BETROTHED TO THE DEVIL

The announcement came at dinner. Seraphine had just lifted her spoon when her father set down his wine goblet, cleared his throat, and told her she was getting married. The soup was good. Leek and cream, her favorite. She set the spoon down carefully, the way her mother had taught her, and waited for the rest of the sentence. There had to be a rest of the sentence. Something like "and we would love your thoughts on the matter" or "we have time to discuss it, of course." Her father reached for his wine again. No rest of the sentence. "To whom?" Seraphine asked. "Kael Ashvorn." He said the name the way men said the names of things they had already decided. Final. Sealed. "King of Vorreth." The dining hall was not large. It was the family table, just the three of them, Seraphine, her father, and her mother, who had gone so still that she looked like a painting of herself. Twelve candles burned in the chandelier above. Seraphine had counted them a thousand times growing up because there was little else to look at when the silences at dinner stretched too long. She counted them now. Twelve. "When?" she asked. "Three weeks." Her mother made a small sound. Not a word. Just a breath that had started to become one. "Three weeks," Seraphine repeated. "The arrangements are already in place. You will travel north with an escort of forty men. The ceremony will take place in Vorreth, as is their custom." Her father lifted his wine. The crystal caught the candlelight and threw small orange shapes across the tablecloth. "You will want to begin packing." She thought about saying something. She had a list of things she wanted to say, and they were all forming at once into a wall of words that would change nothing and cost her everything, so she pressed her lips together and picked up her spoon again. The soup had gone cold. She ate it anyway. Her mother tried to catch her eye across the table. Seraphine did not let her. If she looked at her mother's face right now she would see the thing her mother was very careful not to say in front of her father, and if she saw that she would not be able to finish the meal, and if she did not finish the meal her father would note it as weakness, and she refused to give him that. She ate the soup. She ate the fish. She ate the small almond cake at the end and she told the kitchen boy it was excellent when he came to clear the plates. Her father retired early. Her mother appeared in her doorway before the candle on Seraphine's desk had burned down a quarter inch. "Sera," she said. "I know." "You don't have to be" "I know." She turned from the window. Her mother looked like she had been holding something very heavy for a long time. Seraphine recognized the look because she saw it every time her father made a decision in that voice. That final, sealed voice. "It's done. He's decided." "He did not even ask me." Her mother's voice was quiet and furious in equal measure. "He told me this morning. I have been trying to find the right moment to..." "There was no right moment." Seraphine crossed the room and took her mother's hands. They were cold. "Tell me about Vorreth." Her mother blinked. "What?" "Tell me what you know about it. Anything. Start there." Her mother looked at her for a long moment. Then she sat down on the edge of the bed and began to talk. Vorreth was north. Far north, past the Kern River and the Ashwood and two more days of riding beyond that into country that stayed cold even in summer. The people were not unkind, her mother had heard, but they were private. Closed. The castle was called Draven and it had stood for four hundred years and the stone it was built from was black because of the mineral in the northern mountains and not, as people sometimes said, because of anything else. "And the king?" Seraphine asked. Her mother was quiet. "Tell me." "He is young. Thirty, perhaps thirty one." Her mother smoothed the fabric of her dress over her knee. It was a thing she did when she was choosing words carefully. "He came to power at seventeen after his family was killed. A m******e. He put down the rebellion that caused it within a year. He has fought three wars since then and won all three." "How?" "No one is entirely sure." Her mother looked at her hands. "There are stories." "What kind of stories?" The pause lasted three heartbeats. "The kind that are probably exaggerated." Seraphine studied her mother's face. Her mother was not looking back at her. "But probably," Seraphine said, "is doing a lot of work in that sentence." Her mother looked up then, and her eyes were bright with the thing she was not going to say, and Seraphine felt the first real twist of fear move through her. Not the shallow fear of a changed life or a new place or a man she had not met. Something older and quieter than that. She did not let it show. "All right," she said. She spent the next two hours reading everything in the palace library that mentioned Vorreth or Kael Ashvorn. There were seven books and none of them said much. One mentioned the king in a list of northern rulers. One had a map so old the borders were wrong. The last one, a military history, had a single paragraph. The current king of Vorreth, Kael Ashvorn, earned the title the devil during the Saren Conflict of his twenty second year, during which his forces held the Ashwood passage in winter conditions that should have made the defense impossible. He is known for efficiency and an almost absolute lack of sentiment. He has not remarried since the early death of his first wife. Seraphine put the book down. His first wife. No one had mentioned that. She walked to her window and looked out at the palace gardens, which she was not permitted to visit without an escort, and the south gate, which she was not permitted to exit without permission, and the road beyond it that she had never walked down because the world outside the walls had never been offered to her. Three weeks. She picked up the book again and read the paragraph a second time. He is known for efficiency and an almost absolute lack of sentiment. Somewhere in the palace, a clock struck ten. The candles in the chandelier above her desk guttered in a draft and steadied again. Seraphine thought about the soup going cold and her mother's hands and the word probably and a black stone castle four hundred years old in a country that stayed cold even in summer. Then she picked up her pen and began to make a list of questions. If she was going to be sent somewhere, she was going to understand where she was going. If she was going to be given to a man, she was going to know what kind of man he was before she got there. Her father had decided. But he had not decided how she would face it. That, at least, was still hers. She wrote until midnight. When she finally blew out the candle and lay down in the dark, she was not calm. She was not at peace. But she had six pages of questions, a plan for the morning, and the particular quiet determination of someone who has realized that the only power she has left is the power of her own mind. She was going to need every bit of it.