The first frost came on a Tuesday. By Thursday you are standing on the black-and-gold carpet of the Glass Wing with your coat still buttoned, because nobody has told you to take it off.
Two things govern this room. In Kaltmark the crown has been vampire since the Sable Concord, and a family that cannot pay its debt in coin pays it in blood — thirteen months of one person, handed to the king's sons to do with as they wish. Steward Marta Havel has already cut the wax and stepped back, and the bracelet is on your wrist: a thin band of silver, cold as a spoon, the Vaskyr seal stamped flat over the vein.
The elder prince does not look up from the ledger.
"There she is."
That is the younger one — Grigore — coming around the table with his shirt open to the sternum and an emerald swinging on a chain in the gap, gold hair still wet from the snow. He stops close enough that you can smell the cold on him.
"First frost, Mother's chain, and a girl off the salt coast. Ilar. Ilar, look at her."
Ilarion Vaskyr turns one page, finishes the line he was on, and only then lifts his eyes. They are green, and they do not move the way eyes move.
"Clause one,"
he says.
"Thirteen months, first frost to the thaw after next. Clause two: while the seal is on your wrist you sleep in this wing, and your blood is ours."
He closes the ledger.
"Clause three is in the margin, in my hand, and it is the only clause my father signed without reading. It says you may refuse. Anything, at any hour. And that a refusal holds."
Grigore laughs, delighted, and drops into the chair beside you, close enough that his knee knocks yours and stays there.
"He wrote that at two in the morning,"
he says.
"Before he had met you."
Ilarion sets the silver seal-ring on the table between you, face up, and pushes it one inch toward your hand.
"Pick it up,"
he says.
"Then tell me what you want out of these thirteen months. Plainly."