No More Locked Doors
1339 Words
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The murmurs of the hall had not yet settled when Cassian drew her hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to her knuckles that lingered a half-second too long to be merely courteous. His mouth was cool, his breath cooler still, and yet something about the gesture warmed her from the inside, like sunlight through frost.
"Come," he said, tucking her hand into the crook of his arm as though they had done this a thousand times before. "Let me steal you away from all these staring eyes, if only for a moment."
He led her toward the edges of the hall, where the candlelight burned lower and the crowd thinned into hushed clusters of nobility pretending not to watch them. Maren was acutely aware of every eye that followed—curious, envious, hungry—but Cassian seemed entirely unbothered, as though the weight of a hundred gazes meant nothing next to the fact of her hand in his.
"You're trembling," he murmured, tilting his head to study her with something that looked, absurdly, like tenderness. "Am I so terrible to look at?"
"No," she admitted, and hated how quickly the truth came. "I think that's the problem."
A low laugh rumbled from his chest, rich and warm as poured wine. "A honest tongue. How refreshing." He guided her toward a table laden with drinks she didn't recognize, goblets of something dark and shimmering, and pressed one into her hand without asking if she wanted it. "Drink. It will steady you."
She took a hesitant sip. It tasted of plums and something floral beneath, sweet enough to mask whatever bitterness lurked underneath. "What is it?"
"A comfort, mostly." His eyes—warm again now, brown as autumn leaves, as if the red had never been—held hers with an intensity that made her stomach twist pleasantly. "Tell me about yourself, Maren. I want to know everything. Where you come from. What you love. What frightens you."
No one had ever asked her that before—not like this, not as though the answer truly mattered. She found herself speaking before she'd decided to, telling him of the farm, of her mother's garden, of the way dawn broke gold over the wheat fields in autumn. He listened as though she were reciting scripture, his gaze never wavering, never drifting to the crowd around them the way every other gaze in that room seemed to.
"You make it sound like paradise," he said softly.
"It was simple," she corrected. "Paradise is a strong word for a life of mud and mending."
"Simplicity has its own beauty." His thumb traced idle circles against the back of her hand, and she felt the touch everywhere, a slow-spreading warmth that had nothing to do with the wine. "I mean to give you a life far grander than mud and mending, Maren. I mean to give you everything."
She should have found the words too large, too soon. Instead, they settled into her chest like a promise she'd been waiting her whole life to hear.
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It was some time later—after the third goblet of the strange sweet wine, after Cassian had introduced her to a dozen names she wouldn't remember by morning—that she remembered Bryn.
"My sister," she said suddenly, straightening. "She came with me. I should—"
"Say no more." Cassian's smile widened, delighted, as though the mere mention of family were a gift. "Bring her to me. I would very much like to meet the woman who raised you alongside herself."
Bryn appeared at the mention of her own name as if summoned by instinct alone, weaving through the crowd with her borrowed gown slipping dangerously off one shoulder, her cheeks flushed with wine and wonder. She took one look at Cassian and her eyes went comically wide.
“Oh,” she breathed. Her eyes went comically wide as they darted between Cassian and her sister. “The whole village said you were lucky. They didn’t say how lucky.”
"Bryn," Maren hissed, mortified, but Cassian only laughed, delighted, and took Bryn's hand with the same effortless warmth he'd shown Maren.
"You must be Bryn." He bowed his head, a courtly gesture that made Bryn practically preen. "Your sister speaks of you with such devotion. I confess I'm relieved to finally put a face to the name."
"All good things, I hope," Bryn said, recovering enough to bat her lashes.
"Only good things." His gaze flicked briefly to Maren, warm and conspiratorial, before returning to Bryn. "In fact, I insist both of you come stay at my estate. I won't hear of my mate's sister lodging in that dreary candidates' inn a moment longer than necessary."
Bryn's mouth fell open. "*Truly?*"
"Truly." Cassian's smile was easy, generous, everything a girl raised on farmhouse scarcity could have dreamed of. "There is more than enough room. More than enough of everything."
Maren felt something in her chest loosen—relief, gratitude, the dizzy certainty that perhaps this really was the fairy tale the village had promised her. Bryn was already chattering about which room she might claim, whether there were gardens, whether the staff would mind terribly if she rang for tea at odd hours, and Cassian answered every question with patient, indulgent amusement.
It was in the midst of Bryn's excited babbling that she went suddenly, uncharacteristically quiet—her gaze catching on something across the hall.
Maren followed the direction of her sister's stare and found a man standing near one of the towering windows, apart from the noble clusters, his posture rigid enough to seem carved from the same stone as the columns beside him. Dark-haired, sharp-jawed, his expression arranged into something between boredom and disdain as he watched the festivities with all the enthusiasm of a man enduring a funeral.
"Who," Bryn said slowly, "is *that*?"
Cassian followed her gaze and made a small sound of amusement. "Karl Orion. Right hand to the Duke of Valcourt. A miserable creature, by all accounts—I've never once seen him smile." He glanced at Bryn's expression and laughed. "Careful. I hear he finds giddy young women particularly intolerable."
As if he'd heard—though surely he couldn't have, from that distance—the man's gaze flicked toward them, passed over Bryn with the same mild irritation one might spare a buzzing fly, and moved on without pause.
Bryn's spine went stiff. "Well," she said, tossing her hair with wounded dignity. "*He* certainly thinks highly of himself."
"He thinks of very little at all, from what I understand," Cassian said mildly. "Pay him no mind."
But Bryn's eyes lingered a moment longer on the stern line of his mouth, the cold dismissal in that single passing glance, and something flickered behind her own gaze that looked less like offense and more like the first spark of a challenge she fully intended to win.
---
By the time the ball began to wind toward its end, Maren's head was pleasantly heavy with wine and wonder, Cassian's arm a steady warmth at the small of her back as he guided them both toward the palace's grand entrance.
"My carriage will take you both to the estate tonight," he said, pressing a final kiss to Maren's hand as servants scrambled to gather their few belongings. "No more inns, no more locked doors and strangers in the halls. You'll want for nothing, I promise you that."
Maren looked up at him—this man who had chosen her, who spoke to her as though her farmhouse childhood was a treasure rather than a shame, who had welcomed her sister with open arms and offered them both a life neither had dared to imagine—and felt the last of her fear loosen its grip.
"Thank you," she said softly.
His smile, in the flickering torchlight, was warm enough to banish every shadow of doubt.
She did not look back to see if the duke still watched from across the hall
- Writer
