Staring at him, I suddenly feel the cold of this church, the red light bleeding through the stained glass, pooling at his feet around the frosted cobbles.

I look up to his sister behind him, in her bridesmaid’s dress.

If I squint hard enough, it could be a wedding dress, grey lace and white satin, diamonds in her obsidian hair and a tiara.

Like mine, but beautiful.

Truly beautiful.

Though, she’d look beautiful in anything.

If I wish hard enough, I could be marrying her, I could her holding her hands in mine, I could be in her arms, instead of the prince of the red light.

And the red blood.

And the red wine.

I flick my eyes between them, willing her face to merge with his, willing for her to be standing in front of me, saying vows that will actually mean something.

Then I stare back at her brother. He has no name to me. He has no identity, he deserves no identity.

This is a power bid. I marry him, he doesn’t invade, my queendom lives. I have his palace. This isn’t for love, but if I do happen to find it, it’s not going to be with him.

I’m sure he’ll have other women.

But no one’s going to be as good as Aaliyah.

I stare at the ring she hands to The Prince, meanwhile I hold the ring she gave me weeks ago, in my closed palm.

Sapphire and silver.

I let him put the ruby and gold on my finger, never making eye contact. All the while, holding hers.

I say my vows, crossing my fingers behind my back, staring past her brother, straight into Aaliyah’s charcoal-brown eyes.

Because I can see she’s wearing my ring.

And her brother’s stolen signet.

Because he doesn’t know it, but he has just handed every last ounce of power he has over to our new, shared Queendom.

The feast is loud with men who think they've won something.

I sit at the high table in the great hall, in the seat that should have been a throne, and I watch them celebrate my surrender. They drink the wine that my queendom grew, eat the bread that my people baked, and toast to a king who hasn't yet noticed that his signet ring is missing from his finger.

He won't notice for some time. He's very drunk.

I sip water.

Aaliyah sits three seats to my left, caught between two of her brother's generals, laughing at something one of them says. Her laugh is the only real sound in the room. Everything else is noise. I've known her laugh for four years, since she arrived at my court as a diplomatic envoy, which was what they called it, though she came alone and without papers and I always suspected she was running from something. I never asked. Some things are more precious for being unexamined.

She doesn't look at me.

We agreed she wouldn't.

Under the table, I turn her ring around and around my finger. The sapphire catches nothing in this light, the torches are too orange, too violent, but I know its colour. I know it exactly. The same grey-blue as the hour before dawn, when she'd pressed it into my hand in the stables and said, this is the only vow that matters, and I'd said nothing back because she'd kissed me before I could, and I'd tasted salt and I hadn't known if it was hers or mine.

The Prince leans toward me and says something I don't hear. I turn, and smile, and nod. He seems satisfied. He's easily satisfied. That will matter later. We have time, she told me. We have time, and we have each other, and he has no idea what he's agreed to.

What he has agreed to, in his arrogance, is a marriage contract drawn up by my own lawyers, in the language of my own queendom, sealed with his stolen ring. A contract that names the resulting union a shared sovereignty. Equal lands. Equal throne. Every holding, every levy, every military pledge split cleanly down the middle, governed jointly, neither party capable of acting without the consent of the other.

He had his own lawyers look it over, of course, but my lawyers are better. And Aaliyah had already spent three weeks befriending his.

I watch her now, lifting her wine, the candlelight finding the diamonds still threaded through her hair. One of the generals is leaning too close, speaking too low, and I watch her smile and tilt her head and let him believe he's fascinating. She has always been better at this than me. I am built for battlements and ledgers. She is built for rooms, for reading them, for finding every hidden exit before she's even taken off her coat.

She glances up and our eyes meet for less than a second.

She looks away, but I see the smallest pull at the corner of her mouth.

My husband laughs at something across the table. He has a loud laugh, broad and careless, the laugh of someone who has never had to think about what his face gives away. I find I am not angry at him, which surprises me. Anger would require me to find him significant.

Somewhere in the city beyond these walls, my people are waiting.

I told them, before I left: trust the process. Trust that I know what I'm doing. Light a candle in the window if you want to show me that you understand.

The great hall has no windows facing that direction. But when I retire: alone, for now, I made that negotiation very clearly, my chamber does. And when I stand at the dark glass, still in my grey lace and white satin, still wearing both rings on the same cold hand, I look out over the city. Every single window is lit.