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H ellebore’s mind was already spinning with where she would start. The second Taiyo’s grip on her slackened, she pulled away, ready to get started, but Taiyo did not relinquish her fully. He pulled her to her feet and forced her gaze to his.

“While I appreciate the enthusiasm, we’ve both had a rather exhausting time as of late, and we disappeared from our own reception. Not to mention the stench—” Taiyo coughed, shaking his head before he gently pulled her toward the exit. “You can start first thing in the morning.”

Hellebore looked down at her dress, dirt and decay smeared on the skirts. “I’m not going back to that reception looking like this.”

Taiyo’s hand was on the small of her back as he ushered her into the passageway. “When did I say we were going back to the reception?”

Oh, perfect. Hellebore wanted out of the ridiculous dress anyway; it was a miracle she hadn’t bled through it with all the pins stabbing her.

The castle was quiet, as most everyone was either in the ballroom attending the reception or nearby serving the reception. They passed by a few guards and servants, but not many. Hellebore was more focused on locating the pin digging into her hip than them. Taiyo, however, stiffened every time they spotted an elf and his pace increased. Hellebore was left to lengthen her stride and pick up her pace so as not to be left behind. If she lost him, she’d have no idea how to find her room.

Finally, they made it to her hallway, and Hellebore had successfully removed three of the pins that had been driving her up the wall as Taiyo opened her door.

She looked up from the pin in her hand, mouth open to thank him for the escort, but he had already entered, still holding onto the door and waiting on her.

She curled her fingers over the pins and slowly entered her room. He must want to continue their discussion where it didn’t reek of rot as much.

That better be all he was after.

Once she was back in her room, he shut the door behind her, and she turned on her heel so her back wasn’t to him. She crossed her arms. “I presume I will be staying in this room. I mean, you wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble just to move me after a day, right?”

“I figured it would be easier to go ahead and place you in the queen’s quarters, yes.” Taiyo gestured to a door on the other side of the room. She’d tried it her first night but it had been locked. “That door leads to my quarters.”

Hellebore moved toward her dresser, away from the door. She kept her gaze on the pins in her hand as she dropped them onto the wood. “Good to know.”

She could feel the weight of Taiyo’s gaze on her. If he wasn’t going to say anything, what was he still doing there?

“Do you—”

“Should we discuss our terms?” Hellebore cut him off the second he took a step toward her.

He froze. “Our terms?”

“I used the right word, right?” Hellebore grabbed the dictionary and flipped through it, holding it to her chest. She looked up. “Rules? If I’m going to help you, maybe we should have some rules. If we’re not to be at odds anymore.”

Taiyo nodded, shifting back, clasping his hands behind his back and clearing his throat. “Yes… Yes, some rules might make this process a little smoother.”

Hellebore leaned back against her dresser. “It might go without saying at this point, but just to be clear, since you only married me for my alchemy, that’s all you’ll be getting from me. That’s all you really wanted anyway.”

Taiyo started pacing, gaze on the floor. “Yes, of course.”

Honestly, that was really the only rule Hellebore could think of.

His head snapped up. “I hope you know—I mean, I understand you don’t have a favorable impression of me, considering I’ve strongarmed you into this marriage, but now that you know what it was for… I hope that you’ll trust me. I would never force you into anything.”

She raised an eyebrow.

He sighed. “Anything that wasn’t strictly necessary to save my people.”

“I trust you won’t. Less because of any honor I think you have, but because you’ve already made it very clear this was a mercenary arrangement for you. And why wouldn’t you? You think of me as a monster and a necessary evil. You’re young. After I die, you’ll have plenty of time to have a real marriage and everything that entails. You just have to be patient. Or poison me after I save your people.”

But Taiyo wasn’t laughing along with her.

He stopped in his tracks. “I would never do such a thing.”

“It was a joke. And even so, to be fair, Your Majesty, I don’t even know you. I don’t know what you might do to me once my usefulness runs out.”

Taiyo stared at the ground. Hellebore had no idea what he was thinking; she pushed off the dresser and took a step closer.

His head snapped up. “As for you, you won’t cause any trouble? Your cooperation isn’t some elaborate ruse and you have no intentions of following through? How can I be certain I can trust you?”

Hellebore gestured to her room. “This was an awful lot of trouble to go to if you aren’t even certain you can trust me to do the one thing you brought me here for.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

Hellebore grabbed the letter from her father on her nightstand and held it out to him. When he didn’t immediately take it, she rustled the pages until he did.

Taiyo kept one eye on her even as he read.

She said, “What would be the point? I can’t go back to Chymes, and if I’m going to be stuck here, I’m not so stubborn and prideful that I would sabotage myself in the process. Getting any kind of revenge on you does me no good. Even if I wanted it.”

Taiyo’s expression shifted as he looked up from the letter. “Do you?”

“I want to be a King’s Alchemist. Give me that and I’ll have no reason to want revenge.”

He folded up the letter and passed it back to her, the discomfort that had overtaken him while reading it still lingering in his eyes. “I want to trust you.”

“But you don’t.” Hellebore set the letter back down and took a closer look at him. “And yet, you don’t have a choice in the matter. You have to.”

Taiyo moved to take a seat on a chair, the same one he’d sat in the day before. “I do.”

Hellebore took her seat on the sofa across from him. “Clearly, that’s not an easy task. I know, elves have longer memories, but you don’t really have any other option. You can’t hold the actions of others against me if you want me to save your kingdom.”

Taiyo’s eyes narrowed. “Elves know the nature of alchemists. Of your family.”

Wait…

“Is this about my aunt? I don’t know what happened when the two of you met twenty-five years ago. I mean, I know my aunt doesn’t like you, but she never said why. Surely you can let go of that if my father was able to and was still willing to negotiate with you.”

Taiyo took a deep breath. “Your aunt and I did not get along, and that’s all that needs to be said on the matter. There will be no prying into the past. You are correct, though, I have been looking at you and seeing her, and that’s not fair to you. We will add that to the rules. I can’t promise to do it perfectly, but I will do my best not to hold the bad blood between your family and mine against you.”

“Thank you. And as a gesture of good faith, I’ll add that I won’t hold you forcing this whole marriage against you.” At the shock in his eyes, she added, “I’m going to at least try. The whole affair was instigated by you, but as you saw in my father’s letter, he was looking for an excuse to oust me, so if it hadn’t been you, it could have been someone else.”

Taiyo looked down at his hands again, letting his hair fall into his face to hide his expression. Although Hellebore wasn’t sure why.

When he looked up, there was a strange glint in his eyes. “Thank you. You don’t know how grateful I am.”

Hellebore didn’t like the way he was looking at her, sitting so close their knees were brushing on their wedding night. They’d just established where they stood on that matter, so she knew it couldn’t mean what she feared it meant, but just to be safe, she pushed herself out of her seat and headed for her wardrobe.

“Well, I think we’ve laid down some great rules to start with. Unless there’s anything else you think I need to know before the morning, we should both get some sleep—” Hellebore was opening the wardrobe door, hoping to be able to tell the nightgowns from the day dresses, when a hand brushing the small of her back had her slamming into the wardrobe as she whipped around.

Taiyo shifted back, lifting his hands up in a harmless gesture. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. I just… Do you need any help before I go?”

She’d sooner cut the dress off her than let him help her out of it.

She flashed him a grin. “I am so glad you asked.” She then abandoned the wardrobe, ducking under his arm and reaching the glowing iris by her window. She gestured to it and said, “Your note didn’t give me any information about the typical care for these. Given the predicament we're in, it’s crucial to keep this one in good health. I’m sure you agree.”

“I would have thought someone like you already knew everything you needed to about them.” Taiyo lowered his hands, nodding. “Thanks to their magic, they’re usually resilient organisms. You already have it in a good spot. There’s no such thing as too much sunlight for them. Water it once in the morning. I’ll have one of your maids bring you a cup the right size, and just do one of those when you wake up.”

Hellebore nodded, reaching over to brush her fingers over the petals. “I’m not sure what my father claimed I was to you, but if he tried to say I was a great lover of plants and you took that to mean a gardener, you would be wrong. My studies were always focused on killing plants more so than keeping them alive.”

“That’s what you meant?” Taiyo’s eyes narrowed. “You like to rot plants from the inside out?”

“Lucky you.” Hellebore grinned before she turned back to the iris, admiring the soft glow. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of this one. It will be good to have it for my work. Who knows how useful it could be?”

She was too absorbed in examining which part of the petals’ intricate design the light was emanating from to stop the hand from grabbing her wrist. She gasped as she was ripped away from the plant. Her back hit one of the bedposts as Taiyo backed her up against the wall, hand tight around her wrist. She hissed as his fingers tightened, her still raw skin hidden beneath the sleeves and bandages.

His eyes burned as he hissed, “Not on your life, alchemist.”

Hellebore tried to find a way to escape, but he had her cornered, one of her arms pinned against the stone while his other blocked her in. She sputtered, “Taiyo—”

“Swear to me. Swear on your life, alchemist, you will leave that iris out of this.”

She had no idea what was going on. Why this had been the thing that had caused him to snap. But if that’s what he wanted—

“I swear! Taiyo, I swear I won’t use that iris for anything. I won’t hurt it. I won’t touch it other than to water it.”

Taiyo stared down at her. His chest was heaving with labored breaths. Her own heart was racing under the weight of his examination. Finally, he seemed satisfied with her sincerity and his grip loosened.

He pulled back. His voice was frigid once again as he said, “See that you do. You might be an alchemist by birth, but you are a Sun Elf’s wife. The Sunrise Iris is sacred to a marriage. To deliberately harm it or neglect, or worse, has the same severity as if you were to be found in another man’s bed or if I were to raise a hand against you.”

Hellebore pushed up her sleeve, looking down to examine her wrist to see if the cracked skin had started bleeding. His eyes followed the motion, but she was too busy checking the damage to care if he felt any guilt or not. She muttered, “Then it’s a good thing this isn’t a real marriage.”

Thankfully there was no additional damage. It throbbed a little more than before, but it would ease soon enough.

Hellebore looked up, mouth open to tell him as much, but he was already across the room, disappearing through the door connecting their rooms. The door shut, and she was alone.

Hellebore dropped her wrist and glared at the iris beside her, mocking her with its glow.

She might be helping Taiyo save his kingdom, but that didn’t mean they were on the same side.

It didn’t matter. All that mattered was the alchemy.