An Arrangement Ended

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“Eight years ago,” Cassian said. “Before either of us had much say in the matter.”

Mira slipped off her gloves. “We acquired opinions. The arrangement did not survive them.”

Iona wished her relief were less visible. She had no claim on the man beside her, beyond the extraordinary foolishness of one kiss. Two kisses. She refused to count the second separately.

“Then there is nothing between you now?”

“Friendship,” Mira said. “Sometimes exasperation. Neither is a secret.”

Cassian looked at Iona, and heat rose beneath her collar. He had noticed. Of course he had noticed.

Mira spared her by asking about Tomas. When Cassian went upstairs to check on him, she remained beside the garden doors.

“You should know why I vouched for him,” she said. “He brought grain through the strait when captains with better papers refused the risk. My people ate because he sailed.”

“Lucien described a different man.”

“Lucien benefits from a different man.”

Iona led her into the council room. On the table lay proposals from the duke's allies: grain priced like jewels, protection priced like marriage. Mira read them without concealing her disgust.

“I have three ships outside the harbour,” she said. “Full holds. Payment in instalments would suit us better than a permanent blockade.”

“You can offer that without your government?”

“I can offer the cargo I own. A treaty will take longer.”

It was the first practical alternative anyone had placed before Iona. She asked about quantities, unloading costs, the warehouses still usable after the war. Mira answered plainly. She wanted safe docks and fair payment, not gratitude dressed as obedience.

They sent for the harbour guild's representative and arranged an inspection for the following morning. The plan would not feed Auren for a year. It could feed the capital long enough for a better plan to exist.

The harbour representative arrived with ink on his cuff and very little patience for ceremony. He challenged the unloading estimate, then Mira's price for damaged sacks. She challenged his assumption that her crews would work unpaid while the palace debated. Iona listened until they reached an agreement neither liked enough to distrust.

“Who gives the quay guards their orders?” Mira asked.

“The harbour master gives ordinary orders,” the representative said. “The duke claims authority whenever he names a military concern.”

Iona asked for the decree that allowed it. The man promised a copy. She had expected a problem of money. Instead she was finding the same man's hand on every door through which food could enter.

“We need a second route,” she said.

“River barges,” Mira answered. “Slower. More expensive in winter. But possible.”

They marked the alternative together. Iona would later remember that small line on the map, drawn before anyone knew how much they would need it.

After Mira left, Iona sat alone with the figures. Her mother would have called her reckless for trusting a foreign envoy. Her mother had also signed orders that sent hungry boys to fight over those same docks. Love and loyalty did not make every inherited lesson wise.

Cassian found her tracing a shipping route with her finger.

“Tomas is awake,” he said. “He wants to know whether the window opens.”

“Does it?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

“He asked permission to walk in the courtyard. Your guard told him he was a guest.”

“He is.”

Cassian leaned against the table. “He didn't believe her until she moved away from the door.”

Iona imagined the small, difficult test. Freedom offered in a palace might still sound like another name for captivity.

“Would you like to go somewhere with fewer doors?” she asked.

They walked to the old kitchen garden, Anwen following well behind. Winter cabbages stood in straight, defiant rows. Iona had worked there once, during a childhood punishment for hiding her tutor's shoes. The gardener had fed her warm potatoes and taught her to distinguish a root from a weed. She remembered it as a better education than the lesson she had missed.

Cassian listened with an expression she was beginning to crave.

“What?” she asked.

“I'm trying to imagine you with dirt on your nose.”

“It was very dignified dirt.”

“I'm sure.”

She took his hand where the wall hid them from the upper windows. It felt less daring than the kiss and somehow more intimate. A choice that could continue while they talked about ordinary things.

“Was I very obvious with Mira?”

“Painfully.”

“You might have said no.”

“You asked for honesty.”

“I didn't know it would be so inconvenient.”

He brushed his thumb over her knuckles. “I liked that you wanted to know. I would not have liked being told I couldn't speak to her.”

“I wasn't going to do that.”

“I know. I'm telling you where the difference is for me.”

She considered the distinction. At court, jealousy was treated as evidence of devotion until it became a rule someone else had to live under. She had no wish to build a smaller version of Lucien's kingdom inside her own heart.

“Mira stays your friend,” she said. “And I reserve the right to feel ridiculous occasionally.”

“Generous terms.”

He drew her nearer. She could smell cold air in his coat and the faint soap he had borrowed from the guest rooms. Nothing expensive. Nothing chosen to make her remember him. She thought she would remember it for years.

“I'm afraid of this,” she said.

“Of me?”

“Of wanting something I cannot defend with a speech.”

His hand settled against her cheek. “Then don't make a speech.”

She kissed him. This time there was no startled uncertainty, only the answering pressure of his mouth and the knowledge that she had chosen it. When he stepped back, his breathing had changed.

“Iona.”

She loved the absence of anything before her name.

That evening she ate with him in her private sitting room. Anwen knew where he was. The servants brought two places openly. Iona would keep her private life private, but she would not make the people who served her carry a lie.

Cassian told her about a storm that had cost him his favourite coat. She told him that she sometimes forgot the names of visiting dignitaries and assigned them names belonging to dogs she had known. He laughed so hard she had to put down her glass.

For an hour, nobody needed either of them to save a country.

When the plates were cleared, he stood to leave. She caught his sleeve.

“Stay.”

He looked at her hand, then at her. “Are you asking because tomorrow may be difficult?”

“Tomorrow is always difficult.” She rose. “I'm asking because I want you here tonight.”

He kissed her palm. There was still time to retreat into caution, to make a joke, to return to their separate rooms with their longing intact and their lives apparently simpler. She stepped toward him instead.

Their next kiss was slower. His coat fell over the chair. She loosened the ribbon at her throat herself, watching his face as the movement drew him closer. When he asked whether she was certain, she answered against his mouth.

Later, behind the closed bedroom door, they found a tenderness neither had expected from wanting so fiercely.

She woke before dawn with his hand resting loosely beside hers. He was not holding her in place. She moved her fingers into his and felt them close, even in sleep.

The knock came as the room began to lighten.

Anwen waited outside with a folded note. Her face made Iona reach for her robe before she spoke.

“Tomas left the courtyard yesterday afternoon. He told the guard he was meeting his brother. We began looking when the physician couldn't find him.”

Cassian was already beside her.

“Why wasn't I told?”

“We thought he might have gone to the delegation. Mira searched there. Then this arrived.”

The note was in Tomas's hand. Cassian read it once, then gave it to Iona without folding anything out of sight.

Come to the old river chapel at noon. Bring the queen. Lucien has ordered the harbour chain raised. Mira's crews cannot leave. If you come without her, he sends the soldiers aboard.

Below, in smaller letters, Tomas had added one more sentence.

Please don't make me choose again.