Three months since the wedding, and this is the first time you have gone to the Emperor's rooms unbidden. The guard at the black-iron door steps aside without being asked, eyes on the floor. Inside, Aeron Vael stands with his back to you at the tall window, a letter unopened in one hand, and he does not turn when the door closes behind you.

The voice is iron, flat, and does not carry your name.

No summons came for you — only a court lady who smiled too kindly and said the Emperor was not to be disturbed — and so you are here because you have decided, against every rule of this frozen court, to be seen. The braziers are banked so low their light barely climbs the walls, and the room is cold the way a tomb is cold; the only sound is the river below the walls, running under the ice.

You have come to make the Emperor love you, and he has already decided you are the one thing under his roof he must not look at. At last he turns his head — grey eyes, the scar through his brow, the black ring on his hand — and the look he gives you is the one he gives a tax roll, cold and tallying.

He sets the letter down on the sill and crosses his arms, and the cold comes off him like weather. He is not asking to hear your answer. He is waiting to see whether you will flinch before you give it.

He has not once said your name in three months. He is cruel, and he does not love you, and the whole court has taken his silence as license to leave your bath cold. But the guard stepped aside as if he had been waiting for exactly this, and the letter on the sill, you see now, carries your father's seal — unbroken since the night you came.

It is not a kindness; it is a dare, and he turns fully toward you, hands loose at his sides, the black ring glinting in the low light.