The invitation arrived at breakfast, and by noon Ayla Thorn had counted every gown in her wardrobe twice. None of them would do. The crown prince had opened his court to unwed daughters of the peerage, and the audience was in three days. Ayla meant to leave that hall engaged. She had planned it since she was twelve, when her father drank away the last of the Thorn silver and told her she would have to marry the family back into relevance. She intended to marry it higher than that. She spread the gowns across her bed and made herself look. Faded rose. A green two seasons out of fashion. A cream silk with a wine stain no laundress had lifted. Any of them would put her in the back row, behind the daughters of houses with real coin. A lesser noble in a tired dress did not catch a prince's eye. She would be marked and dismissed before the first course. She went to her mother's rooms and asked for the pearl earrings. Her mother handed them over without looking up from her needlework. Ayla walked them to a jeweler in the market before the hour was out. She took less than they were worth and did not haggle. Speed mattered more than price. With the coin knotted in her handkerchief, she climbed the hill to the dressmaker whose windows faced the pale towers and blue spires of the royal castle. The woman had a gown already cut, ordered by a baron's daughter who had not come to collect. Soft pink silk, silver thread worked along the bodice and skirt, small embroidered flowers trailing to the hem. It fit close enough that an afternoon of pinning would finish it. Ayla ran her fingers along the beadwork and asked the price. The dressmaker named it. Ayla emptied the handkerchief onto the counter. She was short by a third. She smiled, the smile she had practiced in every mirror since she was a child. She told the dressmaker she was a Thorn, and that in four days she would be betrothed to a man who could buy this shop and the street it stood on. She offered a signed note for the balance, payable the morning after the audience. If she failed, the gown returned and the woman kept the coin. The dressmaker studied her. Then she took the pen. Ayla walked home with the gown boxed under her arm. She had a dress that would put her in the front row. She had also signed her name to a debt she could only pay by winning the prince, and she had done it in her mother's earrings. There was no second gown behind this one. There was no second plan. She set the box on her bed and began to plan the audience.

The morning of the audience, Ayla stood in her room with the pink gown laid out on the bed. Silver thread caught the light along the bodice. Small embroidered flowers ran down the skirt to the hem. She dressed slowly. Every hook mattered. She had signed a debt against this dress, and the only way to pay it was to walk out of the castle promised to the prince. The carriage set her down at the foot of the royal castle. Towers rose above her in pale stone, blue spires sharp against the sky. Girls in silks climbed the steps ahead of her. She counted them. Forty at least, and more carriages behind hers. She lifted her skirt and joined the line. The great hall was already crowded when she entered. Daughters of every house pressed toward the dais, fans open, voices bright. The prince stood among them in a dark coat with gold at the collar. A tall girl in blue had his sleeve. A redhead laughed too loud at his elbow. Ayla did not push forward. She walked the long way around the room and took a place near a window, where the light would find her. She waited. She let one hour pass, then another. She did not fidget. She watched the prince's face. She saw him nod without hearing. She saw him smile without meaning it. She saw the moment his eyes began to drift. When they drifted, she was ready. She was standing alone in the light, one hand resting on the sill, her chin turned three quarters toward him. He looked. He kept looking. Then he crossed the hall. "You are not trying," he said when he reached her. "I am trying," Ayla said. "Just not the same thing they are." His mouth moved. It was almost a real smile. She asked him what he had eaten that morning. He blinked, then answered. She asked what he read when no one made him read it. He answered that too. She did not compliment him. She did not touch his sleeve. She asked questions a man was never asked, and she listened to the answers as if she meant to remember them. She did mean to remember them. They spoke until the candles were lit. The hall had gone quiet around them without her noticing. When she looked up, every girl in the room was watching. The prince turned to the court and raised his hand. He named her. He named her house. He said he had chosen. Ayla curtsied low. Her face did not change. Inside the pink silk, her heart was going hard against her ribs. She had won the hall. She had won the debt. She had not yet won the throne, and now every girl in that room, and every house behind them, knew her name and had a reason to hate it.

The morning after the prince chose her, a servant brought Ayla a folded note on a silver tray. The prince wanted a walk in the private garden before the court was awake. She dressed in her pink silk again. The debt on it still stood, and she had no other gown fine enough for a prince. She pinched color into her cheeks and went down. He was already there, in a plain shirt with no coat, no gold. He looked younger without the collar. He was pulling a small green fruit off a low tree and biting into it like a boy in an orchard. "You eat those?" she asked. "Cook says no. Cook is wrong." He held one out. "Try it." She took it. She did not eat it. She turned it in her fingers and watched him. He started walking and she matched his step. He talked without waiting for questions this time. He said he wanted the wedding in early summer, in the lower courtyard where his mother had married. He said he wanted three children. He said he had already picked names for two of them and would not tell her yet in case she laughed. He said he wanted to cook the first meal himself, in their own kitchen, the night after the ceremony. He said he had learned how, years ago, from the staff downstairs. Ayla listened the way she had listened in the hall. She did not interrupt. She filed each thing away. Summer wedding. Lower courtyard. Three children. Two names he was shy about. A kitchen of their own. He cooked. He had bribed his way into learning. She asked him what he was most afraid of. He stopped walking. He looked at the wall a moment, then at her. "Marrying someone I don't love," he said. "My father won't care. I care." Her chest went tight under the silk. She kept her face still. She turned the little fruit in her hand and made herself smile the small smile, not the wide one. "Then don't," she said. "That's the plan." He said it flat, the way he settled a thing. Then he looked at her longer than a prince should look at a girl he had known one day. "You didn't ask about the throne. Every other girl asked about the throne." "I'll ask tomorrow," she said. He laughed. It was a real one. He walked her back to the door of the keep and left her there. Ayla stood in the entry with the fruit still in her palm. She had what she had come for. She knew his wedding, his children, his kitchen, his fear. No rival in that hall could guess any of it by morning. Then the tight thing under her ribs did not loosen. He had said love. He had meant it. She had come to marry a crown. She was going to have to marry a man who wanted one back.

Ayla left the garden with the prince's fear folded away in her chest, but by noon a new problem had reached her door. A page brought word from the steward: the betrothal announcement was on hold. The king's council wanted a sponsor. A voice at court to name her worthy. The Thorn name meant nothing in these halls. Her father's title was old paper. Without someone to speak for her, the announcement could sit for weeks, and forty other girls were still inside the walls. She knew who she needed. The dowager duchess held the west wing. She had buried two husbands and a son, and she picked the girls the last three princes married. She did not take visitors before tea. Ayla went before tea. She borrowed the gown from a lady's maid who owed a cousin a favor. It was blue, cut deep at the shoulders, ruffled down the skirt, stitched with pale stones that caught the window light. It did not fit at the ribs. Ayla laced it tighter and did not breathe deep. The duchess's sitting room smelled of dried lemon. The duchess did not stand. She looked at the gown first, then at Ayla's face. "Whose dress." "Not mine," Ayla said. "I couldn't afford one that would please you. I still came." The duchess's mouth moved. Not a smile. Close. "Sit." Ayla sat. She did not curtsy. She had promised her mother's memory that much. "They tell me the prince picked you because you asked him questions," the duchess said. "Ask me one." Ayla thought of the small green fruit in the garden. The two names he would not say. The kitchen he wanted. "What did you give up," Ayla said, "to sit in this chair." The duchess was quiet a long moment. Then she rang a small bell on the side table. A clerk came in with paper already prepared. "I sponsor the Thorn girl," the duchess said to the clerk. "Send it to the council before supper." She looked at Ayla. "You'll owe me. I'll say when." "Yes," Ayla said. She walked out with her ribs aching and the paper moving down the hall in another woman's hand. By dusk a servant confirmed it. The council had accepted. The announcement would be read in the great hall at the week's end. She went back to her room to unlace the borrowed gown. A folded note sat on the pillow. No seal. Four lines in a careful hand. The prince has been seeing someone for a year. She is still in the keep. He means to keep her after the wedding. Ask him. See his face. Ayla sat down on the edge of the bed in the blue gown she could not pay for. She had her sponsor. She had her announcement. She turned the poison ring on her finger once, and did not open it, and began to think.

Ayla did not ask the prince about the note. She folded it into her sleeve and let the week move. The announcement was read. The dressmaker was paid. The council set the date. She told herself she would look for the other woman after the vows, when she had the ring and the title and the room to move. She turned her poison ring once each night and slept in short pieces. The morning of the wedding, the kingdom filled the square outside the cathedral. Bells rang from the twin spires. Red banners hung from every arch. Children sat on shoulders. A choir warmed up inside the nave. The maids laced Ayla into a white lace gown with a fitted bodice and a long train, and this one was hers, paid for, no borrowed stones at the ribs. She could breathe. She almost wished she couldn't. Prince Adrian Westmont was waiting for her in a side room off the vestibule. He had sent the attendants out. His blond hair was combed flat. His jacket was buttoned wrong at the collar and he had not fixed it. "I need a minute," he said. "Before we go in." "You have one." He looked at the floor, then at her. "There's someone else. There was. For about a year." He did not soften it. "I ended it three days ago. She's gone from the keep. I didn't tell you because I was a coward about it. I'm telling you now because you deserve to walk in knowing." Ayla held very still. The note in her sleeve pressed against her wrist. She had prepared six answers for a lie. She had none for this. "Why end it," she said. "Because I meant what I said in the garden." He shrugged, small. "I can't marry you and keep her. That's not a marriage. That's a room with a door in it." She watched his face. It did not shift. He was not asking her to forgive him. He was telling her the ledger before she signed. She stepped forward and fixed his collar. Her fingers were steady. The poison ring caught the light against the white lace and she turned it inward, out of sight. "Then we go in," she said. They went in. The cathedral rose above them in pale stone and colored glass. The kingdom stood. The choir began. Ayla walked the long aisle without curtsying to anyone, and she said the words when it was her turn to say them, and he said his, and the crown was set on her hair. Outside, the bells went again. The square roared. She was queen. In the receiving line, the dowager duchess took her hand and did not let go at once. "I said you'd owe me," the duchess said. "I'm saying now. Tonight. My rooms. Come alone." Ayla smiled for the crowd and nodded once.