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One

Yves woke early the day the invitations went out.

For the capital city of Staria, Duciel was ugly in the morning.

Yves admired it from the window of his second floor room in the House of Onyx, one of the tall, ornate houses that lined the Pleasure District.

Smoke from kitchen fires choked the air, and a gray, washed-out light revealed water stains on the towering noble houses in the distance.

Above it all, the gold roof on the Starian palace gleamed like a cracked egg at the top of the hill.

The street cleaners were working the palace paths, and detritus skittered over the cobbles as people emerged from their houses and hunched their shoulders in the cold wind.

Most of the house was in bed by now. Courtesans worked late, and Yves had seen his last client only three hours before, but he was too restless to sleep. He watched sunlight creep over the city with his elbows on the windowsill, his blond hair tousled by the breeze.

“Hey!”

Yves tucked a curl behind his ear and sighed.

“Hey! Darr!”

Yves’ smile faded. Only a handful of people called him Darr—short for Darling, the name his all-too-sentimental parents had given him.

Yves had left that name behind in the country, but the country clearly had a difficult time letting go of him.

He peered into the side garden below his window, where his brother Peter—short for Patience— was hefting a rock in his left hand.

“If you throw that at the window, I’m shoving your head in a well and leaving you there,” Yves said. “Why are you here?”

“This card says you’re getting married.” Like their mother, the natural dominance in Peter’s voice came out like a charging bull, with no finesse or care.

Most dominants knew how to control their influence, but Yves’ mother was never very good at teaching, and so the ones in Yves’ family tended to run wild.

As a submissive, Yves had felt like he’d been living with a gaggle of honking geese for eighteen years.

A pair of shutters a few rooms down popped open, and Nanette, one of the other courtesans, leaned out of her window.

“Who’s getting what ?” she asked.

“I had those invitations sent last night,” Yves said to Peter. “How did you find one?”

“Find who?” Simone, another courtesan, squeezed into the window next to Nanette. She was a dominant like Peter, but her voice only held a touch of command.

“Someone’s getting married,” Nanette said.

Peter went pink. Nanette and Simone were nude, and a flashy gold necklace dangled between Simone’s breasts.

Peter seemed determined not to look at them.

“Aunt Josie said Layla’s oldest spoke to Lord Fuller’s son, whose cousin knows a countess from Duciel who gave him this.

” Peter held a card up like a magician about to set a handkerchief on fire.

“Saying you’re getting married this summer. ”

Yves had to admit he was impressed. If the king’s spymaster employed the power of a country village rumor mill, he’d know everyone’s business in a fortnight.

“And you rode all the way here?” Yves asked.

“Wait,” Nanette said, “you’re actually getting married? To whom?”

A pair of shutters slammed above them, and Percy, Yves’ best friend, blurted out, “but I thought the invitations went out this morning!”

“He’s not marrying you ?” Nanette asked, twisting to look up at Percy.

“No,” Yves and Percy said at the same time.

“I’m happily married, thank you,” Percy said.

“Darr ain’t saying,” Peter said, shaking the card in his hand, “because no one’s written on the invitation!”

“Some of us are trying to sleep! ” Oleander, the newest courtesan from Katoikos, slapped open their shutters just so they could glare at the chaos unfolding below. Nearly all the courtesans in the House of Onyx were standing at a window now, looking from Yves to his younger brother.

Yves tried not to look at the closed pair of shutters to his right as he gestured to Peter. “I’ll let you in through the garden.”

“Guests aren’t allowed without permission,” Oleander said.

Percy chucked something at Oleander’s window, prompting a shriek of dismay. “Shut up, Oleander!”

Yves left them to bicker. He hurried down the stairs outside his room and opened the door to the garden, where Peter stood with his back hunched and his face red as a beet.

While Yves took after their mother with her curly hair and big eyes, Peter was the spitting image of their father.

He had a round, splotchy face and yellow hair that hung straight down like a curtain, and he was broad and ungainly in his secondhand traveling clothes.

The family farm wasn’t exactly failing—they were one of the biggest in Staria—but everyone had a chest of hand-me-downs.

“Well?” Yves asked. “Get in.”

“Never been in a whorehouse before,” Peter said. All his fire seemed to have fled as soon as Yves opened the door.

“You have former courtesans working on the farm, Peter.”

“Yeah, milking the goats.” He eyed the wallpaper behind Yves warily, as though a naked courtesan may be hiding behind it to leap out and ravish him.

“Well, we milk things here too. Come on, Peter, no one’s gonna—” He stopped himself before the familiar country accent could creep into his voice. “No one will proposition you. They’ll just ask for gossip.”

“Tony said there was screaming when he visited,” Peter said softly, slinking through the doorway, “in one of the other rooms.”

“Yeah, that was probably Nanette. She likes to show off.” Tony—which was short for Devotion—had visited a few weeks before, and he’d spent the whole time in the same state as Peter.

Peter goggled when Yves opened the door to his bedroom.

The walls glittered with jewelry, paintings, and fine tapestries, all gifts from Yves’ clients.

The open closet was swollen with silk and fine fabric, and Yves’ desk had so much jewelry dripping off stands and hooks that it seemed on the verge of collapse.

Yves flopped onto the bed, but Peter stood in the middle of the floor, clutching the invitation in his hands.

“Were you gonna tell us?” he asked.

Yves patted the bed. “Sit down, Peter.”

“Who is it?” Peter didn’t move. “One of your visitors?”

“Clients,” Yves said. “Maybe.”

Peter swallowed heavily. “This is because of Tony, ain’t it?”

Yves suppressed a groan. Tony had come to Duciel on the back of a milk cart with his best suit on and a cap over his curly blond hair, and he’d done a passable impression of their mother in the House of Onyx sitting room.

The family had collectively decided: Yves had spent enough time frittering his life away in Duciel as a high-end whore, and it was time to come home and make something of himself.

His parents had found a number of dominants willing to accept Yves’ hand in marriage—no one too upstanding, not with his reputation, but he’d have to take what he could get.

He should have expected it. Yves’ parents were painfully old-fashioned, and believed that a submissive was helpless without a dominant to sort out their lives.

There was no room for anything else—no fellow submissives, no chance of going without, and certainly no sleeping around for the fun of it.

His parents had been a love match, so how hard could it be for Yves to follow their example?

Yves didn’t know if he wanted what his parents had.

Their love was almost frightening in its intensity—his father had come home from the navy with a limp that never went away and waking nightmares that came without warning, but Yves’ mother had taken it all in stride.

He could still remember watching his mother run across the farm as though they were so bound that she could sense her husband’s fits before they struck.

Yves wasn’t sure he could ever have that kind of connection with someone.

It seemed unfair to assume anyone else should try.

“Tony was just trying to help you,” Peter said. “What do you think a stunt like this’ll do?”

Something creaked in the room next door, and Yves grit his teeth. “I simply feel like it’s time to find a nice, wealthy husband who can shower me in so many jewels that I can’t breathe. Isn’t that what everyone wants? Isn't that what you all want for me?”

“Then why do this ?” Peter asked, shoving the invitation at Yves.

The card was made of thick stock, with gold paint on the edges and big, looping letters that shrank as the calligrapher realized they only had so much space to write. It read:

You Are Formally Invited to the Wedding

Of Yves, Favored Courtesan of Staria

And His Yet-to-be-Chosen Husband of High Esteem

On the First Day of Summer

White Rose Park, Duciel

(Potential Husbands Must Apply to the House of Onyx for Inquiries)

Yves handed Peter the slightly crumpled card. “I’ve turned it into a game. We like those here.”

“A game,” Peter repeated, incredulously.

“Yes. Anyone who makes inquiries gets a clue to the first test. The first person to pass all of them gets the prize.” Yves gestured at himself.

“They get a whore, you mean.”

“Try not to spit when you say it,” Yves said. “No one else in the Pleasure District has retired without a little fanfare. My retirement party is louder than most. Don’t worry, though. No one could actually pass all the tests.” He smiled bitterly. “It would be impossible.”

“So you’re not even serious about it.” Peter took a jerky step forward and lowered his voice. “How badly are you going to embarrass us before you’re satisfied?”

Yves’ smile didn’t falter, despite the pain lancing through him. Once, Yves had been responsible for raising his younger siblings. Now Peter looked at him like he was a stain on a nice cloth, and he was trying to figure out if it was better to scrub it out or toss it entirely.