Weddings have a peculiar talent for turning the world polite for just long enough to be dangerous.
They chose the market square because it had the widest view and the most witnesses. A crowd gathers faster than rumors; a crowd remembers a face longer than a ledger remembers a number. Banners hung—some embroidered by nervous hands, others painted hastily by the twins—flowers were arranged with Lira's theatrical flourish, and even the priests had been persuaded (or bribed) to look the other way long enough for vows to be spoken without immediate lynching.
Elara's dress was simple: pale blue silk that moved like water and a veil that she wore more for symbolism than for modesty. She had traded the formal, stiff gowns the court favored for something that let her move—walk, laugh, duck, be human. Aras wore a dark doublet tailored by a noblewoman who had fallen in love with his ridiculous boots and insisted they were heroic. He looked dangerous in the manner of men who look as if they belong in a painting and in a brawl in equal measure.
The caravan—ragged, brilliant, stitched with small miracles—lined the path. Lina carried a basket of flowers, Verene smoothed hems with hands that had finally learned to trust scar tissue, Miren kept her eyes on the edges for anyone wearing black-sun colors, and Serane stood like a blade folded in cloth, aware of danger even as she allowed herself to enjoy the pageant. The twins ran ahead, scattering confetti that looked suspiciously like breadcrumbs, for bribing tastes and celebratory habits intersected in their cheerful chaos.
King Alric had consented—publicly—with all the drama of a man dragged to a portrait he didn't like. Coren stood by his father's side, less a prince tonight and more a nervous, bewildered fan of the woman he loved. The king's face was a study in compromises: he had accepted the marriage to keep a scandal contained, to reclaim some narrative out of the messy one Aras had started. Everyone in the square understood that the wedding was a bargain wrapped in music.
The priests read blessings that smelled of incense and ledger-quietude. Aras and Elara stood face to face; the city hushed in the way a heartbeat learns to listen. Aras's hand found hers and, for once, he did not offer jokes as armor—only an honest, ridiculous grin that had become a kind of liturgy for those who loved him. Elara's hand was warm and steady; when she looked at him she did not see a thief so much as a man who'd learned to keep promises aloud.
"Do you, Aras… take Elara…" the priest intoned.
"I do," Aras said, and the words surprised even him with how true they felt.
"Do you, Elara…" the priest continued.
"I do," she answered, in a voice that belonged to hedgerows and secret gardens and the quiet ferocity of a princess who'd chosen to be more than a page.
They kissed—briefly, perfectly, with the clumsy dignity of people who'd been rehearsing rebellion and not romance—and the crowd cheered. For a sliver of time, the world was the kind of place wedding songs pretend it to be: warm, noisy, and full of forgiving laughter.
Then the black-sun rider's horn cut across the square like a blade testing its temper.
Miren's hand was on Aras's sleeve before the second note fully vibrated. "They've found us," she breathed. "At least ten riders at the east gate. They move fast."
Serane's sword was out before the crowd realized the cheering had a hollow in it. The twins scrambled, and Lina shoved a basket toward the guests as if bread might be diplomacy. Aras kissed Elara once more—an oath he could not yet explain—and then set Keen loose from the scabbard with the sort of tenderness people reserve for old friends.
"You will get inside," he told Elara, voice low. "You will take the routes Miren mapped. Coren will take your father. My family will keep the square."
"Your family?" she asked, lips pressed.
"My ridiculous, terrible, utterly devoted family," he said. Their eyes met and the promise between them was a thing that had survived ambushes and bread shortages and now had to survive cavalry.
The attack was both clumsy and furious. Black-sun riders poured into the square like spilled ink, fast and practiced. The captain from before—red-eyed and mean as a winter's wind—led them. He wanted the letter, or revenge, or the satisfaction of proving a thief wrong in the public eye. He did not expect to be met by a wall of people who refused to be reduced to lines on a page.
Serane moved like a blade with purpose: she had people to protect, a rate of return tied not to coin but to lives. Her sword sang. Aras was close beside her, less showman now than someone whose grin had become a weapon in its own right: distracting, human, and unpredictably lethal. Keen spoke in silver notes, parrying and redirecting with a voice that understood the difference between killing and winning.
The twins and the barn's awakened had laid traps in the cobbles—nets, hidden pits, a cleverly rigged tangle of ropes that turned galloping horses into floundering beasts. Lira's voice—trained for performance—became a rallying cry, a signal that turned chaos into choreography. The people in the crowd—shopkeepers, mothers, bored students—found themselves helpfully taking up brooms and sticks, improvising a defense. The square turned into a theater of blunt instruments and ugly heroism.
At one point the captain leapt for Aras with the intent of ending him in a tidy, dramatic stroke. Aras sidestepped, spun, and in the motion lost his balance on wet stone—his boot slipped, his doublet snagged, and his knee hit the ground hard in a way that should have been disastrous. The captain lunged with a triumphant snarl—only to be tripped by Lina, who had hurtled from a cart with the sort of teacher's improvisation that becomes violence when necessary. She hooked his ankle, flipped him, and the captain tumbled amid confused gasps and the unromantic squelch of mud.
That moment—Aras on one knee, Elara's veil blown like a banner behind her, Lina's grin triumphant—turned into an image that would be painted and sung about for months. It had everything: danger, clumsiness, bravery, and the ridiculous dignity of love in the middle of a skirmish.
When the last rider realized the square was no longer a soft target, they broke. Their retreat was not elegant. The village dogs that had watched from the hedgerows began barking as if celebrating. The priests' bell, which had been intended to count and condemn, rang instead for the living—an odd, accidental benediction.
After the dust settled, the wedding resumed with the sloppy, human dignity of people who knew they'd nearly died but preferred to finish what they'd started. Elara and Aras exchanged vows again—not because the first had been insufficient but because two promises said in the same afternoon are harder to uncount.
The reception spilled into night like warm syrup. The king—begrudging, proud, and perhaps a little moved—clinked a glass and said something about duty and family which, stripped of the lacquer, sounded like an apology in need of a chorus. Coren watched Elara with the mix of joy and pain of someone who had given up a different kind of throne for love.
The harem—no one used that word with the seriousness it implied; they called themselves a coalition, a messy family, a theatrical rebellion—danced badly but with complete conviction. Aras led Elara in a clumsy waltz that made the twins squeal and Lina spill wine. There were toasts and whispered plans and, under the big oak, a small knot of conspirators mapped the next moves against a king who kept inconvenient letters.
Later, after the celebrations thinned and the moon made gullies of the streets, Elara and Aras stood on the palace wall, looking over the city they had both helped to complicate.
"You could have avoided this," Elara said, fingers hooked through his arm.
"You could have married a man who counts things and sings hymns," he countered.
She looked at him—moonlight turning her eyes silver—and kissed him, soft and real, the kind of kiss that stitches two messy people into a single, ridiculous alliance.
"Married or not," she murmured, breath warm against his mouth, "we still have work."
He smiled, not the grin of a thief but of a man who'd been given back something he hadn't known he wanted to keep. "Then let's make a life that annoys the ledger," he said. "And keep stealing the moments between battles."
She laughed and tucked her head into his shoulder. Around them, the city slept fitfully, counting and uncounting stars. Inside the palace and among the barns and river cottages, people moved with a new kind of certainty: there were vows to be kept, enemies to be negotiated with, and a marriage that—political or not—had the power to change how a king counted his people.
The wedding had lived up to its prom
ise: it was a bargain, a spectacle, and, most importantly, a start.