I'm sitting in an ox-cart. My wrists smell like old myrrh and yesterday's sweat. Someone tied a gold band around my head and called it a crown. My dress is linen, scratchy, stiff with dye. Flies buzz around me. The road is dust and heat. The driver spits and says, "You're a married woman now."
Married. To some count I've never met. A trade deal sealed over wine and figs. A wife sent by cart like a shipment of dates. No one asked me. They just loaded me up and pointed me toward his estate like I was a debt to be paid.
We pass crumbling statues. A cracked relief of some ancestor stabbing a lion. Dried-up olive groves. A slave with a reed fan waits at the gate, blinking slow in the heat.
The count's house is built of sun-baked stone, low and wide. Everything stinks of grease and smoke and animal musk. Clay idols watch me from the corners.
They bring me to him.
He's sitting on a wooden stool, naked except for a bronze belt and a dusty red cloak. Skin pink and sagging, belly hanging like a wineskin. His face… gods. It's the face of a hog. A real one. Snout, tusks, bristled jaw. Swine eyes. He looks at me once. Then turns away.
"Good enough," he says. His voice is thick and wet.
A servant smears oil on his back. Another brings him a bowl of grain. He eats with both hands. Some falls down his chest and no one dares wipe it.
They tell me I'll sleep in the weaving hut. That I'm not to bother him unless he sends for me.
I ask if I'm his wife.
They say, "You're his honor."
At night, I lie on a straw mat beside the loom, rats skittering in the thatch. I stare at the cracked ceiling, mouth dry, hands clenched, heart hammering like a goat caught in a snare.
I dream I slit his throat with a spindle. But even that dream is too slow. He bleeds barley and wine.
It's near dusk in the dream now. The light outside turns thick and coppery. Everything feels slow and heavy, like the air's been mixed with ash. I sit in the weaving hut, scratching bites on my ankle and wondering how hard I'd have to hit myself with a loom weight to wake up.
That's when the old woman enters. She's bent like a sickle, robe the color of sand, mouth full of half-rotted teeth. No one introduced her. She just appears. Like most people in dreams do.
"You were married by proxy," she says, as if I asked. "Three priests, two seals, and a bowl of honey wine."
I blink. "To him?"
She doesn't flinch. "His lordship needed a human consort. Something soft. Upright. Breathing. For appearances."
I stare at her. "He's a hog."
"Counts have been worse," she shrugs.
"He ate with his face."
She smiles, all gums. "And yet, you're here. You'll get used to it. You'll bear his mark, maybe a child. The House of Swine has deep roots. This is politics, girl. You're not a person now. You're a symbol."
"Of what?"
She tilts her head. "Compliance."
I want to throw something at her, but the only thing in reach is a lump of drying clay. I squeeze it instead. Hard.
"Why me?" I whisper, even though I know the answer.
She looks at me with those tired, bored eyes and says, "Because you're nobody. And no one misses nobodies."
That hits harder than anything else. I stand. My legs shake. The hut spins. Outside, I hear the grunt of his lordship echo through the compound like a war drum softened by fat.
The old woman's already gone.
Just me, the straw mat, and the loom.
And a marriage I never agreed to.
I wake up with the taste of straw and grease in my mouth, heart thudding like someone's trying to hammer their way out of my chest. My skin's slick with sweat, and for one awful moment I swear I can still hear the pig's grunt echoing somewhere in the trees.
The fire's down to embers. The Dragon lifts one eyelid, flicks it shut again. "Go to sleep, Saya."
I shake my head, still half in the dream. "No. Gods. No."
He sighs like I've ruined another perfectly good moment of peace. "What was it this time? Drowning? Falling? Flocks of talking wombs again?"
"I was married off," I whisper.
"Scandalous. Tell me more in the morning."
"To a hog."
Now both his eyes open. Glowing faintly in the dark. "Like… metaphorically?"
"Literal tusks. Bristles. A noble cloak that smelled like bacon fat." My voice is shaking now. "He needed a human wife. For political reasons."
The Dragon makes a choking sound—could be a laugh, could be revulsion. "Well. At least he didn't eat you."
"He fed from a bowl," I mutter, trying not to picture it. "With both hands. And it… slopped. Gods. And then they told me I was his honor—like I was some token, a proof of civilization, stuck between his trotters."
I stand. Too fast. The world tilts.
And then I bolt into the bushes and retch.
It comes out bitter and burning. Wine, mostly. And shame. And the last greasy pastry I stole from that roadside stall.
I hear the Dragon shift behind me, rustling his wing like a blanket. "You done?"
I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, spit, and groan. "Not even close."
Silence for a beat. Then:
"I have to admit," he calls out, "this one's new. Most people dream of flying. You dream of getting pig-married in a heatwave."
I stagger back to the fire, curl up by his side like a kicked dog. "I want it out of my head."
"Too late. It's in mine now."
He exhales smoke. Warm. Annoyed. "No more rose wine before bed."
I nod against his flank, eyes still wide. "And if I ever start talking about wanting to marry into nobility again—"
"—I'll roast the groom myself."
"Deal."
I close my eyes, but the bristle of his snout still lingers behind my eyelids. Gods. Why did he have to have a snout?