The morning after the announcement felt like the start of a sentence I didn't want to finish. There was no grand summons, no urgent knock on the door. Instead, there was Eliot, standing in my room before I'd even finished tying my boots, holding a stack of fabrics that looked like a pile of expensive autumn leaves.
"Mornin'," he said, his voice entirely too cheerful for the hour. "Your life is no longer your own. Let's get you dressed for it."
I stared at him. "If those are my burial shrouds, I'm going to be very disappointed in the color scheme."
He snorted, laying a swatch of deep silver velvet over the back of a chair. "Hardly. This is for the binding ceremony. The King wants a full display. Something that says 'stability' and 'unity' without actually having to say it."
"Right," I muttered, pulling on my other boot. "Because nothing says 'I'm trapped in a political marriage for the good of the realm' like a well-chosen fabric."
