

The earnest crease in his brow made me want to spit. “Do I look like I need it?”

“You do,” he said, commandingly, wholly unfazed by my turn of emotion. “There are tears in your eyes.”

He looked at me again with that incisive stare, like I was made of water he could see straight through. I opened my mouth—to say what, I wasn’t sure—when he cut me off.

“The entryway and halls are full of guests eager for gossip. As we’ve established, you’re quite…” His gaze darted down the front of my body. “… conspicuous in that gown. It would be wise to take a moment before you descend.”

His fastidious caution stunned me. There was something about him that made me want to relent.

Perhaps it was that I could sense no malice in him, no lack of patience.

I could feel his steadiness, a rooted, immovable quality that made me want to linger.

We stood, gazes locked, at the top of the stairs.

A strong gust boomed up the wall below us. It howled around the fort’s corners and ran through our hair. I took a step back. “Thank you for the conversation,” I said, curtly. “Enjoy gaping at Seraf’s horrors, my lord.” I started down the stairs. “They’re as endless as the cheap wine.”

When I returned to the throne room it was close to bursting. It brimmed with beating music, bodies, and more of that unfamiliar salt air.

Agatha stood at my side, arm looped with mine. She took a deep breath and gave a shiver. “I suppose it’s best you can’t breathe.”

I grunted at that, unamused. The conversation from the parapet played over in my mind, and that odd plucking feeling in my chest had returned. “I need some wine.”

“It’s worse than usual.” She took a sip of her own half-empty glass and grimaced.

“Then I’ll drink it quickly.” I wound us through groups of whispering guests, toward where the drink table sat. I downed a quick glass, then tried to pull in a breath, which earned me her scowl.

“Nemea ordered the dress to be made that tight on purpose, you know.” Her mood hadn’t improved in the least.

I took another gulp. “Yes, I know.” I’d already surmised that Nemea had wanted my gown to be as heavy and pinching as a fetter.

Expensive and garish, so that visitors would see his ward, would look closely, and I would be tasked with hiding my pain.

He wanted me to remember that even in marriage, I would still be his to control.

“I hope you find someone to dance with,” I said in a gentle voice, trying to change the subject.

“I know how you love it. The music shouldn’t be ruined by my circumstances. ”

“They’re hard to ignore,” she said. I watched the first of the dancers twist and spin, letting the vibrations of the drum and lute stifle that feeling in my chest. “And how was dinner with your adoring captain last night?” Agatha asked, the question dripping with sarcasm.

“Was your husband-to-be what we’d expected? ”

We’d expected him to be dull and harsh, but to my surprise, he’d been anything but. I’d been surprised by his wit. He’d shown manners and offered thoughtful conversation. He’d kissed me softly when he left, his fingers firm on my jaw. “It was nice. He was kind.”

The look she gave me felt like a strike to the knees. “ Kind. ”

My throat clamped. “I… I meant that he—I simply meant that I didn’t fear him.”

A woman beside me gasped and pointed toward the throne room’s tall oaken doors.

She had not been the first to do so. Plenty of young ladies had swooned, leaning into their friends or escorts, at the sight of the Siren wing hanging above them, stark against the pale wall.

The large feathers were stretched wide; bolts through the bone held it to its wooden plaque.

The dim, golden candlelight didn’t pull out the riot of colors on the wing’s black plumage—the slash of iridescent blue and green near its base, the purple near its fringed edge—but I could paint it from memory.

My gaze dipped to the inscription in the marble below it.

THE MONSTER IS ALWAYS SLAIN.

That motto was the black-tipped root of King Nemea’s cruelty and the reason all the other rulers of the archipelago loathed him.

It was why all these people had sailed for days across treacherous seas to visit a poor, near-barren rock of an island.

For decades, King Nemea had obliterated all goodwill that might have once been his with the heinous practice of hunting divine Sirens.

I moved us away from the group of young women, whose eyes had found me and drank me in with condescension.

Nemea had done well at making me a spectacle.

We tucked in near the dais, where King Nemea stood speaking with the queen of the united kingdoms of Della and Gos.

He was tall and barrel-chested. Wild black hair streaked with gray contrasted his fairer skin.

That narrow, usually dour face of his looked so strange with a smile upon it.

He gestured proudly and patted his chest, and the deep red coat he wore, boasting ruby buttons down its front, looked too fine against his rough countenance.

“He’s positively glowing,” Agatha drawled, a hateful frown on her face as she stared at him.

“I can’t understand how you can look at him with such open dislike.” I pulled again at my bodice, gave a small moan of discomfort. “Aren’t you afraid he’ll notice?”

“I’m incapable of looking at him any other way. My face won’t allow it.” She attempted a crooked smile that did nothing to make her look less dismal. “I’ll find you shortly,” she said. “Going to get some more of Nemea’s terrible wine.”

I clung to the edge of the dais, illuminated in the wavering light of half a dozen candelabras.

The brightly colored guests looked so carefree, flushed from drink and dance and laughter.

Not one of them seemed to notice how King Nemea’s highest-ranking soldiers skulked through their midst like death itself, clad in their night-black armor.

I searched every one of them wondering where their captain—my fiancé—might be.

In the candlelight, the large ring he’d given me seemed to trap the flame in its angles.

The spinel stone was the deep gray of the sea in a storm. Spinels were not found on the Leucosian archipelago. They were only mined on the northern continent of Obelia, and no captain from any kingdom could afford such a stone. I could only assume that Nemea had given it to him.

I twisted the ring with my thumb. It was a rare and expensive shackle.

And I was stuck, yes, but more importantly, I was safe.

On King Nemea’s mountain, my mind did not often stray to its darker recesses, where thoughts of shredded flesh and dark water and rivulets of blood did their best to lure me.

Here, I could live dulled and peaceful. I would do all I could to keep it that way.

King Nemea stepped onto the dais. The head table set upon it was laden with customary gifts from all the neighboring kingdoms. The swath of red silk draped across it was embroidered with twisting black eels.

A gift from Della and Gos, I guessed, as they were famous for their silkworms. Blood-colored flowers sat in sprawling arrangements, likely gifted from Varya.

Nemea fisted a new silver goblet, studded with rubies.

“Don’t linger in the dark, Imogen,” he said, without casting me a glance. “Come up here.”

Careful of my skirt, I took the stairs and came to his side.

He took my hands and raised my arms. With impassive gray eyes he took in the intricacies of my gown.

The pins in my hair, the heavy rubies pulling at the soft flesh of my ears.

“The gown looks like a perfect fit,” he said in a snide voice.

“It is, Your Majesty.” I gave a weak smile.

He reached up with an inelegant hand and tugged at a dark curl that rested on my shoulder. “What’s this?”

“The curl, Your Majesty?”

“You were to have it all pinned up.” His already cool gaze turned frigid. “As I had instructed.”

He’d given me no such instruction. I bent into a low curtsy. “Of course. I can go—”

He gave a quick shake, the gesture impressively withering and dismissive at once. “It’ll do.” He looked out over the glittering throne room, filled with guests. “It’s something, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“And you…” He set a gentle hand to my cheek, and I went deathly still. He had never struck me before, but I’d seen the flex of his hand, as if it yearned to. I knew how his soft voice could boom, how easily he could order me locked away for a week. “Are you happy?”

I paused at the strange question. “I am. How could I not be?”

“Precisely. The gown, the feast—it’s all more than you deserve.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

His gaze locked onto someone across the room, and it was as if a bolt struck him. He took me by the wrist and hauled me off the dais. “I don’t imagine you think often of a king’s duty, do you?”

“Not often, Your Majesty.” My feet could hardly move fast enough to keep up with him as he wove us through the crowd. “But I have thought of it.”

“And what do you think?” The music rose.

A swell of strings and a drum like a heartbeat filled my ears.

Bodies pressed toward the center of the room, where the next dance was to begin.

“Of duty. Do you think it is achieved by carving out pieces of yourself or by growing, collecting, so that you are equipped to do what is needed when it is time?”

“Your Majesty, I don’t know what you mean. Both, perhaps?”

We came to a sudden halt before a wall of gold-armored soldiers. Six of them. All were broad and unmoving, with flowering vines carved into their breastplates, their vambraces. “Theodore Ariti,” Nemea barked.

“Hello, Nemea,” came a disgruntled voice from behind the soldiers.

I recognized it, smoky and deep. The guards parted and there stood the man from the lookout.

He was even more striking now, clothed in a beautiful deep green coat and wearing a perfect scowl.

Tucked into his dark waving hair sat a golden crown of woven laurel.

That scowl slipped toward me, and his eyes widened.

I averted my gaze quickly, feeling the heat rise in my cheeks, and sank into a low curtsy before the king of Varya.