Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

They laced her into the dress like they were binding a secret.

Silk whispered as Rey's handmaidens drew the black ribbons tight, their fingers deft and impersonal. The gown was a cathedral of red—carmine and wine and the exact shade of a flush that couldn't be hidden. Jet-black piping traced her waist and collarbone; onyx beading clung to the bodice like night sky breeding constellations. A gauzy overskirt—black as a threat, sheer as a promise—fell from her hips and drifted when she breathed.

"Hold," Mira said, slipping a final hook into place. "Perfect." She stepped back beside the others, three shadows in soft slippers, each of them reflecting Rey's face differently—pride, worry, awe.

Rey kept her chin lifted, mouth steady. She'd practiced that mouth in the mirror. Romantic heroines never trembled in the first chapter, the novels insisted; their hearts might, but their mouths didn't.

"Your hair," said Fala, easing pins into the dark coils. "Half up, as you asked. The black combs."

The combs were old—her mother's, they said, though her mother was a rumor no one believed and no one dared disprove in the same breath. On the combs, two lacquered thorns curled toward each other, never quite touching. Rey felt the bite of their teeth catch along her scalp and chose to like the sting.

Behind them, the tall window framed the palace's northern courtyard, now ribboned with lanterns, the fountain brimming with white lilies and pale fire. Musicians tuned strings; the sound drifted up polished stone like laughter that didn't care what it was laughing at.

A rap at the door, knuckles hard enough to bruise. "Highness." The chamberlain's voice was crisp, oil on marble. "It is time."

The handmaidens melted, smoothing skirts that didn't need smoothing, trading quick, conspiratorial glances with Rey in the mirror. Mira pressed a kiss to the air near Rey's shoulder, the way girls do when they're trying not to spook a horse. Fala tucked a small scented sachet into Rey's glove—orange blossom and clove. "For nerves," she murmured.

"I don't have nerves," Rey said, and made it sound mostly true.

When she stood, the dress stood with her—a second spine. She slipped into the long black gloves; the silk cooled her palms. At the threshold, she paused and looked once over her shoulder. The three handmaidens gave her the same nod: go be the story we'll whisper about later.

The corridor to the Grand Hall stretched like a dare. Tapestries of her father's victories lined the walls—storms broken on iron fleets, treaties signed in ink the color of old blood. The floors had been polished so relentlessly she could nearly see her uncertainty trailing her, a red ghost with dark eyes.

At the top of the staircase, she glimpsed the hall in full: a lake of light and faces, the broad marble balcony where heralds stood, the sweep of dancers like red-and-black currents. Crystal the size of skulls hung from the chandeliers, spitting light into the cut glass goblets below. On the dais, beneath the sable banner embroidered with the Palpatine sigil, her father sat as if the throne had grown from his bones.

He did not rise.

He didn't have to. The room bent toward him without moving.

The chamberlain glanced at Rey—the briefest flicker, as if to remind her that one misstep carried farther in rooms like this than a scream in an empty field. She nodded back. She had read enough romances to know that dignity could be armor if you wore it before anyone tried to dress you in it.

"Presenting," the herald cried, voice carrying like a blade across a drumhead, "Her Royal Highness, Princess Rey of House Palpatine, heir of the Northern Marches, Warden of the—"

Rey stepped forward as the titles unfurled behind her. Music hushed. For a heartbeat, there were only the small sounds: the tick of a watch, the faint sigh of silks settling. She felt a hundred eyes land where the dress had been designed for them to land.

She lowered her head.

It wasn't submission. It was a game. In the dip of her neck, she hid a smile—the sort that belonged to a girl who marked her page in a book with a pin and bled for it gladly.

"—Princess Rey," the herald finished, and the room exhaled.

She lifted her gaze and let it move, disciplined and slow: dignitaries she knew by name and by rumor, young nobles in sharp shoulders and sharp cheekbones, older ones with appetites no one had taught to soften.

Rey found her friends at a tray of sugared plums, exactly where people who loved her would stage an ambush: not far from an exit.

"Your Highness," Poe said with an elaborate bow so deep his curls almost met the floor. "On behalf of the dangerously handsome, I'm here to file a formal complaint."

Rose snorted. "He's offended the dress didn't pick him."

Finn only grinned at Rey like good weather. "Happy birthday. You look... like you already know how tonight ends."

"I don't," Rey said, letting the steadiness slip for them. "Tell me it ends with cake."

"It ends with you not pretending to enjoy Viscount Wet-Handshake," Rose muttered, then caught Rey's gloved fingers and squeezed. "Breathe. We'll orbit. Swoop if needed."

Poe lifted a fresh glass to Rey, the fizz biting at the rim. "To surviving being looked at."

She clinked and didn't drink. The handmaidens' orange blossom clung to her, warm as a secret. Their laughter gave her a small raft in the sea of faces, and for a minute she let herself be a girl in a red dress with friends who remembered when she wore muddy boots.

Across the hall, half-hidden by a marble column and the sort of shadow that chooses interesting men, Ben Solo watched.

He didn't angle his body toward the gossips or hold court with the sons of dukes. He watched the way she smiled when Finn said something that was more true than funny; he tracked the way she dropped her chin when she laughed, as if she were sharing it with the floor. It pulled in him—old gravity, the kind that doesn't ask for permission because it was here before names.

Memory arrived uninvited: cold corridors at the keep years ago, both of them small enough to slip past guards who were too busy arguing about rules to enforce them. She'd had a scrape on her knee and a book clamped to her chest; he'd had a dare balanced on his tongue. They'd kissed once in a corridor smelling of stone and apples—awkward, warm, immediate—and then he'd left before morning, as princes trained to do. He hadn't been able to unknow the taste of that decision since.

"Princess?"

The voice was exact, its politeness a leash. Hux had materialized with a bow calibrated to please anyone who liked numbers. "A moment, if I may."

Poe's smile froze; Rose's eyes sharpened; Finn shifted half a step closer. Rey could have refused. She knew she could have. She also knew the words that would follow if she did: difficult, ungracious. She set down her glass.

"A moment," Rey allowed.

Hux offered an arm and she took none of it, walking beside him instead. He didn't appear to notice the omission. They slipped through a side door into the veranda's cooler dark. Lanterns made small rivers on the black surface of the ornamental canal; the night smelled of water and lilies and the iron in the railings. Inside, music swelled; outside, it thinned until it could pass as civility.

"Allow me to be plain," Hux said, folding his hands behind him like a schoolmaster about to praise himself. "Your father and I are... aligned in many respects. The court admires your intelligence. The realm requires stability."

He turned, pleasant as a blade. "Marry me."

The word didn't drop like a stone. It slid like a well-oiled mechanism locking into place. She had imagined proposals with poems; she'd also imagined worse. This was worse disguised as reasonable.

"No," Rey said.

A single blink. He hadn't rehearsed his surprise; he didn't think he could be surprised. "You misunderstand the advantages. Your father—"

"My father," she said evenly, "doesn't climb into my bed."

His smile stayed, but the life behind it stepped back. "You're young."

"So are you," she said. "But you've been old too long."

Hux moved closer by an inch, the kind of distance that read as ownership. "I could make you very powerful."

"I already am," Rey returned, and because her books had taught her something sharp, she added, "and you already know it, or you wouldn't be asking."

Something thin and true flashed in his eyes. For a breath he looked like himself: a man who wanted to be king of everything tidy. "Consider your position. Consider your father's wishes."

"I have," she said. "No."

The night shifted. Not the weather; the attention. Rey felt it before she saw him, the way a room feels a storm rolling toward its windows. Ben stepped out from the veranda's far arch as if the dark had been keeping him in reserve.

"Problem?" he asked mildly, which was somehow ruder than a shout.

Hux didn't turn immediately. He skimmed Ben with a look that liked to think it could peel paint. "We're speaking privately."

Ben's gaze flicked to Rey's face first—checking, not claiming—and only then to Hux. "Are you?"

It wasn't really a question.

Rey let the smallest breath out. "Lord Hux was concluding a proposal."

"Ah." Ben came nearer, the aristocrat's self-possession settling on his shoulders like a mantle. The precise courtesy he produced next ought to have been framed. "Then allow me to congratulate you, Hux, on receiving a swift answer. The best kind. Saves everyone time."

Color climbed Hux's high, careful cheekbones. "This is a matter of state."

"In that case," Ben said, silk over steel, "it should be brought to people who enjoy being treated like a matter. She isn't one."

Hux's mouth thinned. "Prince Solo, your mother's tendency for... charity does not extend to—"

Ben's expression did not change, but the temperature did. "Finish that sentence and we'll find out which of us the king prefers to clean blood off his stones."

Rey felt it—the visible irritation that flashed through him when crossed, leashed and obedient to his control but not concealed. It wasn't for show. It was for her. Irrationally, treacherously, it steadied her.

She stepped past both men to the rail, letting the lanterns gloss her gloves. "There's no matter to discuss. I've answered. If anyone requires clarification, they can send it in writing."

Hux inclined his head, but the bow he gave Rey wasn't the one he'd give a future queen; it was the one a man gives a city he intends to starve. "Princess." Hux lowered his head to Rey.

To Ben, just a fractional, joyless smile. "Your Highness."

He left without stomping. He was too well-bred for that. The stomp was in the air behind him.

Silence found them—the good kind, where you could hear water think. Rey set her hands flat on the rail and looked at them like they belonged to someone braver.

Ben stood a pace away, not crowding. "You shouldn't have been out here alone with him."

"You weren't far it would appear" she said, and hated how grateful it sounded.

He absorbed that, some of the edge leaving his posture. The protective thing lived in his eyes again for a second, unguarded and embarrassingly sincere. "I was exactly far enough," he said. "In case you wanted the satisfaction."

"I did." She allowed herself a sideways glance at him. The pull ran between them like a taut line, humming with old memory. "You used to hide in corridors."

"You used to kiss boys in them," he answered, the corner of his mouth betraying him.

"A boy. And that boy left," she said, before she could stop herself.

That made him look at her properly. Not the prince. Ben. The boy who had stood too close to her on cold stone and tasted like an oath he hadn't learned the words for yet. The aristocratic ease didn't vanish, but it made room for something gentler. "I came back."

"To a ball," she said, because needling him was safer than naming anything else.

"And to you," he said, because sometimes he refused to let her win on technicalities.

Her breath snagged. Somewhere inside, a hundred small, trained reflexes argued about whether to lower her eyes or raise her chin. She did the latter.

"Come back with me," he added, sudden, amused at himself. "Inside. Before Rose starts a rumor that I've stolen you to join a traveling circus."

Rey turned from the canal. In the doorway's spill of light, the black combs in her hair flashed once like teeth. He offered nothing as obvious as an arm; he was not that kind of liar. He simply stepped where she would have to step with him.

They went in together.

The music rose to meet them. And when he reached her again later—when the room remembered its script and he asked for her hand with that particular confident economy—no one watching would know they'd already chosen the interesting kind of trouble out under the lanterns.

They slipped back through the archway into light and sound, the ballroom swallowing them with a practiced hunger. Ben's hand hovered at the small of her back—never presuming, always present—guiding her along the edge of the floor where the chandeliers cast their rain of crystal.

Rey turned to look at him. Up close he was all controlled lines: collar sharp, mouth schooled, eyes refusing to admit how they followed her. He let the silence hang just long enough to own it, then bent his head the fraction required to put his voice where only she could hear it.

"We were young," he said, clipped and low, "and foolish."

Her mouth tilted. "Speak for yourself."

A breath that could have been a laugh, could have been surrender. "That night has haunted me ever since." No ornament, no apology. "Through winter campaigns. Through sieges. In the quiet before cavalry—when there is no quiet." He watched her, irritation nowhere in his face now, something almost gentle taking its place. "You kept me going."

Heat pooled under the black silk at her wrists. She'd read a hundred declarations that tried to be this brave; none of them had the weight of his restraint.

"Meet me later tonight," he said, the command wrapped in courtesy. "Alone."

She couldn't help it—the soft sound that slipped out of her, half a giggle, half a dare. She gave him a smile that let him see the flirt and the girl both, and drew breath to answer—

"Borrowing the birthday girl," Rose sang, materializing like a saboteur in peach silk. She looped an arm through Rey's with the familiarity of a sister and the timing of a thief. "Our dance is up, Highness. Tradition."

Ben's jaw set—no more than a flicker, the brief, aristocratic annoyance of a man unaccustomed to being denied the next move. He smoothed it a heartbeat later, offering Rose a court-perfect nod that did nothing to cool the focus in his eyes.

Rey glanced back over her shoulder as Rose tugged. Ben didn't follow. He simply held her gaze across the shifting bright, answering every unspoken yes with a promise he had no intention of breaking. His mouth shaped a single word she caught and felt rather than heard:

"Midnight."

Then the crowd took her, and Rose was laughing in her ear, and the music rose—leaving him at the edge of the floor, watching the red of her dress carve a path through light.

Chapter Text

Midnight trimmed the palace into quiet. Lanterns beamed on low along the garden paths; rain worried the hedges with delicate fingers. Rey slipped from a service stair in her nightgown and a dark hooded cloak, bare feet silent on the cold stone. The air smelled like wet earth and lilies.

She kept to the yew's black edge, the hood shadowing her face until the path opened onto the rose parterre. Drops beaded on the cloak, then soaked it; the rain was light, persistent, the kind that found its way in.

He was there before she turned. Of course he was.

Ben stepped from between two clipped arches, a taller shadow becoming a man with a charming, unruly grin he used like a private weapon. He didn't hurry. He never had to. The grin made room for his eyes, which were not casual at all.

"You make it far too easy to follow you," he said softly.

"Maybe I wanted to be followed," Rey answered, and pushed the hood back. Rain slicked her hair to her temples, turned the little black combs into midnight thorns.

His expression flickered—something warm, then something possessive he smoothed away. The aristocrat returned, dry and amused. He shrugged out of his coat and set it across her shoulders without asking.

"It's raining," he observed, faintly irritated, as if weather had offended standards.

"So command it to stop," she teased.

"Believe me, I've tried." The clipped retort, cool for a heartbeat—then his mouth softened. "You knew I was here."

"Of course" she said with a smile.

They stood beneath the dripping arch while the garden breathed around them. He was close enough that the rain off his hair found her cheek. Up this close, she saw the campaign lines at the corners of his eyes that had no place on the boy in her memory.

"I meant what I said," he told her, voice pitched low enough to belong to rain and leaves. "About that night—" He didn't dress it up. "It hasn't left me" He tipped his head, the silver star at his breast catching a stray lantern glint. "You kept me moving forward when everything else asked me to stop."

She shouldn't have blushed; she did, heat blooming where the rain couldn't reach.

"You left before dawn, if I had known that would be the last time saw you..." she trailed her words and went quiet.

He bore it, but his jaw set for a breath—irritation, honest and fleeting.

"I was ordered," he said. "I obeyed too much then."

"And now?"

"Now I've learned which orders deserve to be broken."

He reached, slowly, as if crossing a border. His fingers found the edge of the cloak at her shoulder, then a damp curl at her temple; his touch was a promise kept gentle on purpose. "May I?"

The question pooled warm between her ribs. "Yes."

His mouth found hers, not the clumsy certainty of children in a cold corridor but something intent and controlled, heat threaded through restraint. Rain cooled the edges of it; his hand at the small of her back warmed everything else. The other hand cupped her cheek. His body pressed against hers. His hungry lips claiming hers. They were still as soft as he remembered. He pushed against her, his hand on her back moving to the tree behind her. Her back pushed against the tree, Ben pressed against her. Her fingers moved up brushing through his wet hair. Rain dripping down both of them as their lips wrestle years of yearning.

A low growl escaped him as Rey tugged on his hair slightly. His lips trailed down the curve of her lip, moving toward her neck. The soft warmth of his lips brushed the skin on her neck. The hairs on her arms stood on edge like lightning had struck close by. A moan escaped her as she tilted her head back against the tree. Ben's teeth grazed her skin, followed by the drag of his lips up to her ear.

"You break the strongest of men Rey" He chuckled pressing his temple to hers.

"Only one" she whispered back. His dark eyes beaming down into hers.

"You shouldn't be out here alone," he murmured, the protective note unhidden now. "Not with wolves in silk prowling your father's halls."

"Hux is a fox," Rey said. "He prefers tidy henhouses."

"I prefer dead foxes." The line was smooth; the intent under it wasn't. "He presses, I press back."

"You can't solve my father's politics with a duel in the lilies."

A ghost of a smile. "Don't tempt me."

He guided her under the stone arcade where the rain thinned to a silver curtain. He shook out his hand once, scattering drops, then smoothed a strand of wet hair behind her ear like he had a right to it. She studied him in the dim light, the long, aristocratic lines and the stubborn mouth that refused to apologize for existing.

"Say my name," he said, too casually, as if the request didn't matter.

"Your Highness," she said, sweet as poison. His eyes cooled—a moment of clipped distance that told on him—then melted when she relented. "Ben."

"That's better." He bent, brushed a kiss against the inside of her wrist and felt the tremor that answered him. Satisfaction flashed. "Meet me like this again and I'll start to believe the gods have decided to be interesting."

A sound in the hedges—only a shift of wet leaves, but the soldier in him turned to it. The grin vanished. He drew her back into deeper shadow with a hand that brooked no argument and placed himself between her and the garden, body all at once attentive and ready. The rain spoke. The hedges settled.

"You are paranoid," she whispered, smiling "Was just the wind or some critter"

"I'm protective," he corrected, but the humor crept back, the charm restarting like a blade sheathed. "And uninclined to let anyone watch when you smile at me like that."

She tipped her face up. "Midnight suits you."

"Disobedience suits you." He studied her, gentle and intent. "I'll take you back before the stones grow suspicious. But I will see you again. Soon."

"You sound very sure."

"I am." He buttoned his coat at her throat, his knuckles grazing skin gone warm despite the rain. "Princess Rey"

He walked her along the arcade toward the service stair, a measured escort through shadow and rain. At the threshold he stopped, eyes on hers as if the garden and the palace and the realm could wait to breathe.

"Tomorrow," he said. Not a question.

"Tomorrow," she agreed.

She'd barely crossed the threshold when his voice followed—low, amused, meant only for her and the rain.

"If you run, I shall only chase you."

The old dare from cold stone corridors. Rey paused, looking back with that smile he'd earned, rain-slick hair clinging to her temples.

"Then you'd better keep up," she murmured, and slipped into the dark, leaving him with the grin of a man who fully intended to.

Chapter Text

The summons came with morning steel. No trumpet, no pageant—just the chamberlain at her door, voice smoothed to a sheen. "Their Majesties will see you. Now."

The solar was all pale stone and deliberate light. Her father sat beneath a tapestry of victories that had learned to look like virtues. At his right, the Queen—polished amber and perfect posture—watched with a measured, approving smile. The court called her Mother when the doors were open; some habits are policy.

Between them and Rey, a man in black stood as if the room had been arranged around the line of his shoulders.

"Princess," the King said, his voice not needing to rise to own the air. "You remember Prince Ben Solo."

As if her body could forget what midnight had done to it. As if six summers ago were something that could be misplaced like a fan. Rey let a breath soften her mouth, then drew herself into the shape the court loved to misread.

She sank into a curtsy like a blade sliding home. When she rose, she lowered her head the exact degree that made old men nostalgic and young ones reckless. A daring smile cut at the corner of her mouth. "Milord," she said, playful as a pinprick.

Ben's eye flickered—the barest irritation at being teased under another man's roof, caged at once by control. Then charm settled over him like a tailored coat. "Princess," he returned, voice low enough that the title felt like a hand on her wrist. "You look well. Daylight adores you"

"A prince with charm, some things never change." she murmured, lashes batting, the picture of a princess who had read too many novels and chosen to become one.

The Queen's smile approved of the tableau. "Children do insist upon making even politics charming," she said, a hint of fondness lacquered into the words.

"Politics," the King repeated, and the room remembered itself. "Prince Ben will be our guest for the summer."

A dove could have flown through Rey's stillness and not stirred her sleeves. Inside, something unclenched and then coiled sweeter. She let her eyes find Ben.

"For the summer," Ben echoed, crisp, respectful. "It will be my honor." His glance skimmed the King, then returned to Rey with a softness so brief it could have been imagined. "There is... much to reacquaint ourselves with."

"Ben joins the Privy Council as observer," the King continued. "Hunts on Thursdays, inspections of the eastern fortifications at my convenience. You will show him our marches, Rey. The real ones. Not the ones sung to children."

"Yes, Father." She kept her tone dutiful and her pulse wicked.

"We expect decorum." The Queen's voice was velvet on iron. "The court notes everything and forgives nothing."

Rey arranged innocence over her mouth like a veil. "Of course."

Ben accepted the reprimand that wasn't—head tipped, aristocrat to queen, the perfect son of a sovereign who'd taught him when to look civilized. "Majesty."

"Good," the King said, satisfied. "A page will see you to your rooms in the East Wing, Prince. Adjacent to the old schoolroom. You remember the way."

Six summers ago flashed—the narrow corridor smelling of stone and apples, the boy who had learned her corners faster than her tutors. Her dress flowing as he chased her.

Rey's smile sharpened.

Ben's did, too. "I do."

They were released. Courtiers bent like reeds as the tide shifted. In the antechamber, out of the direct aim of parental regard, Rey let herself tilt closer; his shadow covered part of her skirt, and somehow that felt like possession.

"You play princess," he said softly, amusement and approval braided. "It suits you."

"You play prince," she countered.

The grin came—the private, charming weapon he only drew when it mattered. "If you run," he murmured, just for her, "I shall only chase you."

She lowered her head again, the daring smile returning, a promise dressed as flirtation. "Then try to keep up, milord. I'm very fast."

The irritation sparked—brief, honest, pleased to be provoked—and vanished under control. Protective warmth replaced it, visible in the way his gaze checked the hall behind her before returning to her face. "I'm here for the summer," he said, making the season sound like a sentence he intended to enjoy. "That's long enough to catch anything worth catching."

She swept him a curtsy sharper than the first, a little cruel just because he'd like it. "Welcome back to the keep."

He bowed the exact fraction that would scandalize the precise and thrill the romantic. "Thank you for having me, Princess Rey."

They parted in opposite directions like good children, each taking a different corridor that led, inevitably, to the same garden.

Rey had found the one corner of the south gardens everyone forgot: a low stone bench tucked behind a quince tree, the fountain close enough to cover footsteps with its steady hush. Sunset laid gold along the hedge tops and turned the gravel path to embers. She'd slipped off her slippers and tucked her feet beneath her, a romance novel open on her knees, halfway through a chapter where the heroine pretended not to know a man was ruining himself for her.

"Of course she knows," Rey muttered, smiling to herself.

"Who are we demanding public declarations from today?" Poe's voice floated in before he did.

She looked up to see them swinging into her little refuge like they owned it: Poe with a jacket he hadn't bothered to button and a grin that had gotten him into and out of everything; Rose with a ribbon in her hair and the expression of a person who collects problems for sport; Finn carrying a plate he had obviously liberated from the kitchens—sliced peaches and sugared almonds balanced like treasure.

"We brought tribute," Finn said, offering the plate. "So you'll let us interrupt."

Rey took a peach slice and made a show of considering. "Permission granted."

Poe dropped onto the bench's arm, careful of her book. "So? How's our princess of hearts?"

"Reading dangerously," Rose said, plucking the novel and flipping to the dog-eared page. She scanned a line and snorted. "Ah. The chapter where she insists she doesn't care what the prince does, then dies dramatically when he leaves for battle."

"Art reflecting life, perhaps," Poe murmured, eyes sliding toward the palace. "Or at least this week's theatre schedule."

Rey took the book back with mock dignity. "I am merely educating myself."

"On how to handle princes?" Finn asked, half-teasing, half-earnest.

"On how to handle everyone," Rey said lightly, though her heart had already begun its unhelpful habit of practicing for trouble. "Speaking of education—my parents summoned me this morning."

Rose's eyebrows jumped. "And?"

"They reintroduced me to a houseguest." Rey kept her tone airy. "Prince Ben Solo. You remember, the boy who stayed six summers ago."

Poe made a noise that suggested he remembered entirely too well. "Tall. Polished?"

"If he was a god I would bow." Rose murmured

Finn tried and failed not to grin. "You curtsied like a saint and smiled like a sinner."

"I played princess," Rey said, unrepentant. "He played prince. The court will clap."

"And?" Rose prompted, sharp with interest.

"And he's staying for the summer," Rey finished, and bit into the peach to hide the way the words tasted.

Silence, then Poe let out a low whistle. "A whole season. We'll need a calendar of your terrible decisions."

Finn nudged him. "Her excellent decisions."

Rose's eyes softened. "Are you all right?"

Rey pretended to study a droplet of juice on her thumb. "I'm... busy."

"Busy," Poe repeated, amused. "With hunts on Thursdays and inspections of fortifications and being seen not being seen together."

Finn leaned his shoulder to hers, warm and steady. "We're your swoop team. Just say when."

Rey exhaled a laugh that let some of the tension run out of her shoulders. "I know."

They fell into easy talk then. Finn recounted a skirmish in the stables between a temperamental gelding and an even more temperamental duke's son; Rose described how she'd bullied the master of candles into doubling the light in the library; Poe confessed that he'd promised three dances tonight and intended to deliver none of them.

"Offer them all to Finn," Rose suggested. "His smile is honest. It'll do them good."

Finn lifted his hands. "Leave me out of your crimes."

Sun slid lower, washing the upper windows in burnished light. Rey's gaze drifted there despite herself. For a moment, framed in one of the long casements, she caught the line of a figure in black—hands behind his back, weight taken by one hip like the stone had been placed to accommodate him. He didn't move. He didn't need to.

Rose followed her eyes. "Is that—"

Rey dropped her gaze to the book. "Probably a shadow."

Poe grinned, unkind only in its accuracy. "A very well-bred shadow."

Finn tried not to laugh and failed, the sound soft. "We'll clear out before we're mistaken for accomplices."

Rose stood and smoothed Rey's hair with quick fingers, practical and fond. "You're not obligated to play anyone's game. Not ours, not theirs, not his."

Rey tilted her head into the touch, then nodded. "I know which ones I'm choosing."

Poe bent and stole a sugared almond, then kissed the top of her head like the brother he pretended not to be. "Dinner in an hour. If you don't come, we'll say you were kidnapped by a traveling troupe."

"Make it a band of poets," Rey said. "I want the gossip to be pretty."

Finn offered the plate once more. "Eat something."

She took another peach slice to keep him from worrying and watched them go, their laughter threading the path ahead of them. The garden settled when they left, the fountain reclaiming the conversation. Rey set the book in her lap and traced the spine with her thumb.

"You know I'm here."

His voice came from the far side, indulgent and amused.

Rey didn't startle, she turned her head just enough to let the angle of her smile do the work. "Your shadow speaks"

Ben came into view like he'd been invited by the sunset. The charming grin was already there, but his eyes did the real speaking. He took in her bare feet, the book, the plate of peaches, and that smile of his tipped private.

"Educating yourself?" he asked, nodding at the novel.

"On handling princes," she said, batting her lashes deliberately.

He huffed a soft laugh, then reached and, without asking, plucked a peach slice and ate it like he was breaking a law no one would punish him for.

"Careful. Some of us chase when provoked."

Rey lifted her chin. "If I run, you'll only chase me."

The irritation flashed—the old, clipped spark when she got the better of him—and smoothed into something sweeter. "Count on it."

She slipped her feet back into her slippers and rose. "Dinner in an hour," she said, as if she hadn't planned to walk that way anyway. "Walk me to the door, milord."

He offered no arm, only fell into step beside her. The quince tree let them through, the stone path bright as embers under two pairs of careful steps, the summer suddenly feeling very, very short.

Chapter Text

Dinner unfurled in courses and candlelight, the sort of spectacle designed to make conversation look effortless. Gold plates, red wine, a thousand polished reflections. Rey took her seat halfway down the high table, the Queen at the head like a star fixed to a precise sky. Finn, Rose, and Poe had been tucked just within whispering range, conspirators hidden in plain sight.

Ben slid into the chair beside Rey as if the place had always belonged to him. Someone had been displaced to make room—she saw the ripple of it down the table—and Ben accepted the minor courtly chaos with a gracious nod that also said: of course.

"Your Highness," he said, low, for her alone. The curve at his mouth was a secret and an invitation. "You clean up well."

"I washed my hands, and chose a different dress" she managed, determined to be clever.

He looked pleased. Dangerous.

The first course arrived—clear consommé studded with pearls of white root. Ben ignored his spoon for a moment, studying the light off hers like it was a more interesting physics. "You were reading at sunset, before your friends came" he murmured. "A romance with a heroine who knows exactly what she's doing."

She blinked. "You were spying."

"I was looking," he corrected, aristocratic and unapologetic. His glance dipped to the red silk at her shoulder, then back to her eyes.

Poe coughed into his napkin very softly. Rose's mouth trembled with suppressed laughter.

Rey lifted her spoon to buy time. Her face felt hot.

Ben leaned an inch nearer, pitch perfect: close enough to make her aware of his breath, far enough that no one could claim scandal without proving an interest in it. "You look stunning this evening."

The second course arrived with quiet choreography: delicate fish, paper-thin lemon. Ben's cuff brushed her wrist as he reached for his glass; the contact was accidental by every standard but his eyes. "To education," he said, lifting the wine. "I find I am wildly behind in mine."

Rey touched her glass to his. "On what subject?"

"You," he said, and made it sound like an entire curriculum.

She nearly forgot to drink.

A lord down the table tried to pull Ben into talk of fortifications; Ben turned just enough to be polite, answered with clipped competence, and returned to Rey as soon as the sentence allowed it. The irritation at being interrupted flashed and smoothed, his attention re-anchoring like a tide claiming its bay.

"You blush," he observed, amused but gentle, as the third course was set down. "It looks like treason against the crown of your composure."

"Stop," she whispered, and hated how breathy it sounded.

"Why?"

She shot him a look that should have charred him. He smiled like it had warmed him instead.

The third course was a roasted quail with a fig split open like a secret. Ben used his knife with soldierly precision, then, without asking permission and somehow making it a courtesy, transferred the better half of the fig to her plate. "You like peaches," he said. "We'll see if figs make you kinder."

"Figs make me dangerous," Rey muttered, and then promptly betrayed herself by taking the bite he'd chosen. The sweetness hit; the wine deepened it. She made a small involuntary sound that was absolutely not appropriate to a high table.

His grip shifted infinitesimally on his knife, as if the table had tilted under him and only control put it right again. "Noted," he said, the word civilized, the look anything but.

Poe propped his chin on his hand. "I'm learning so much about produce."

"Shh," Rose hissed, delighted. "Do not spook the game."

Finn tried to help. "It's romantic," he offered.

"It's fruit" Poe countered. "With subtext."

Ben turned his head just enough to include them, the charming edge of him on full display. "If you'd like to borrow lines," he said, "I can provide a few failures from my youth. They might suit you."

Poe held up both hands. "I prefer to improvise my disasters, Your Highness."

"Wise," Ben said, already back to Rey.

The fourth course vanished between remarks that should have been nothing and weren't. He asked if she still hid in the south gardens; she asked if he still broke horses by looking at them until they obeyed. He said her hair looked like trouble when it escaped its pins; she said his mouth looked like an argument begging to happen. He laughed once, quiet and real, and she had to look at her plate until the heat cooled.

Dessert arrived in a fanfare of sugared almonds, delicate tarts, the candied peel of oranges lit like stained glass. Ben took one of the oranges without taking his eyes from her and turned it between long fingers.

"Will you call me by my name," he asked, "or shall we keep pretending we haven't already broken that rule?"

"Ben," she said, before she could think better of it.

He didn't smile, exactly. Something softer and more dangerous happened to his face. "Rey."

Rose let out an audible little squeak and pretended it was because she'd bitten a sugar shard.

Her friends were terrible but she adored them.

A minor dignitary tried to conscript Rey into praising some road works; Ben's expression cooled instantly, aristocratic annoyance barely leashed. He answered for her, smooth and correct, and the dignitary drifted away wearing a smile he didn't feel.

"You don't have to guard me," Rey said, flustered and grateful and not ready to name it.

He considered her, charm settling into something tempered. "I'm not guarding you," he said. "I'm choosing where to stand. There's a difference."

Her throat worked. She nodded because words had abandoned her.

The hall rose for the final toast. The King lifted his goblet and the room obeyed. Ben leaned in one last fraction, speaking under the swell of voices so that what he said was theirs alone.

"After," he murmured. "Five minutes by the eastern door. If you run—"

"I'll only be making it interesting," she finished weakly.

"Good girl." It wasn't patronizing; it was possession disguised as praise, and it turned her bones to heat.

The toast ended. Chairs scraped. Conversation reflowered. Rose leaned across Finn. "You are absolutely doomed," she whispered, gleeful.

Poe grinned. "We're witnesses. We'll sell the rights."

Finn elbowed them both and looked at Rey, earnest. "You okay?"

Rey stared at her plate, at the orange peel like a little captured sun, and then lifted her gaze to the man beside her who had coaxed her name out into public and made it sound like a vow.

"I'm...Speechless" she said quiet and found that it didn't feel like weakness and the three of them tried and failed to smother their giggles as Ben—playful, romantic, entirely sure—set his glass down and reached for her attention like it was the most natural thing in the world to take.

They met at the eastern door between candles and shadow, the corridor was empty. Rey slipped from the line of servants. Ben was already there, back to the stone, hands behind him—every inch the civilized prince except for his eyes.

"Rey," he said, like he'd been holding the word in his mouth all dinner.

"Ben."

The latch settled with a soft click as she pulled the door to. For a moment neither of them moved. Rain threaded the courtyard beyond, the sound thinning through the ironwork; in here, the world was breath and candle-glow and the distance of a single step.

She took it.

His restraint cracked first—the most gentlemanly surrender she'd ever seen. One hand found her waist, sure and warm; the other rose to her jaw and held there, asking without language. She tipped her face into his palm and felt him decide.

He kissed her the way he did in every dream he'd had with her. The first press of his mouth was careful and soft. Barely a kiss. A whisper of breath against her lips. She made a sound she'd never made in her life. His body pressed her against the wall as his lips claimed hers. His hand on the wall behind her, his body pressed against hers. Stealing kisses. Her fingers lost within his hair. A small nip on her lip shocked her. His dark eyes met hers and she melted in his hold.

He smiled against her, the dangerous kind that warmed and promised in the same breath, and kissed her again. He tasted of orange and dark wine. Her gloved fingers slid to his shoulders; he caught her wrists, paused, then deliberately peeled the black silk back, inch by inch, like unwrapping an argument. When her hands were bare he lifted one and kissed the inside of her wrist. Heat arrowed through her so fast it felt unfair.

"Tell me to stop and I will," he said, low and clear, the soldier in him insisting on the rule even as the prince ignored all the others.

"I don't want you to stop" she said, and meant everything.

He turned, guiding her back to the cool of the stone—never crowding, always offering, somehow both. The wall took some of her weight so she could let go of the rest. His coat bracketed her; his body bracketed the coat. He kissed her jaw, small, warm kisses melted into her skin. Scarring her skin with his mark. He slowly trailed his kisses below her ear that made her knees reconsider their loyalties. She found the edge of his hair.

"Six summers," he murmured, breath unsteady. "I've had that corridor in my head for six summers. Every time I thought I'd freeze, I remembered that smile on your mouth luring and calling me back to you. It made me angry enough to live."

She laughed—helpless, delighted, wrecked. "Romantic."

"Very." His tone was cool again, aristocratic, except his hands were at her waist and the truth was doing all the speaking. "You kept me moving forward. You still do."

He kissed the corner of her smile and then the center of it. She caught his lower lip lightly between her teeth—just to see—and the flash of annoyance that answered her was pure Ben: sharp, controlled, immediately turned into intent. He gathered the skirt of her gown just enough to anchor her against him, one thigh sliding between hers. Her heat came on like an order that he had ordered and her body obeyed.

"Ben," she whispered.

"Rey," he answered, voice gone rough.

She let her head fall back against the stone. His fingers brushed over her thigh, trailing teasing lines as they climbed. The way he watched her like she was the only interesting thing he'd ever learned. He kissed down the column of her throat, reverent and hungry, then rested his forehead there for a beat as if to steady himself.

"If you run," he breathed, smiling where she could feel it, "I shall only chase you."

"I'm caught" she moaned happily, and dragged him up to her mouth again. Her lips claiming his once more. Desperate and hungry. She grinned herself over his knee, a moan escaped him.

The rain beyond the iron sang. Inside, the candle burned lower and their breathing burned higher. His thumbs drew idle circles through the fabric at her waist that undid her with patience alone. She took his face in her hands to make him look at her while she fell apart a little.

"Good girl," he said when she did, soft praise spoken like a secret, and she discovered she'd do nearly anything to hear it again. He returned a kiss that stripped her of her vows. Her fingers curling in his jacket, drawing him closer until there was no room for restraint.

Footsteps ghosted somewhere far down the corridor. Ben went still, listening with the whole line of his body, and shifted to stand between her and the door without thinking—automatic, protective, perfectly him. The steps faded. He lingered a heartbeat longer in guard, then came back to her with a look that promised a lifetime of that reflex.

"You're not my guard," she whispered, touched and treacherous.

"No." He kissed the corner of her mouth. "But if we were found like this. In a dark room, mere moments from..." he gulped "Well it wouldn't look too good now would it? Your father would no doubt banish me" He chuckled

She slid her hands under his jacket, palms greedy for heat. "What about me?"

"You?" The grin came back, charming and wolfish and wholly hers. "You may do anything you like to me."

"Dangerous permission."

"I'm here for the summer," he said, teeth grazing her lower lip in a threat that felt like worship. "Plenty of time to be in danger."

She laughed, breathless. "You tease."

"Correct," he agreed, then gentled. "And completely at your mercy."

There was no way to answer that except to show him how true it was. She did, and he accepted the ruin with a grace that made her dizzy. The candle threw their shadows long and intertwined across old stone; the rain stitched the night to the edges of the world. When at last they pulled back, it was only far enough to see each other clearly.

"Tomorrow," he said, still close enough that the word belonged to both of them.

"Tomorrow" she whispered.

"If you run, I shall only chase you" he whispered against her lips. Inside she came undone.

They parted in opposite directions like saints who'd misplaced their halos.

Chapter Text

Morning made a spectacle of the estate. Horns practiced bright notes that startled the swans; grooms trotted nervous horses across the cobbles; the hounds braided themselves into white-and-brown rope and then unraveled with joyous yelps. Under the eastern balcony, the hunters gathered—velvet coats, high boots, blades and bows dressed like they, too, were attending court.

Princesses weren't permitted to ride the hunt. They were permitted to bless it.

Rey descended the last step—chin regal, mouth composed—while a row of ladies pressed scarves and tokens into gloved hands, tying favours around wrists and scabbards. She felt eyes tip toward her the way flowers find the sun. Somewhere above, the Queen watched without blinking. The King spoke to a Master of Hounds, voice low enough to bend obedience.

Ben waited astride a dark bay, a patient hand on the reins, his sword hanging at his hip. He wore black as usual, the discreet silver star at his breast the only light he allowed himself. When he saw her, the line of his mouth softened into that private curve that ruined her composure far more efficiently than any poem.

Rey approached him like a princess and like the girl who'd kissed him in a stone corridor: both at once. She sank into a curtsy that made old courtiers nostalgic and young ones restless, then rose with a flirtatious tilt to her smile. "For you, milord. May it bring you luck."

She slipped off the slim ribbon bracelet from her wrist—black with a thin red thread hidden in the weave—and stepped into his shadow. He didn't move; he made room. Fingers deft, she looped the ribbon at the base of his sword, just above the guard, and drew it tight with a neat bow.

As she leaned in, her breath ghosted the line of his jaw. "So I am always with you," she whispered.

His inhale caught—small, sharp, the only public evidence that her words had gone in like a blade and lodged. Ben glanced down at the knot, then up at her through his lashes, aristocratic polish unable to hide the heat. He bowed his head the fraction he would to a sovereign and, without touching her skin, brushed his mouth to the ribbon where it had warmed against her wrist.

"With your beauty in this dark world, who needs luck?" he said flashing her a small smile. A smile that created butterflies.

A stir down the line—Hux, immaculate on a pale gelding, observed with the pleasant expression of a man cataloguing an offense. "Charming" he said for the benefit of those who liked to be overheard. "Let us hope it doesn't tangle when the work begins." he said pointing to her ribbon.

Ben didn't look away from Rey. "It won't." His voice was silk over threat. "I tie my knots to hold."

The irritation—his, quick and honest when crossed—flashed and was leashed again. He tipped his head a fraction closer to Rey, protective warmth living briefly in his eyes. "Stay with your friends," he murmured. "And if anyone thinks to press—"

"They'll find I bite," she said, sweet as a sin.

He smiled—wolfish, delighted. "Good." He lowered his head and extended his hand. She took it without a second doubt. A smile curved his lips as he pressed them against her skin.

The Master of Hounds raised his horn; the bay shifted under Ben with a contained eagerness that felt like him. Rey stepped back just enough to be proper. Above them, the King lifted two fingers. Conversation folded; leather creaked; a hundred small readinesses aligned into one.

Ben settled his hand over the ribbon at his sword as if swearing on it. "If you run," he said softly, so only she could be guilty with him, "I shall only chase you."

She lowered her head, that daring smile cutting like a secret. "Then keep up, milord."

For a heartbeat he let the mask slip—want, promise, a flicker of possessive pride—and then the prince was back, crisp and controlled. He saluted her with two fingers to his brow—discreet insolence made courtly—and put his heels to the bay. The horse broke into a clean canter, hounds exploding forward, the field streaming after in a ribbon of bright coats and sharpened steel.

Wind took the hem of Rey's skirt. She watched the black and the silver and the red-threaded knot vanish toward the treeline, felt the tug in her chest answer like a tether gone taut.

Rose drifted to her side, eyes on the disappearing riders. "You didn't give him luck," she said, half awed, half teasing. "You gave him orders."

Poe appeared on her other flank, hands in pockets, grin incurable. "And he looked thrilled to obey."

They claimed a corner of the glass pavilion where the sun could make a show of itself without burning anyone—low table, thin porcelain, a plate of honey cakes no one pretended not to want. Outside, the park ran green to the treeline where the hunt had vanished; inside, the clock ticked like a very polite threat.

Rose poured. "Jasmine or orange blossom?"

"Orange," Rey said, because everything smelled like him today, and it made her feel ridiculous and alive.

Poe eyed the cakes. "If Ben Solo returns with the stag in his teeth, I'm stealing his portion."

Finn pushed the plate toward Rey first. "Eat something."

She broke a small bite from the cake and tried not to check the far meadow again. Failed. "Do you think they're near the east ridge yet?"

Rose hid a smile in her cup. "You're acting like a love struct child" Rose giggle "He'll come back along the line you set."

Poe's grin went sly. "You tied your ribbon on his sword in front of half the court. The queen blinked twice. That's practically an embrace in public."

Rey rolled her eyes, heat creeping up her throat. "It's tradition. A favor for a hunter."

"Mmh," Rose said. "And whispering 'So I am always with you' is also very traditional. In romances."

Finn's eyes lit. "You said that?"

Rey pretended intense study of her saucer. "I may have suggested a... presence."

Poe made a small, delighted noise. "Ghost bride! The palace will be buzzing. Already heard Lady Ves exclaim that Prince Ben's blade was 'immodestly decorated.'"

"Tell Lady Ves I've seen her hat pins," Rose muttered. "Glass houses."

They sipped and gossiped the way people breathe: easy, necessary. Rose recited the morning's inventory of scandals—the dowager who'd misplaced a diamond, the stable boy who'd been promoted because he refused to be kicked. Poe sketched impressions of three minor lords with such wicked accuracy Rey nearly spilled her tea. Finn confessed he'd bribed the kennel master with sugared almonds to let him pet the gentlest hound; Poe declared this true heroism and reached for another cake as compensation.

"Do we think Hux falls off today?" Poe mused, peering at his reflection in his spoon. "Or does he merely perspire in an orderly fashion?"

"Neither," Rose said. "He'll glide back unsmudged and claim credit for the weather."

Rey laughed, then stilled at a faint sound that might have been a horn and might have been her heart.

Finn noticed. "He'll be all right."

"I know." She set down her cup. "He's very—" She groped for a word that wasn't foolish. "Competent."

"Terrifying," Poe offered. "In a benevolent way, for you."

Rose's look gentled. "You're allowed to care."

Poe leaned back, pleased. "Our girl is writing her own chapter."

"Page one," Finn said. "'The princess gave the prince a weapon and a warning.'"

Rey smiled into her cup. "He prefers orders."

"Yes," Rose said dryly, "but only yours."

Footsteps and whispers passed the pavilion door; a pair of court ladies drifted by like informative clouds.

"Did you hear?" one breathed. "The prince took the hedge at Blackwater in one clean arc—"

"—and Hux pulled up short," the other finished, avid. "Claimed his horse didn't like the mud."

Poe clutched his heart. "A tragedy in three acts."

Rey hid a grin behind her hand. The clock ticked. Somewhere far off, a horn sounded again—unmistakable this time, a bright thread through the trees. The pavilion prickled with attention as other ladies set cups down and turned their faces to the park.

Finn stood, already offering Rey his hand. "Come on."

They stepped to the open door. Wind brought them the smell of crushed fern and horse and the faint, thrilling chaos of returning hounds. Over the rise, the first riders crested—splashes of color, the bobbing white of tails, the glint of steel in sunlight.

"There," Poe said, crowding without shame. "Black coat, arrogant posture, a very pretty problem."

Ben came into view on the bay, controlled and effortless, the discreet silver at his breast flashing—and at his hip, the base of his sword tied with a neat black ribbon, a thin red thread catching the light.

Rey's breath left her in a small, helpless sound she would deny in any court.

Rose bumped her shoulder, smiling like a secret. "Told you."

"Competent," Finn said again, satisfied.

Poe leaned close enough to be wicked. "You realize, if you run now, he will in fact chase you."

Rey let the daring smile find her mouth. "Then perhaps I should make it interesting then."

"The Prince has never seen trouble wrapped so pretty" Rose giggled.

The field poured back in a ribbon of color and noise—hounds yawning, horses blowing, laughter polished for public use. Ben swung down from the bay in one clean motion, handed the reins to a groom, and walked straight for the pavilion as if the path had always been drawn from him to her.

Conversation thinned around him the way it does when something interesting is about to happen.

Rey stood just inside the open door with Rose, Poe, and Finn flanking like cheerful conspirators. She had a teacup she'd forgotten to drink from and a smile she couldn't quite tame.

Ben stopped before her...and bent the knee.

Not the shallow court dip given to rank. He went down fully, one boot to the gravel, one hand braced on his thigh, head tipped in a gesture that made the nearest dowagers inhale behind their fans. The discreet silver star at his breast caught the light; the black ribbon at his sword—hers—fluttered once in the afternoon breeze.

In his gloved hand: a single daisy, mud brushed from its stem, white petals bright as a secret kept.

"For you, milady," Rose whispered under her breath, wicked. Rey's elbow found her ribs.

Ben looked up, all civilized charm and something older beneath it. "The only prize I wanted," he said, voice pitched for her alone and the court precisely enough to overhear. "I found it stubborn and shining at the hedge break—day's eye in the churn. It reminded me of someone who refuses to lower her gaze."

Heat climbed Rey's throat. She sank into a curtsy that answered his kneel with dangerous politeness, then rose with a flirtatious tilt.

"May it bring you luck," he echoed softly, the shared language making the corners of his mouth admit defeat. He held the flower up; his other hand turned, palm open, asking. "May I?"

"Yes," she said.

He rose—slow, unhurried, claiming the space—and stepped that half-breath closer that made the world fall away. He tucked the daisy just beneath one of the black combs at her temple, careful fingers grazing damp hair, knuckles ghosting her skin in a touch that could not be scolded by any etiquette because it was so precise. His glove still smelled faintly of fern and leather; the daisy shone indecently innocent against her dark hair.

"There," he murmured, satisfaction low and intimate. "Now I can find you in any crowd."

Poe made a small, strangled sound and turned it into a comment about the weather. Finn's grin was wide, proud almost. Rose bit her lip and failed to look stern.

From the lawn, a few courtiers tittered; one or two frowned as if simplicity were a scandal. Up on the balcony, the Queen's fan paused a heartbeat, then resumed. Hux, immaculate and unsmudged, observed from his pale gelding with the expression of a man making notes for later punishments.

Ben's gaze shifted past Rey's shoulder once—checking, counting dangers—then returned to her like a decision. He reached for her hand but stopped at her wrist, where the ribbon had been, and instead bowed over the air just above her skin, the courtesy somehow more intimate than contact.

"You gave me steel," he said quietly. "I bring you mercy."

"Mercy?" Rey teased, eyes bright. "With a weapon and a knee?"

"With a flower," he returned, mouth curving. "Don't tell anyone. It will ruin me."

The Master of Hounds cleared his throat somewhere behind them; the King spoke to an equerry; the palace pretended to be busy. Ben straightened and, without letting the moment be stolen by the room, stole it himself.

"If you run," he said, soft enough to belong to her alone, "I shall only chase you."

Rey's lashes dipped. The daring smile cut at the corner of her mouth. "Then you'd better keep up."

Poe whispered, "We are living in a poem," and Rose swatted him with her fan.

Ben's eyes flashed with that brief, aristocratic irritation he never bothered to hide when she bested him—and then softened into something that felt like vow. He touched two fingers to the ribbon at his sword, acknowledging the tether she'd tied, then to the daisy in her hair, acknowledging the one he'd made.

"Dinner?" he asked, suddenly all court-perfect ease.

Rey tilted her head so the daisy brushed his knuckles. "If you can keep up, milord."

He gave her a look that promised he would, bowed just enough to trouble the precise, and turned to accept the congratulations meant for a prince who'd returned in triumph—with a simple flower offered like a secret that everyone had seen and no one could take away.

Chapter Text

Rey let the maids bring out every weapon a wardrobe could muster and chose the one that looked most like a promise.

Black silk, cut on the bias so it moved like a shadow learning to dance; a collar of onyx and garnet that sat against her throat like a polite threat; a sweep of overskirt lined in cardinal red that flashed when she turned. She left her mother's lacquered combs in, and—deliberately, wickedly—tucked Ben's daisy just beneath the right one, its white a bright rebellion amid all that night.

"Too simple?" Mira asked, meaning the flower.

"Exactly simple enough," Rey said, and smiled at her reflection until it obeyed.

The Grand Hall was already a blaze when she arrived, the air glittering with talk and glass. The chamberlain's staff struck marble; the herald's voice cut the hum.

"Her Royal Highness, Princess Rey of House Palpatine."

Heads turned the way stars turn toward a heavier gravity. Rey took the stairs without haste, letting the gown decide what to reveal and what to keep. The daisy shone like a secret that refused to be hushed.

The Queen's fan paused for one measured beat, then resumed. The King did not move at all, which was how he showed approval. Hux's mouth made a small, tidy line. Rose, Poe, and Finn—clustered just beyond the pillar of propriety—looked like a trio of conspiracies trying not to cheer.

Ben stood.

Not the perfunctory half-rise men give to courtesy; he came fully to his feet at the second table and did not sit again until she was near enough to hear him breathe. The discreet silver star at his breast caught the light; the black ribbon—hers—was still tied at his sword, the little red thread bright as embers.

He didn't reach for her. He let his eyes do it.

"You look like a beautiful. Stunning..." he said when she drew level, voice pitched to slide under all the room's silk.

"You sound guilty milord," she returned, dipping into a curtsy meant for the court...and the daring smile meant for him alone.

His gaze flicked to the daisy. The aristocratic composure checked, then yielded a fraction to something warmer. "You kept it."

"It kept it," she said lightly, and took her seat. He waited the heartbeat it took to be scandalously correct, then sat as well.

Wine found their glasses. A first course arrived in a glow of steam and polish. Ben tilted his head, looking not at her gown, but at her throat, at the line of onyx guarding it. "You've come armored."

"Only where it matters."

He considered that, visibly pleased. "Then I'll aim where it doesn't."

Rose hid a laugh in her napkin. Her eyes wide to Rey and then the boys.

Across the table, a minor lord attempted to draft Rey into praise for the kennels; Ben's expression cooled, the brief, clipped irritation that lived under his good manners flashing and smoothing. He answered with crisp competence, redirected the conversation like a rider taking a hedge, and returned to Rey as if that were the only reason he'd spoken at all.

"Careful," she murmured, mouth barely moving. "They'll say you're besotted."

"They'd be right," he said, absolutely unbothered.

Heat climbed her cheeks; he saw it and looked satisfied in a way that made her consider the wisdom of wearing less armor.

The second course came—river fish bright with citrus. Ben shifted his chair an imperceptible inch closer, enough that the world narrowed just to the distance between their sleeves. Without touching her, he set the better cut on her plate, then lifted his glass.

"To the hunt," he said aloud, for the table.

Then lower, only for her: "To the tether."

Her lashes dipped. The daisy brushed her temple when she nodded. "To the chase."

He drank, mouth curving. "If you run—"

"I'll only be making it interesting."

"Good girl," he said, quiet enough to be a sin.

"You guys are the cutest! Honestly I'll never find love like this" Rose said pouring more wine out.

The hall swelled with talk. Somewhere above, the Queen's fan stilled again, as if deciding whether to be amused by the flower in a princess's hair and failing to be offended by something so perfectly chosen.

Ben watched Rey watch the room—counting dangers, marking loyalties, weighing jokes—and looked like a man realizing he'd never again be bored. He set his forefinger lightly to the stem of his glass, the smallest tap in time with the music, and let the rhythm become a code: one for look at me; two for are you all right; three for later.

Rey's mouth softened. She answered by tracing her thumb along the edge of her plate: one, then three.

He didn't smile; it was worse. Satisfaction slid through his eyes like warmth, and the aristocratic edge of him sharpened into intent.

Dessert arrived in a hush of sugar and light. Ben leaned that fractional, ruinous inch. "After," he murmured, polite as prayer. "South loggia. If you run—"

She let her fingers ghost the daisy, felt the petal's cool against her skin, and met his gaze full. "Keep up, milord."

Dawn made the quince leaves shine like coins. The grass was wet enough to soak hems; the air still held a shiver from the night. Rey came first, black cloak over her nightgown, hair down, Ben's daisy tucked by her comb like a quiet dare. He was already there—of course—with that civilized posture he wore like a blade and a look that made the rest of the world irrelevant.

"You're late," she lied.

Ben's mouth tipped. "I've been here forever."

They stood a heartbeat apart, the distance vibrating. He watched her the way a hunter watches the one thing that matters, charming grin tucked away in favor of something truer.

"Say you want it," he murmured, close enough that his breath warmed her cheek.

She made him earn it. She circled him once, fingers grazing his lapel, then the ribbon she'd tied to his sword. "Please," she said at last, very soft, very brave.

His control thinned—beautifully. "Good girl."

He lifted her wrist and peeled the glove back with careful slowness, inch by inch, as if unwrapping a secret. His mouth found the pulse point and lingered, kissing until her knees forgot their duties. He didn't rush her; he let the wanting build until it ached sweet.

"Ben," she sighed happily, not a title in sight.

He bent his head and, finally, kissed her.

Not a polite press—heat, precision, a steady claim that deepened when she opened to him. He tasted of citrus and dark tea. She answered with a soft sound she'd never give the court, fingers sliding up into his hair, tugging just enough to test him. He answered by stepping closer, bracketing her with the tree at her back and his body in front, careful not to pin, certain enough to shelter. Her fingers tugged on his hair slightly as their eyes met.

"More," she breathed against his mouth.

He gave it, the kiss turning darker, slower, thorough. His hand cupped her jaw, thumb stroking the hinge where composure lives; the other traced her waist and found the small of her back, anchoring her so the world could tilt and she wouldn't. She nipped his lower lip—deliberate, teasing—and felt his brief, aristocratic irritation spark and turn instantly to intent. He smiled into the kiss, then took it deeper until her toes curled in the wet grass.

She explored him back—cheekbone, the warm line behind his ear, the starched edge of his collar turned soft under her hands. He shivered when she kissed that unguarded place at the base of his throat; the sound he made was quiet and entirely for her. His hands moved down and cupped below her ass lifting her up. Her dress bunched as she wrapped her legs around his waist. A moan slipping into the kiss. She could feel his heartbeat thumping in his chest. The urge for more. The control.

"Six summers," he said against her mouth, breath uneven. "This is the first morning that's ever felt honest."

"Then don't waste it," she whispered, dragging him in again.

He obeyed beautifully. He kissed her like a vow, then slower still, until it was almost cruel how gentle he could be. When he finally broke for breath he didn't go far, forehead resting against hers, both of them smiling like thieves with pockets full of dawn.

"If you run," he said, voice gone low and pleased, "I shall only chase you."

Rey's fingers toyed with the ribbon at his sword, eyes bright and wicked. "Then keep up, milord."

He laughed—short, dark, delighted—and kissed her again, softer this time, as if sealing something he intended to keep. The garden breathed around them; dew soaked her hem; his coat warmed her shoulders where he'd pulled it close without asking.

"Tell me stop," he offered once more, because he always would.

She shook her head, a little breathless, very certain. "I could never, when heaven tastes so sweet"

So he didn't—he just held her there in the pale morning, kissing her like he'd been starving and had finally found something worthy of the hunger, until heat chased the chill from her skin and the world decided to start again.

Chapter Text

The morning had the good manners to be clear. Dew still clung to the meadow grass, turning every blade into a pin of light. Rey let her mare stretch into a canter along the south ridge, cloak snapped back, hair half-tamed and happier for it. Rose kept pace on a neat, clever gray that minded every cue as if it had stitched them.

They eased down to a trot where the path narrowed between gorse and hawthorn, birds sewing sound into the hedges.

"All right," Rose said, not looking over, reins loose in competent hands. "Confess."

Rey laughed, uselessly trying to swallow the smile that kept happening to her. "About what?"

"About why you've been floating since dawn and staring at quince trees like they invented mornings."

Rey's mare pricked her ears, as if in agreement. Rey stroked her neck to hide the heat crawling up her throat. "I'm... gone," she admitted, and felt the truth land with a jolt that was not unpleasant. "Headfirst. Headlong. Head—everything."

Rose's mouth did an I-knew-it tilt. "How gone?"

"The kind where I hear a horn and look for him even when I know he isn't there." Rey breathed, tasted clover. "The kind where the room blurs until I find his eyes, and then the rest of the world has to ask permission to resume."

They rode in companionable silence a few strides. A lark skimmed low across the track; the gray flicked an ear; Rose's hand steadied without thinking.

"And it's—" Rey searched for the right shape. "It's intense. He's... so controlled. Everyone says that. But when he chooses me—when he looks—" Her laugh broke, helpless. "It feels like standing at the edge of something and being certain the ground will rise to meet you."

Rose glanced at her, sharp and softened both. "And when he's angry?"

"He shows it." The answer came too fast. "For a breath. Irritation, clean and quick. Then he leashes it. But I see it. I like that I see it." Rey's smile went wicked, then contrite about it and not at all sorry. "Sometimes I provoke it, just to watch him do the work of mastering it."

"Truly doomed," Rose diagnosed, amused. "What else?"

"He's... protective." Rey's fingers toyed with the edge of her glove. "Not like a wall over me. Like a choice to stand where danger would have to go through him. He listens. He notices." She took a breath, let it out as if it carried something heavier. "He puts himself between me and footsteps in corridors. He looks over my shoulder before he looks at my mouth."

"That sounds like a man who wants you alive," Rose said plainly. "Useful trait."

"And there's this—" Rey bit her lower lip, then gave in to the truth. "He says 'If you run, I shall only chase you,' like he did when we were children. It used to be a dare. Now it... feels like. a tease"

Rose's grin went sideways. "And do you? Run"

"Every chance I get." Rey sobered. "I know what this looks like to the court. A princess with a ribbon on a prince's sword. A daisy in her hair. The King watching. The Queen... counting. Hux making notes." She stroked her mare's neck again. "I know. But I'm choosing it anyway."

They crested the low rise where the valley opened green and ribbed, the palace chimneys a gray comb against the sky. Sun warmed the backs of their hands; a breeze lifted the hair at Rey's temples. She let her mare walk, hips moving with the swing, breath finding the horse's rhythm like a lullaby learned late.

Rose's eyes gentled. "And the rest?"

Rey let the mare pick her way around a puddle, the reflection shivering as hoof met water. "We met after dinner. Twice." She left the word there—the heated, hungry honesty of it—letting the wind pull some of the blush away. "He's... very sure of himself. But the kissing. Oh god forgive me but I've never wanted to sin so much in my life" She broke off, half laugh, half sigh.

Rose made a pleased sound a friend only makes when the world, for once, is being fair. "You're allowed to be happy. Happiness isn't a sin."

"I'm more than happy." Rey searched for a word that didn't embarrass her. Failed and used it anyway. "I'm brave. With him. Even when I'm terrified of what this means—for the court, for my father, for... everything. He makes me want to be braver than I've been taught is safe."

They fell quiet long enough to hear the creek arguing with stones below. A hare broke from cover and sprinted; both horses flicked ears, contained. Rey watched the flash of life vanish into grass and felt something in her do the same quick, joyful run.

"You know I'll say the caution things," Rose said at last, voice as practical as braids. "Hux will press again. Your father counts alliances in his sleep. The Queen doesn't blink for gossip; she blinks for threats. Be smarter than them. Pick the places you're seen. Give the court enough theatre they miss the real play."

"I will." Rey looked over, grateful enough to risk the earnestness. "Thank you."

"And keep us in the loop," Rose added, mock-prim. "If you plan to run, tell your swoop team where to meet you."

Rey's smile went feral. "He'll chase."

"We'll trip anyone else." Rose squeezed with her knees; the gray surged a length ahead, tossing his head in visible agreement. "Race you back?"

They broke together, hooves drumming, skirts snapping, the meadow blurring into a ribbon of wind and sun. Rey's mare stretched into the gallop with the clean joy of a body doing its purpose. For a moment there was no court, no hunt, no Hux—only the pull in her chest that had learned a man's name and didn't apologize for it, and the certainty that when she ran, he would keep up.

The yard still smelled of sun-warmed hay and horse, that good, ordinary peace that made palaces seem like stories told about other people. Rose swung down, cheeks pink from the ride, and patted Rey's boot.

"I'm going to bathe before court eats me," she said. "Don't loiter."

"I'll be quick," Rey promised.

She wasn't. She never was with the mare. She walked her down, listening to the satisfied huff of a worked animal; she loosened the girth, slid the saddle free, rubbed the sweat-marked back with a rough cloth until the skin shone. The mare nosed her pocket, greedy and hopeful.

"Fine," Rey murmured, smiling, and produced the contraband apple.

"Your Highness."

The voice came smooth and exact from the tack-room arch. Rey didn't startle. She set the brush on the stall's half-door, stroked the mare's neck once more, then turned.

Hux stood as if the stable had been arranged for him—gloves spotless, boots unsmudged, smile folded just so. No dust dared settle on him.

"You shouldn't be here," Rey said. "You don't like dirt."

"I like order," he corrected mildly, stepping in. The mare flicked an ear, displeased; Rey's hand found her cheek, calming. "Allow me to be plain again. Marry me."

"No," Rey said, crisp as a cut rein. "You asked. I answered."

He looked almost amused by her efficiency. "Your father will find my offer... stabilizing. The court will find it consoling. You will find it tolerable."

"I find you intolerable," she said, pleasant as tea.

A pause. The smile didn't leave his mouth, but it stopped belonging to his eyes. "Princess, you mistake this for courtship." He drifted closer, not enough to crowd, enough to make the stable feel smaller. "It is logistics."

"Then miscount me," she returned. "I'm not yours to tally."

Hux's gaze flicked to the stall, to the clean line of her arm along the mare's neck, to the ribbon mark still faint at Rey's wrist where she'd worn it tight. When he spoke again, the veneer thinned just enough that she could see the wire beneath.

"Refuse me," he said softly, "and I will remove your distraction."

She felt the words before she understood them, a cold drop down a warm spine.

"My distraction."

"Prince Ben Solo," Hux said, tasting every syllable like a diagnosis. "Men vanish, Princess. They are reassigned to fronts where maps are... inaccurate. Accidents occur on hunts. A horse refuses a hedge; a strap fails. Letters stop arriving. People sigh and say 'how tragic' and the realm moves on, relieved of a complication." He tilted his head, kindly as a knife. "You, meanwhile, become a queen. You will thank me later."

Rey kept one hand on the mare because otherwise she would close it around Hux's throat and that would be messy. Her pulse steadied with effort. "If you touch him," she said, and her voice surprised even her—quiet, iron, without tremor, "you will discover how very little of me is ornamental. I could have you hung for such threats towards the crown."

Hux's mouth acknowledged the line with a flicker of admiration he didn't mean. "You are your father's daughter. Practicality will prevail."

"I am my own," she said. "And you are not listening."

He leaned in by the smallest degree, breath unsoured by effort, eyes clear with tidy cruelty. "Say yes."

"No."

A beat. The mare stamped, a soft warning on wood. Hux's lashes lowered, slow and satisfied, as if he'd reached an equation's inevitable sum.

"Very well," he murmured. "Let us see how fast your prince can run."

He stepped back on a perfect pivot, turned his smile to the stablelike a seal pressed to wax, and left without creasing a single line.

The yard reclaimed its sounds: a distant clink of bit and buckle, a sparrow shouting from the rafters, the steady horse-breath under Rey's palm. She stood where she was for a long breath, then another, until the shiver that had climbed her spine found nowhere to live and left.

"Easy," she whispered to the mare, though she wasn't talking to the horse.

Bootsteps paused in the shadow between stalls. She didn't look up. She didn't need to. The air shifted the way it does when weather changes.

Ben stepped from the dim like the stable had been keeping him in reserve—jacket open, gloves in one hand, eyes already on her face. Whatever he'd heard lived in the set of his mouth: that brief, aristocratic irritation when crossed, leashed so tight it shone.

"You're early," she said.

"I was impatient," he said, because honesty is sometimes a shield. He came closer, slow, like approaching a spooked animal, even though she wasn't the one he planned to break. "What did he say?"

Rey met his eyes. "That if I don't marry him, you... vanish."

Silence. The kind that draws a line and dares the world to step over it.

Ben's jaw flexed once. Twice. Then everything about him settled—not softer, not colder, just very, very precise. "All right."

She hated how much she loved that calm. "Ben—"

"I hear you," he said, and the protective thing was not hidden at all now; it sat openly in his eyes like a standard. "And I heard him." He set the gloves on the stall door, reached, and—with the patience of a man who knew how to gentle something fierce—covered her hand on the mare's cheek. Warmth over warmth. "You will not marry him."

"No," she said, the word steadier because his hand was there.

"And I will not vanish." His mouth curved, humorless and voracious. "He can try. He won't like what he learns."

"You can't duel him in the hay, Ben."

His gaze tipped toward the arch where Hux had stood, then back to her. The grin came, quick and wolfish and tightly controlled. "You overestimate my subtlety. I don't duel in hay."

Despite everything, a laugh escaped her, small and bright and indignant. He caught it like a man who collects victories where he can.

"Make a plan."

"Already have," he said, the aristocrat back in his bones, the soldier under it sharpening. He glanced at the mare, then at Rey's wrist, then up, softer at the edges. "If you run—"

"I shall only make it interesting," she finished, and felt her fear reorganize itself into something useful.

"Good girl," he said quietly, and pressed his mouth once to her knuckles—nothing a court could indict, everything she needed.

He straightened, slid the gloves back on, and offered his arm not like a claim but like a line she could choose to take. "Walk with me. Slowly. No scenes. Let him see you laughing."

Rey took it. "I can do that."

They stepped out of the stall into the bright yard, two figures going nowhere in particular with great, deliberate purpose. Over the door, swallows argued about nests; under the eaves, dust motes floated like innocent things. The palace watched because palaces do.

Hux, at the far edge of the colonnade, paused just long enough to meet Ben's gaze across the space between them. Ben's mouth didn't move. His eyes said everything.

Try.

And Rey, chin lifted, lips curved, chose to be seen smiling as if the world were already doing as it was told.

Chapter Text

They summoned her to the solar with the shutters thrown wide, as if sunlight could make the thing cleaner.

The King sat beneath the tapestry of storms tamed into treaties; the Queen held her fan like a blade hidden in a hymn. The Privy Council stood in a crescent that pretended not to be an audience. Ben was there—slightly behind a pillar by design, hands folded behind his back, the discreet silver star at his breast catching what light it liked and ignoring the rest. His gaze found Rey when she entered and steadied; the smallest tilt of his head asked are you all right. She lowered hers a fraction: yes.

"Lord Hux," the King said without flourish.

Lord Armitage Hux stepped forward immaculate, a scroll in one gloved hand and a smile that said he'd already measured the room. He bowed exactly the proper depth, to both monarchs separately, then to Rey as if she were a concept he approved of.

"Majesties. Highness." His voice was smooth as ruled lines. "Our realm flourishes on two pillars: order and perception. Your reign, Sire, has secured the first. The second—how our allies and adversaries see us—requires a gesture as legible as law." He let the words settle like sand in an hourglass. "A union between House Palpatine and a house devoted to the apparatus of the state—logistics, supply, the quiet muscles that move empires—would announce a season of stability neither blade nor rumor could unhorse."

He unrolled the parchment, not to read but to show that he could have. "I propose a Concordat of Houses: your daughter, Princess Rey, to be married to myself. In return, I bind my fortunes and the machinery I command to your borders and your coffers. Grain arrives on time. Roads are repaired before they are needed. Armories run like clocks. Your enemies will discover what true tidiness does to them."

A few councilors hummed the way men hum when they hear words they'll enjoy repeating later. Hux's smile did not change.

"I am aware," he went on, gracious in his magnanimity, "that the Princess's... inclinations matter." His eyes flicked to Rey—cool, assessing, tidy. "I am also aware that inclinations can be educated into virtue. The court will be comforted; the marches will be fed; the crown will rest more easily at night. And if poetry is required by some—" a small, precise bow toward the Queen "—consider the romance of a marriage that ends chaos not with a sword, but with a schedule."

He finished as he had begun: correct. The Queen's fan paused and resumed. The King's gaze did not move.

"Daughter," the King said, the word both possession and formal address. "Your thoughts."

Every eye tilted. Rey stepped forward the way a dancer chooses the first beat.

"My thoughts," she said, and let a little of her mother's velvet thread her father's iron. "Lord Hux makes a fine speech. It is neat. It is... bloodless." She let her mouth tilt, daring. "I decline."

Silence. Hux did not blink. In the corner of her vision, Rey saw Ben's jaw set for a single pulse and smooth, control reasserted like a hand over a flame.

"You decline," Hux repeated softly, as if tasting an unfamiliar spice. "For what reason?"

"Because I'm not a warehouse to be managed," Rey said pleasantly. "Because I am not an emblem to be manipulated into legibility. Because 'order' and 'perception' are not vows. When I marry it shall be for love not wars" She lowered her head the precise degree that always unsettled the tidy. "No."

Something fine and true flashed under Hux's polish; then his mask returned, even brighter. "Majesties," he said, turning—not to plead, to proceed. "The Red Charter recognizes the Right of Contention when a princess's hand is disputed. It is an old law, but value does not spoil with age. Let the most eligible suitors contend in honorable duel for the privilege of her hand. Clear rules. Public spectacle. The realm adores a tournament; our allies adore certainty. Let the Princess be won in the open, where gossip and daggers cannot distort outcomes."

A stir along the council's arc—interest, discomfort, nostalgia pretending to be principle. The Queen's gaze sharpened. The King's fingers tapped once on the arm of his chair and were still.

"And you," the Queen said lightly, "intend to contend?"

Hux's smile acquired humility like a final accessory. "Majesty, I am a wordsmith. The law allows a nominated champion to fight in a suitor's stead; the claim is proved by strength of claim, not merely strength of arm. I would therefore name Commander Phasma of the Northern Guard as my champion." A ripple—everyone knew the name: mirror-bright cuirass, a record unmarred by defeat, loyalty measured in steel. "Her prowess is uncontested. My claim, once married to her skill, will be... compelling."

Ben didn't move. Only his eyes changed—cooling a degree that would have frosted glass if the solar had allowed it.

"The Right of Contention," the King said, tasting the archaic phrase like old iron. "My grandsire dusted it for the Midsummer Lists, then put it away again because men insisted on dying in public."

"Not if you set the terms, Sire," Hux said smoothly. "First blood, not to the death. The lists can be a pageant and a principle at once."

"And the prize?" the Queen asked. "Our daughter's hand, as if she were a falcon's jess?"

"The prize," Hux said, eyes never leaving the throne, "is the right to marry the Princess Rey with Your Majesties' blessing and the realm's applause."

The King's gaze moved to Rey. It was the old, heavy attention that made mistakes travel farther than screams.

Rey breathed once—felt the weight of the room, the old law, the careful trap—and laid the blade she'd brought behind her teeth.

"If the old game must be revived," she said, voice even, "it will be on new terms."

Hux's head tipped, polite curiosity. The Queen's fan went still. Ben's attention locked on her like a held breath.

"First," Rey said, counting on her gloved fingers, "no death. First blood only. I do not intend to be widowed by sport."

"Merciful," Hux murmured.

"Second," Rey continued, "the victor does not win me. He wins the right to petition for my hand. My father can make a law; he cannot make my yes."

A susurrus—half disapproval, half relief from those who aged with daughters. The King's mouth did not move, but a corner of something like pride creased his stare. The Queen's fan flicked once: permitted.

"Third," Rey said, and allowed herself a small, sharp smile, "the Right of Contention is a test of fitness, not brute force alone. There will be three trials. Arms, as tradition demands. Wit, because governance is more than blade-work. And Mercy, because a man who cannot spare when he could crush is unfit to stand at my side."

A deeper stir now—this was not in the Red Charter, and everyone enjoyed finding out what else wasn't either.

"In Arms," she went on, "a suitor may field a champion. In Wit and Mercy, he stands for himself. No proxies. No polished steel hiding a hollow man."

Hux's smile held, but only because it had nowhere else to go.

"The Princess speaks like a sovereign," the Queen said, amusement lacquered thin over approval. "I find the conditions elegant."

"The law does not forbid elaboration," the King observed, and that was as close to fondness as the Red Charter had ever earned. He turned to the council. "Objections?"

A duke cleared his throat and discovered it was occupied. A bishop murmured about precedent and decided he liked mercy whenever it was applied to him. No one wanted to be the first to say no to the King, the Queen, and the Princess in chorus.

"So ordered," the King said, satisfaction sheathed. "Midsummer. Seven days." He fixed Hux with the kind of look that diagnosed and sentenced at once. "First blood in the lists. Then debate under the eye of the Privy Council. Then a judgment in the chapel courtyard—each suitor to choose a petition among the supplicants and resolve it in a way that keeps both justice and dignity intact."

He turned his head slightly. "Prince Ben."

Ben stepped from his shadow as if summoned had been the wrong verb and invited the right. "Majesty."

"You are, by all measures, eligible," the King said, dry as good wine. "Do you intend to enter?"

Ben's glance flicked to Rey—permission asked without bowing to it. She lifted her chin the exact degree he adored and said nothing at all, which in their new language meant: I will neither forbid nor beg. Catch me.

"If the Princess will tolerate me among her petitioners," Ben said—polished, cool, the aristocrat at full controlled power—"then yes. I'll stand."

Hux did not bother to look his way. He looked at Rey. "And your answer," he said gently, "when the victor asks?"

"My answer belongs to me," Rey returned, just as gently. "And it will remain mine no matter who bleeds on what field."

The Queen's fan hid a smile. The King tapped the chair once more—the sound of a gavel disguised as a habit.

"Then we have a pageant and a principle," he said. "Lord Hux, name your champion."

"Commander Phasma," Hux repeated, pleased to have rehearsed the line. "She will stand in Arms. I will stand in Wit." His mouth softened into kindness that could cut. "And in Mercy, I will demonstrate that tidiness can be generous."

"See that you surprise us," the Queen said.

"It is my specialty," Hux lied.

"Council adjourned," the King said. "Let the lists be raised."

Courtiers emptied as if pulled by tide. Hux bowed to the thrones, then to Rey, fractionally deeper than before, because pretending to respect what you intend to subvert is part of the costume. "Highness." He glanced once at Ben—an inventory, not a greeting—and turned on a pivot that had never known mud.

Ben came only as far as propriety allowed, which was just close enough for his voice to thread to her without catching in anyone else's ears. The irritation that always flashed through him when crossed was visible for a heartbeat, then caged. What replaced it was intent.

"Three trials," he said, approval and hunger braided. "You are wicked."

"I am tidy," she said, letting the word cut where it should. "I don't like hollow men."

His mouth curved, dangerous and proud. "I shall win for you princess"

"And then?" she asked, because bravery is a muscle that strengthens with use.

"Then," Ben said, the promise quiet and absolute, "we let you keep what's yours to keep."

She lowered her head with a daring smile that belonged to no law and every vow. "If I run—"

He didn't let her finish, which was rude and perfectly timed. "I shall only chase you."

"Keep up, milord," she said, and swept the room a curtsy the court would argue about for a week, while the summer rearranged its calendar around a day that would teach everyone the difference between winning a woman and deserving her.

Chapter Text

Ben's quarters were spare the way a blade is spare—maps pinned with neat threads, a rack of practice swords, a single window letting in the cool, early light. He stood at the table in his gambeson, black as a promise, sleeves rolled to his forearms. The ribbon she'd tied to his sword still circled the guard, the thin red thread catching a stubborn gleam.

Silk announced her before her voice did—her gown a dark river that flowed when she moved, the small crown catching daylight and throwing it back at the walls. He turned as if the room itself had called his name and forgot, for a heartbeat, to breathe.

"Rey"

"Ben" She smiled

"Day one," she said. "Arms."

"Arms," he echoed.

She drew out the linen square, kissed it slow—red blooming indecently on white—and pressed it to his palm. "Win for me. For my heart."

His breath caught; the irritation he always leashed when crossed smoothed into intent. He tied the favor inside his sword wrist, where leather met skin, then bent and set his mouth to the flutter at her pulse. "Say the word."

"Make a scene," Rey said, eyes bright.

Silence—and then the most dangerous smile he owned.

"What kind of scene, Princess?"

"The kind they can't tidy away. Announce me without saying my name. Burn them with your manners."

He stepped closer, lowering his voice until it belonged only to her. "I'll bind your favor to the outside of my hilt so the sunlight has no choice but to carry it. When the trumpets end, I'll kneel—not to the throne—to you at the rail. I'll dedicate the bout aloud: 'For the Princess's heart.' After first blood, I'll throw my blade point-down in the sand, cross the lists, and kiss your glove where everyone must watch or admit they're cowards."

Her throat worked. "And the King?"

"I'll look at him," Ben said, aristocratic and utterly sure, "and not ask permission."

She laughed, wrecked and delighted. "Make them talk for a year."

"A generation," he corrected softly. "I'll give the gossips thread and the weavers a tapestry."

She set her palm over the silver star at his chest and felt the measured pound beneath. "If they call it scandal—"

"I'll call it devotion," he said. "And when I'm crossed, I don't forget."

Rey tipped her chin, crown glinting. "Then go be unforgettable."

He leaned in, stopped a breath from her painted mouth, and stole color from her throat instead—a slow kiss just below the line of the crown, reverent as kneeling. She shivered; his eyes went pleased and intent.

"I'll gift you luck on the field again," she murmured, stepping back so the gown could find its flow. "You are my champion."

"And your scene," he promised, flexing his sword hand so the hidden linen tugged like a heartbeat. "Watch me."

She was almost out the door when he added, low and amused, "If you run—"

"I'll do it along the rail," she threw over her shoulder, wicked. "So you have an audience."

His grin flashed—wolfish, civilized. "Keep up, milady."

The lists glittered like a promise: pennants snapping, trumpets bright, sand raked into obedient lines. Courtiers stacked themselves in color along the rails; the King sat like a weather system; the Queen's fan kept time with no music at all.

Ben entered with the other contenders, black as a verdict, the discreet silver star at his breast catching whatever light dared him. The ribbon at his sword still held her thin thread of red. He looked like control and intent stitched together.

A murmur rolled the rail when Rey rose.

She came down from the royal stand with two ladies hovering at a distance, her gown flowing like a dark tide, crown precise on her hair. In her hands: a length of silk, deep crimson with a whisper of black shot through—scarf, veil, banner. Luck you could wear.

She stopped at the barrier opposite Ben. Everything else hushed because it preferred not to be compared.

"For my champion," she said, voice pitched to carry and belong only to him. She lifted the scarf, and before any herald could invent a rule against it, Ben stepped forward—one boot in the sand, one at the rail—bowing his head in a gesture that managed to be both insolent and reverent.

Rey leaned in and wrapped the silk around his neck herself, careful hands smoothing it flat against the column of his throat. The color blazed against all that black; the knot she tied was neat, defiant, intimate.

"Luck," she murmured. "For my heart. For my love."

His eyes shut for a breath as if the word had weight. When they opened, they were warm and dangerous.

"Watch me." his voice darkened.

She smiled—daring, tender—then rose on her toes and pressed her mouth to his cheek.

Not the air beside it. Skin. A clean, claiming kiss that landed like thunder in a room of glass.

Whispers broke like birds. Fans failed to hide smiles. Someone dropped a program. Poe made a strangled sound two tiers up; Rose bit her lip to keep from grinning.

On the high dais, the Queen's fan paused exactly two beats before resuming. The King didn't move at all, which in this language meant he'd chosen not to stop it. Hux—immaculate at the edge of the champions' enclosure—watched with tidy loathing, his mouth a line that tried to turn silk into sin and failed.

Ben didn't touch her—he didn't need to. He bent the knee to the rail, head tipped beneath her hands, and when he rose he spoke just loud enough that there could be no mishearing.

"For the Princess's heart," he said to the sand, to the court, to the sky that would have to live with it.

The Master-at-Arms flinched, then remembered his job and raised the trumpet. Ben stepped back into the ring, fingers brushing the scarf once like a ritual. He drew his blade; the ribbon at its hilt—the first favor—caught sun; the silk at his throat answered.

He looked at Rey one last time before the world narrowed to an opponent. "If you run," he called, wickedly formal, "I shall only chase you."

She tipped her chin, crown bright, smile sharper than any spear. Trumpets split the morning; the marshals dropped their flags. Ben stepped into the ring like a problem already solved—black gambeson, her crimson scarf knotted at his throat, the ribbon at his hilt catching light like a dare.

"First blood," the Master-at-Arms reminded, voice ringing off the stands.

First Round

Viscount Cael of Westmere—plumes, posture, a sword that had seen more polish than rain—sauntered in with an audience already in his smile. They touched blades.

Ben gave him an inch of courtesy and no more.

Cael pressed with parade-book flourishes; Ben answered with economy: parry six, bind, half-step outside the line. When Cael overreached to impress the rail, Ben's riposte traced a precise, gentlemanly kiss along the Viscount's forearm. A red thread appeared. The marshal's kerchief flew.

"First blood—Solo!"

Ben saluted the throne because rules demanded it, then turned where the gravity truly was.

He came to the rail. Rey was already leaning, crown bright, eyes brighter.

"For the Princess's heart," he said, not bothering to soften it.

She set two fingers to the scarf at his throat, smoothing it like a brand. "One."

He bowed his head and kissed her gloved knuckles. Whispers fluttered like startled doves.

Round Two

The Southron duelist waited next—sleek, all angles, rapier in one hand and a main gauche in the other. He fought like a map of feints, slippery and fast. Ben's mouth sharpened with interest; irritation flashed and leashed at the first flicked attempt to nick his wrist.

They circled, blades rasping. The Southron tried to tangle; Ben let him, then rolled the bind, trapped the offhand dagger with a neat turn of his guard, and slid a line of honest red across the man's bicep so fine it took a heartbeat to bloom.

"Solo!"

Back to the rail, breath steady. Rey tilted her face up, daring and tender at once.

"Two," she counted, eyes on the spot where luck warmed his skin.

"Two," he agreed, and bent—not touching her skin—pressing his mouth to the silk at her wrist where it hugged the pulse. The court made a sound it pretended wasn't envy.

Round Three

Sir Malden of Greybough came armored in reputation and muscle, preferring a broader blade and the kind of aggression that convinces lesser men to give ground. Ben didn't. He yielded distance without yielding balance, let Malden chew space and swing for spectacle, then punished the opening—a short beat to the inside, false withdrawal, return cut that kissed along Malden's temple under the rim of his coif. A coin-bright bead ran.

"Solo!"

Sand dusted Ben's cheek; he ignored it until Rey reached him at the rail. She dabbed the grit away like a queen declaring territory.

Round Four Semi Final

A left-handed blade from the Eastern Marches next—lean, patient, dangerous. This one tested the edges, probed for appetite. They traded tempo, silence stretching tight as wire. The crowd forgot to breathe.

Ben changed nothing and everything—footwork a whisper, pressure steady as tide. When the southpaw tried a tricky short thrust under his guard, Ben's quillons trapped, his pommel tapped the man's wrist with elegant rudeness, and his point drew a thin, obedient line along the underside of the forearm.

"Solo!"

He turned to the rail; Rey's smile was pride dressed as composure. "Hux is counting," she warned softly.

"I can count higher," he replied, cool and pleased. He kissed the edge of her glove again—briefer this time, hungrier for the final.

Final - Phasma

Commander Phasma stepped into the sand like a mirrored verdict, cuirass bright enough to throw sun into the court's eyes. No plumes. No smile. Her blade was plain and perfect. Hux watched from the shadow of a pennant, immaculate, already imagining this win as if logistics could plan blood.

They touched steel. The world narrowed.

Phasma pressed with soldier's sense: no wasted flourish, measure forced, angles ugly on purpose. Ben answered in the same language—economy against economy, the meeting of two disciplines that had buried men neither intended to name. She caught his sleeve once—cloth whisper, nothing more. He saw the opening and didn't take it; it was bait. He waited.

They reset. He felt Rey's scarf against his throat, the linen kiss wrapped at his wrist, and let both become timing. Phasma changed guard—there, the briefest high line when she advanced off the right. Ben's blade flickered, not a lunge, a draw-cut, quiet as a breath.

A scarlet bead blossomed along the edge of her gauntlet where leather met skin.

The marshal's kerchief snapped down. Silence. Then the stands erupted.

"Solo!"

Phasma looked at the mark, then at Ben, and saluted him with simple, unsentimental respect. He returned it in kind. Hux's mouth flattened into a straightened seam. The Queen's fan paused three beats this time.

Ben planted his sword point-down in the sand—a clean, deliberate line—and crossed to the rail as if the court had been built for the distance between him and her.

"For the Princess's heart," he said again, louder, so there would be no bad hearing later.

Rey met him without flinching from the storm they'd made. She slid her fingers under the knot of crimson at his throat and tugged it snug, a claim dressed as care.

"My champion," she said, not quite whispering.

He took her hand and, with a very public care, turned her palm and pressed his mouth to the center of it through silk, eyes never leaving hers. The sound the court made had no name polite enough to publish.

"If you run," he added, wicked and formal, joy caged and visible in his face, "I shall only chase you."

Her crown caught the sun; her smile was a blade. "Keep up, milord."

The Master-at-Arms raised his voice for the record. "By the laws of the lists, the Trial of Arms goes to Prince Ben Solo."

Ben reclaimed his sword, saluted the thrones because he must, and Rey because he chose to. The scarf flashed bright as he turned from the rail. Beyond the pennants, Hux's immaculate stillness said: very well—next board, new pieces.

Ben didn't look at him.

He was already counting his way to the next trial—in wit and in mercy—with the taste of silk and victory warm at his wrist.

The corridor outside the women's wing had gone quiet, carpet swallowing footfalls, sconces guttering low. Rey turned the last corner—already thinking of pins and hot bath water—when a hand caught her waist and the wall became a cool certainty at her back.

Ben.

He'd opened a servant's door with his shoulder and pulled her into a narrow, dark antechamber that smelled of stone and beeswax. He braced one palm beside her head, the other at her hip, not quite touching, all heat and control and that look he saved for her.

He kissed her like he'd wanted to since he'd left the rail: heat threaded with precision, not polite at all. She rose into it, crown tilting, hands finding his lapels. The scarf at his throat brushed her knuckles. Her laugh broke against his mouth; his did, too—quiet, pleased, like a man who'd collected exactly what he'd come for.

"You were... indescribable," she whispered, catching breath. "Do it again tomorrow."

"I intend to," he said, teeth grazing the corner of her lower lip in a threat that felt like worship. "Wit and Mercy. I'll win them. For you."

"Win for me," she said, voice rough with the day. She tugged the scarf, pulling him closer until his breath warmed her cheek. "And make a bigger scene."

His brows tipped, that aristocrat's irritation flickering into amusement. "Define bigger."

"Turn heads," she murmured, lips brushing his. "Be daring. Be shocking. Be romantic."

His hand came up, careful and sure, fingers sliding into her hair just under the crown. "Done."

"How?" she pressed, greedy for the plan and the kiss both.

"In Wit," he said, low and intent, "I'll let Hux spring his filigreed traps...and step around each one without raising my voice. When they ask what guides my counsel, I'll say it plain: 'The Princess's good is the realm's good.' And I'll let them hear exactly what I mean."

"And Mercy?"

"I'll choose a supplicant no one else will touch," he said, eyes on hers. "Fix a problem that's ugly and human where people prefer tidy and distant. I'll make them watch what mercy looks like when it costs the giver, and I'll make them want it from their prince."

Her breath went tight with pride. "And the scene?"

He smiled—the dangerous one. "When the marshals dismiss us, I'll walk to the chapel steps and take off my glove. I'll kneel where the whole court can see and kiss your bare palm, not silk. If the Queen looks away, I won't. If the King doesn't blink, I'll thank him for the courtesy. I'll say, 'For the Princess's heart,' and then I'll promise the realm I'll spend mine learning it."

She swallowed. "They'll talk for a year."

"A dynasty," he corrected, mouth curving. "And if anyone calls it scandal, I'll make 'scandal' sound like a virtue."

Her laugh trembled and turned to heat when he kissed her again—slower, deeper, until time remembered to move. He eased back first, forehead tipping to hers, breath steadying by discipline.

"Keep winning for me," she whispered against his lips. "Make it impossible to tidy away. Be the story."

"For you," he said, all the polish burned to intent. "For your heart. For your love."

She tilted her head, daring. "If I run, Prince—"

"I shall only chase you," he finished, delighted. Then, because she'd asked for shock, he turned her hand in his and, right there in the dark, slid her glove back just enough to bare her palm. He kissed the center of it—slow, unhurried—like a vow. She shivered; he looked fiercely satisfied.

"Tomorrow," he said. "South side of the lists. Three minutes after the trumpet. Watch me ruin their composure."

"I'll be ruined first," she confessed, wicked and soft.

He framed her jaw with his hand, thumb stroking the hinge where composure lives. "Good."

Footsteps brushed the far corridor; he shifted automatically, placing himself between her and the door until silence returned. Protective, unhidden. He looked back down at her, and the control softened, the sweetness he only let out for her visible and unashamed.

"Go before I make the gossip truer than it already is," he murmured, pressing one last, careful kiss to the place under her crown. "And Rey—"

She paused in the doorway, looking back over her shoulder, crown bright in the dark. "Yes?"

"Thank you for the scarf," he said, touching it with two fingers. "It feels like a hand at my throat telling me what to do."

"Then obey," she said, smiling that small, dangerous smile that belonged to no one but him. "Keep up, milord."

His grin flashed—wolfish, civilized. "Count on it."

She slipped into the corridor, pulse like a drum, lips warmed and bruised, the whole palace suddenly a theater set built for whatever he was going to do next. Behind her, in the dark room, Ben flexed his sword hand so the hidden favor tugged at his wrist—and began to script a scene no one would be able to tidy away.

Chapter Text

Morning poured through the high windows of the council chamber, washing the long table in a clean, revealing light. Banners hung still; scribes waited with sharpened quills. On the dais, the King and Queen made an architecture of attention. Ben stood at the far end—black, spare, the crimson scarf at his throat a line of heat; the linen-kissed favor tugging hidden against his sword hand like a pulse he could feel.

Rey entered with the councilors and took her place in the gallery above, flanked by Rose, Poe, and Finn. She wore daylight like armor: dark gown, small crown, a face that said she could be moved only by choice.

The Trial of Wit

"Advise us," the King said, voice steady as old stone. "The grain convoys for the western marches are late; the river has run too fat for the ferries and too thin for the barges. Speak."

Hux inclined his precise head, hands folded as if they already held the solution. "We ration. We re-route. We impose fees to discourage hoarding; we punish those who do." His smile had the softness of sharpened glass. "Order restores itself when reminded it exists."

He sat into a hush that expected praise.

Ben didn't move immediately. He looked at the map as if listening to it, then spoke without embroidery. "Send riders today—light, fast—to the upland mills that still turn. Pay double for their flour at the source; cancel the ferry tolls until floodcrest passes. Open the southern granary and let the bakeries see you unlock it. People endure scarcity when they believe you stand in line with them."

A ripple, the kind that breaks against bone-deep sense. Hux's smile thinned. He tried a trap about budgets; Ben stepped around it without raising his voice.

"The coffers are not a dragon's hoard," Ben said mildly. "They are a promise. Spend to keep faith; tax later to keep books."

"Bandits, then," Hux pressed, satin over wire. "Do we court brigands with mercy?"

"Break the men who prey," Ben answered, cool and clean, "and hire the ones who steal because they're hungry. Give them a wage and a badge. Make the river safer by making men less desperate to drown it."

Rey's fingers tightened on the rail. Rose made an undignified, delighted sound. Poe whispered, awed, "He's setting the room on fire without the flame." Finn just breathed, "Good."

The King's eyes had gone thoughtful; the Queen's fan paused one measured beat.

"Final question," Hux said, voice sweetening like bait. "What guides your counsel, Highness? Principle? Sentiment? The whim of a—" a flick to the gallery "—princess?"

Ben looked up and found Rey without apology. "Yes," he said, and let it ring. "Principle, sentiment, and the Princess. The realm is not a ledger. It is people. Her good is their good; their safety is hers. If I am to counsel a crown, I will do it by loving what it rests upon."

Silence learned to listen. Somewhere in the back a bishop exhaled like a man who'd remembered his vows.

The King lifted two fingers. "Recorded." He let the room breathe, then: "The Trial of Wit goes to Prince Ben Solo."

Ben inclined his head to the thrones because he must, then to Rey because he chose to. The scarf flared when he turned; the court watched because it couldn't help itself.

The Trial of Mercy

By afternoon, the chapel courtyard was crowded—stone warmed, roses throwing their clean ache into the air. Supplicants stood in a line drawn by chalk and hope. Traditionally, suitors picked a small, tidy grievance: a fence line, a wedding contract, a cow's disputed calf.

Ben stepped to the chalk and pointed past them all—to a woman with a child on her hip and tired in her bones, standing apart because she knew her trouble was ugly. "You," he said gently. "Speak."

She swallowed. "My husband died on the southern road. The toll-warden kept his mule and the grain he carried—said he owed arrears that weren't his. I knocked until my hands bled. No one opened."

Ben didn't ask for papers. He looked at the child and then at the crowd. "Bring the warden," he said.

A murmur; a marshal ran. Hux's mouth curved, already composing the lecture about precedent.

The warden arrived sweating, his ledgers clutched like scripture. Ben didn't shame him; he separated him, listened, and turned to the line so everyone could hear.

"We can run a road like a vein or like a drain." He set the ledger on the chapel step. "The toll will be forgiven. The mule and grain will be returned. And we will inscribe a rule today: when a family loses its bearer, the realm bears them for a season. The living are not tax."

He took off his glove.

Then he crossed to the woman and, very publicly, set a coin from his own purse on the open ledger—not as charity, but as an example of how to collect differently. He knelt—yes, there on the chapel steps where no one knelt unless a life was changing—and kissed the child's hair like a blessing he didn't presume to give.

The courtyard made a sound that wasn't courtly at all.

Rey's vision blurred and steadied with the movement of her breath. The Queen's fan lowered and did not rise. Even the King's attention softened, edges still iron, center something else.

"The Trial of Mercy," the Master proclaimed, voice rougher than morning, "to Prince Ben Solo."

Ben stood and faced the sea of watching. "For the Princess's heart," he said, and every gossip in the realm leaned forward because here was the scene he'd promised.

He turned to the rail where Rey waited, already ungloving her right hand. The hush went tremulous. He climbed the chapel steps—no haste, no apology—and stopped before her. Without blinking at the thrones, he took her bare palm in both of his and lifted it to his mouth. He kissed the center of it—slow, exact, nothing hidden—and it felt like kneeling without the stone.

Rey's breath broke. The crowd's restraint did, too.

Ben didn't let go. He looked up at her, all control burned to a steady, fearless heat.

"I love you," he said—plain, unadorned, impossible to tidy. "Before this court. Before your father and mother. Before any law. I set my heart in your keeping and I will spend my life learning how to deserve yours."

The word moved through the courtyard like weather: love. Not a title in sight.

Rey answered the only way that matched it. She bent—crown bright, eyes brighter—and pressed her mouth to his brow, blessing and claim, yes and always.

When she straightened, she didn't look at the murmuring tiers or the careful thrones. She looked only at him.

"And if I run—"

He laughed, ruined and perfect. "I shall only chase you."

"Keep up, milord," she whispered, and the court—stunned, scandalized, undone—finally remembered how to breathe around a truth that didn't ask permission to be said aloud.

Above them, bells began to ring for no reason anyone could argue into rules.

The great court gathered like weather—banners stilled, voices thinned, a hush that made footsteps sound like choices. Rey entered from the eastern arch with the Queen's ladies drifting behind her like well-trained clouds. Ben came from the opposite side with the marshals and the Master-at-Arms, black and spare, her crimson scarf still at his throat, the favor tight against his sword hand like a second pulse.

They met at the foot of the dais, between the thrones and the watching realm.

Ben stopped first.

He offered his hand—not as possession, but as an invitation that knew it could be refused. Rey placed her bare palm in his. The court inhaled.

Then he let go, unbuckled his sword, and lowered to one knee.

He laid the blade across his upturned palms, hilt toward her, point toward himself—every inch of it lesson and vow.

"Princess Rey of House Palpatine," he said, voice steady enough to carry, soft enough to belong only to her, "you have my counsel, my name, and any skill the gods or the drills gave me. Take, now, the piece of me I have never given to anyone."

He inclined the sword, offering—not the steel, but the service.

"I vow," he went on, "to stand where danger must pass to reach you. To be quiet when you speak, loud when you are silenced, honest when the room turns to performance. I vow to count our people as you do, and to make myself useful to their bread, not just their songs. I vow to remember that 'order' without mercy is only tidiness, and I would rather be worthy of your heart than admired by your court."

A breath rippled the chamber.

"I vow," he finished, eyes upturned to hers, "to love you first, last, and always—to protect you until my final breath, and to spend all the breaths before it learning how to deserve you."

He set the sword across his palms once more. "For the Princess's heart," he said, because he had promised a scene no one could tidy away, "and for the realm that rests upon it."

No one moved. Even the Queen's fan forgot its duty.

Rey stepped closer, crown catching light. She set her fingers to the scarf at his throat and tightened the knot—not because it was loose, but because it was hers.

"Ben Solo, son of Han and Leia, my champion"

He rose. The sword remained across his hands, an offered line the court would whisper about for years.

Rey took the blade by its flat—fearless—and kissed the steel where her ribbon lay. Then she set her palm over his heart, over the silver star, over everything that beat there for her, and answered with a vow of her own.

"I accept," she said simply. "Not because you won a list, or a debate, or a crowd—but because you have made yourself a home for my heart. I will walk with you where danger passes, I will be your measure when the room turns to smoke, and I will spend my days making certain the love we swear today is useful to those who never asked for our crowns." Her mouth tilted—daring, tender. "And if I run, Ben—"

His smile broke, ruined and radiant. "I shall only chase you."

"Keep up, milord," she whispered, and slid a small ring—plain silver, a fine line of red enamel hidden inside the band—onto his finger. He answered by bowing his head into her palm and kissing the center of it in full view of thrones and banners and breathless rumor.

The King stood without rising. "So witnessed," he said, old iron warmed. The Queen's fan didn't move at all; this was how she blessed.

Around them, sound returned in waves—cheers breaking like surf, a few scandalized gasps that would age into legend. Hux's mouth became a tidier line than lines were meant to be. Rose cried and pretended it was the roses. Poe whooped and called it a cough. Finn looked like good weather promised after a hard winter.

Ben turned his sword and knelt once more—not to the throne, not to the room, but to Rey alone—then rose into the life they had just chosen together. He held out his hand again. She took it.

They faced the court side by side, vows ringing in the air like struck silver, and for a heartbeat the realm felt less like a weight and more like a promise they were both strong enough to keep.

The King rose without rising, the way only he could—attention gathering to him as if the air owed him that courtesy.

"By our word," he said, voice clean and iron, "and by the witness of this court, the marriage of our daughter, Princess Rey of House Palpatine, to Prince Ben Solo shall be celebrated one week hence."

Sound broke like surf—cheers, a few scandalized little deaths behind fans, the bright crackle of rumor igniting for the run of its life. Bells near the chapel began to argue about enthusiasm and then agreed to ring.

Rey felt the world tilt and set, the way a ship takes the right wind.

She looked up at Ben—at the scarf she'd knotted, the favor hidden against his wrist, the line of him that had learned how to be both blade and shelter—and let the smile happen to her.

"All this," she murmured, just for him amid the roar, "for one summer six years ago."

His mouth softened, the aristocrat's edge easing into something older. "I would spend six winters for one summer," he returned, amused and wrecked and entirely sure. "And every year after learning to be worthy of it."

The Queen's fan stilled—permission, blessing, surrender, who could say. Rose's hand flew to her mouth and didn't quite hide the grin. Hux stood very straight and very still, the neatness of him making a whiter kind of noise than applause.

Ben leaned the fraction that belonged to them and nobody else. "Seven days," he said, voice pitched under the bells. "I'll make each one a scene they can't tidy away."

"Do," Rey dared, chin tilting, crown bright. "Be shocking. Be romantic. Turn heads until they're dizzy."

He laughed, low and delighted. "Starting now." Then, because he was exactly the kind of man she'd chosen, he bowed to the thrones because he must and to her because he wanted to—and when he straightened, he offered his hand the way he always had: an invitation that knew it could be refused.

She took it.

The court parted before them like ribbons cut clean. As they mounted the dais steps together, Rey felt the old corridor under her feet—the smell of apples and stone, two children with a dare between them—and overlaid it with this: banners, bells, a blade across palms, a vow spoken where the whole world had to hear it to believe it.

At the top, beneath the tapestry of victories that had learned to look like virtues, Ben's fingers gave her palm one precise, reassuring press. Protective, unhidden. He angled himself half a breath in front of her—habit—before remembering she preferred to walk even.

She nudged his shoulder with her own. "If I run—"

He didn't make her finish. "I shall only chase you."

"Keep up, milord," she said, and the bells took it and made it sound like a promise the realm could learn to count by.

For a heartbeat the court blurred. There was only the boy who had kissed her in a cold corridor. One week, she thought, and smiled like trouble. One week to write a chapter no one could tidy away.

Chapter Text

The atelier smelled like steam and starch and nerve. Sun spilled across bolts of silk; chalk dust made constellations on the dark floorboards. Three seamstresses orbited Rey with pins in their mouths and measuring tapes around their necks, murmuring the holy litany of "don't breathe, don't move, breathe now."

The gown was a storm of light: ivory silk cut close through the bodice, then falling in a clean, cathedral sweep. Along the seams, a thread you'd miss unless you knew—red, finer than a whisper—ran like a pulse. At the waist, onyx beadwork traced a small, honest constellation. The veil, currently sulking on a dress form, was sheer as a dare, edged in the faintest black lace so the whole thing didn't drown in innocence. A daisy, stitched so faint it was almost superstition, hid on the inside hem.

"Hold." Mira slid another pin, then stepped back, pleased. "She wears the dress; it does not wear her."

Rose lounged on the window seat with a pincushion cuffed to her wrist like jewelry, one leg tucked under her, the other bouncing in time with her gossip. "Turn," she ordered, grinning. "Slow, so I may absorb and be jealous."

Rey obeyed, the skirt sighing around her. "It's heavy," she said, breathless and happy. "But the good kind. Like a promise."

"Speaking of weight," Rose said, eyes dancing, "how's your heart, Princess? Still floating? Or has Ben's grand public devotion dragged it safely to the ground?"

Rey tried to scowl; failed, glowing instead. "It alternates. He speaks and I need a chair. Then he looks at me and suddenly I'm on my knees confessing sins." She lifted a hand as Mira pinned the sleeve cap. "He keeps making scenes."

"Saints preserve us," Rose sighed, delighted. "The chapel steps—Rey, the palm kiss. The vow. I had to pretend the roses made me cry."

"They did," Rey said. "He did." She swallowed, the pin at her shoulder pausing. "I asked for bigger and he delivered. He always—" She stopped, helpless. "He always does."

Mira made a soft approving noise around her pins, which might also have meant "don't wriggle."

Rose flicked a bit of chalk off the train. "And in private?"

"Rose," Rey hissed, cheeks pinking.

"My job is quality assurance." Rose widened innocent eyes. "Is he still... very sure of himself?"

"Yes," Rey said, eyes going someplace dawn-colored. She bit her lip, then gave up and smiled so hard Mira had to re-pin the sleeve.

"Utterly doomed," Rose diagnosed, pleased. "Good."

Rey's gaze found the veil, then the daisy hidden in the hem. "I keep thinking about six summers ago. How small we were. How foolish. And how... exact it felt anyway." She laughed softly. "All this for one summer. I gave my heart to him that summer and it left with him" Rey looked up at Rose.

Rose squeaked. "I adore you."

A page knocked and slid a tray through the door with the caution of a boy who had been stabbed by pins before: tea, sugared almonds, and a single daisy in a narrow glass. Rey tried not to look like a girl; failed again.

Rose plucked the flower, examined it like evidence, and tucked it into the pincushion cuff with wicked ceremony. "He sends the court poems with logistics and you one flower at a time. The man understands mixed media."

Rey's throat tightened. "I asked him to keep turning heads," she confessed. "Be daring. Be shocking. Be romantic."

"And he said, 'done'?" Rose guessed.

"He said, 'watch me.'" Rey breathed, steadied. "I'm not afraid," she added, surprised to hear how true it was. "Of Hux, of the court, of the weight. I'm—" She searched for it. "I'm brave. With him. Because of him. For him."

Rose's smile gentled. "That's the correct answer."

Mira stepped in with the veil. "Close your eyes."

Rey did. The world went pale when the lace settled—cool, almost weightless, the faint black edging like a line drawn around light. She opened her eyes to find herself reflected twice—once in the mirror, once in Rose's face gone soft.

"Oh," Rose said, all the teasing knocked out of her for a heartbeat. "Rey."

Rey looked at herself—the girl who had refused to be tallied, the woman who'd demanded three trials and made the rules, the bride with a red thread hidden in seams—and smiled like trouble and blessing at once.

"Pins," Mira warned, and slid the last one into place. "Now breathe."

Rey did. The gown shifted with her—promise, armor, yes. "He'll cry," she blurted, horrified and charmed by the idea. "He won't mean to. He'll pretend it's dust."

"He'll be very irritated at his eyes for crossing him," Rose said solemnly. "Then he'll leash it and kiss your palm again."

Rey reached for Rose's hand. They stood there a moment—princess and friend, bride and saboteur—while the seamstresses tidied their saints' tools and the daisy shone immodestly on Rose's wrist. Outside, bells practiced their scales as if getting ready to behave.

"Tea," Mira decreed, sweeping the pins into a tray. "Then I remove you from my masterpiece before you attempt cartwheels."

"Unfair," Rose said. "She would look glorious mid-air."

Rey lifted the hem carefully and stepped down from the fitting block, the veil whispering at her shoulders. "He'll love it," she said, soft as a secret she wanted to be true. "He loves me."

Rose bumped her shoulder. "And you love him."

Ben had ridden out at dawn with the sky still silver and the guards yawning at their posts. He'd kissed Rey's palm, said nothing more dangerous than "back before the lamps are lit," and was gone in a curl of breath and hooves. No escort. No fuss. Just that look that promised he was fetching a secret the world would learn about at exactly the right moment.

All day the keep listened for him.

By afternoon the light went green at the edges—storm weather. By evening the rain came hard and unashamed, shouldering against shutters, sluicing down the stone like a pen trying to erase the castle. Thunder rolled over the roofs; lightning put bright knives through the cloud and put them away again.

Rey sat among half-fastened veils and a scatter of pearls the maids had abandoned when the first crack of the storm made them cross themselves. The daisy from the fitting rested in her palm. She turned it by the stem until her fingers went damp.

He should have been back before the lamps were lit.

A second set of candles guttered. She stood, crossed to the window, and hated the way fear arrived already knowing where to sit in her chest. "Keep up," she whispered into the glass, as if distance could be bullied into sense.

The door burst without ceremony.

Rose, rain in her hair, cheeks colorless, didn't bother with courtesy. She shut the door hard enough to make the pearls jump and came straight to Rey with a look that made the room smaller.

"Where is he?" Rey asked, voice steady because she made it be.

"They don't know," Rose said, breath short. "No one saw him come back through the south gate. The guards at Blackwater never clocked him. The storm's washed the tracks and—" She stopped herself. Started again. "Ben is missing."

The thunder answered like a verdict.

Rey stood very still, the daisy stem creaking between her fingers, the storm pressing its ear against the windows as if the weather itself wanted to hear what she would do next.

The war room was a map of the realm and the weather: banners dripping, shutters rattling, candleflames bowing to drafts. Lightning blew the windows open from the inside—white knives that cut across steel helms and wet cloaks and the King's profile carved out of iron.

Rey didn't wait to be announced. She shoved the door so hard it rebounded, skirts dark with rain, veil half-pinned, crown askew like a dare.

"Where is he?" Her voice carried like a horn over water. "Where is Ben?"

Every head turned. A courier swallowed. An old general studied his boots. The King lifted his gaze to her, and in that gaze the keep remembered who had built it.

"I've men on every road to Blackwater," he said, not unkindly. "Riders on the high trail, boats on the river, lanterns along the marsh. We're searching."

Lightning flared; thunder answered like a slammed gate. In the white flash she saw the tokens on the map—little carved horses marching toward rain—and the place where the trail slipped under a smear of storm.

At the far edge of the table stood Hux, immaculate in a room that smelled of wet wool and fear. He didn't smile. Not with his mouth. Something tidy in his eyes did.

Rey saw it and burned.

"What did you do?" She came around the table so fast two captains flinched. "What—did—you—do."

Hux's lashes lowered in a performance of patience. "Your Highness, I don't—"

"Don't lie to me." Her hands flattened on the map so hard a token toppled. "You threatened him in the stables. You said men vanish. That roads grow inaccurate. That straps fail."

"Strong words," Hux said softly, "which I regret if they made an impression." He looked to the King, the picture of injured competence. "Majesty, I have no authority over the weather, nor over the choices of princes who ride out at dawn without escorts. I am merely... concerned."

"Concerned," Rey spat, the word tasting like iron. "You're pleased."

"Rey," the King warned, not loud, very sharp.

She didn't look away from Hux. The storm lit her face again—fear bright as fever, fury brighter. "If he's hurt—if he's gone—"

"Then your father's riders will find him," Hux said, calm as a ledger. "And if not, we will... adjust."

Something feral showed through her composure. "You don't get to say 'we' about my life."

He dipped his head. "Of course."

"Out," the King said to the room at large. "Half of you back to the stables. The other half to the Blackwater turn. Send word every quarter hour. Go."

Boots scraped; cloaks swung; the door breathed men in and out like a lung. Only Hux lingered, perfect and dry.

"Lord Hux," the King added, without moving his eyes from the map, "if I learn you engineered this weather, I will have you hanged for witchcraft and poor taste."

A flicker—gone. Hux bowed. "Majesty." He glanced at Rey as if she were a column to be measured. "Highness." Then he was gone, leaving the room somehow colder for the space he had vacated.

Silence bent under the storm.

Rey steadied her hands on the table's edge until the tremor became intent. "I'm going."

"You are not," the King said, in the tone that has kept borders where they're drawn. "You'll be under this roof when he rides back through the gate, which he will."

Lightning strobed. In the white she saw Ben's scarf at his throat; in the dark, the empty road.

"He said he'd be back before the lamps were lit," she murmured, more to herself than to anyone. "He keeps his word."

The King heard the prayer in it and, for once, did not call it weakness. "So do I," he said. "I've sent everything that moves."

Rey lifted her chin. The fear didn't leave her face; it set like metal. "Then send me a horse to the east loggia at dawn," she said, almost mild. "For when your everything isn't enough."

The King's mouth tightened; the father in him nearly answered; the sovereign did: "Dawn," he said. "If no word."

She nodded once—compact, oath—and turned for the door. At the threshold she paused, palm flat on old wood, and spoke to a man the storm couldn't carry her words to.

"If you run," she whispered into the rain, "I shall only chase you."

Lightning lit the room like a vow. Then the dark took it, and the search went on.

Chapter Text

The rain had settled in to a steady, soaking pour that turned the cobbles slick and carved small rivers off the eaves. Lanterns along the east loggia hissed where drops found flame; beyond the arch, the road to Blackwater ran away into a gray that swallowed sound.

Rey stood at the last pillar before open air, veil gone, hair dark and heavy against her neck. The crimson scarf she'd tied at Ben's throat lived like heat in her mind; out here there was only cold and the word he'd left her with: back before the lamps are lit.

The lamps were lit. Then guttered. Then lit again.

She didn't move.

Rain ran from her lashes until it wasn't clear what was water and what was grief. She lifted her chin into it, as if she could meet the storm at eye level and bargain. The ribbon mark at her wrist had faded days ago; it felt fierce now anyway, a memory she wore like skin.

Footsteps on wet stone. "Rey."

Rose came armed with three things: a cloak, a towel, and the stubbornness that had bullied the master of candles and frightened a duke. She swung the cloak up and around Rey's shoulders on reflex; it darkened immediately, water biting through in a heartbeat.

"You'll freeze," Rose said, voice low, practical, furious with worry. "Come inside. Just for an hour. For tea. For anything that isn't pneumonia."

"No." Rey's teeth had started a small, treacherous chatter; she steadied them with will. "He said before the lamps were lit."

"They were," Rose said, exasperation fraying into love. "Twice. And lightning lit them again. The storm doesn't care about our appointments."

"I do." Rey's gaze never left the road. "If he rides in and I'm not here—"

"He will endure it," Rose snapped, too sharp because fear makes you cruel. Softer, immediately: "He will endure it because he loves you. Please. Come warm up. I'll send you word the second any hoof dares the outer gate."

"No," Rey repeated, because the word was a stake she could hammer into the ground. "I told him I'd watch him ruin their composure. I told him I'd watch." She swallowed. "And I asked him to keep up."

Thunder shouldered over the roofs. Somewhere along the curtain wall a horn sounded once—an inquiry, not an answer. A courier pelted by, boots throwing water, and slid to a halt long enough to gasp, "No sign at the marsh turn—riders still out—" before the rain took him again. The word missing threaded itself tighter around the bones of the evening.

Rose pressed the towel into Rey's hands, as if the argument could be won one small concession at a time. "Wipe your face at least," she said, which was foolish because the sky would only rewrite it. Rey obeyed because it made Rose breathe easier for a breath.

"You remember," Rey said suddenly, the laugh that came with it all wrong, "when we were twelve and I swore I could stare the sea into retreat?"

"You nearly drowned proving the theory," Rose said, fierce and fond.

"I didn't," Rey said. "It changed its mind."

"Be the sea now," Rose insisted. "Retreat indoors."

Rey shook her head. Water flung from her hair; the lantern nearest them sputtered and steadied. "If he runs," she said, voice wrecked and almost smiling for the habit of it, "I shall only chase him."

"Rey you cannot run a fever," Rose retorted, because humor is a weapon, too. "Rey, please."

Rey's hand found Rose's and squeezed, brief and tight. "Go in. Tell my father I'm here. Tell him dawn."

"Dawn," Rose echoed, hating it, accepting it. She hesitated, then tugged the cloak's edge higher, useless against this kind of wet, and set her palm to Rey's cheek the way you do for someone burning up or freezing. "If he rides past me, I'll tackle his horse."

"Do," Rey said, and the almost-smile broke into a tremor she couldn't control. She turned her face back to the road before Rose could see it all.

Rose went, because friendship is sometimes obedience. She got twenty paces and turned back anyway, unable to leave the sight of Rey standing as if the storm had asked her to model resolve. "Shout," she ordered. "At the first shadow. At the first hoof. At anything."

"I will."

Alone again, Rey let the tears go because the rain was generous and would take the credit. She counted the breaths between lightning and thunder and pretended the math could deliver a man from a road. She whispered the ridiculous practicalities of prayer—step carefully, watch the low places, don't trust the rope bridges—until the words became a hum her bones could sit inside.

Time, which is usually loud, went quiet in the rain. Once, a shape moved at the far bend and her heart sprinted like a hound; it resolved into two grooms wrestling a tarp and her heart stumbled back, chastened. Once, a lantern bobbed where no lantern should—only a page with orders to light the eastern sconces again. The road kept its secrets.

She set her palm against the cold stone of the pillar and felt for a heartbeat that wasn't hers. "Keep up," she whispered into the water, into the wind, into whatever listens when you address the world like it's a person. "Ben, keep up."

The hours did the thing hours do in storms—stretched, doubled back, forgot their names. At some point her shoulders stopped shivering because they were too tired; at some point her lips went numb and she left them that way because moving them would shake something loose inside her she wasn't sure she could gather again.

A bell somewhere tried midnight and gave up. The rain did not. Rey stayed. The road stayed empty. And when the wind came down the valley like a messenger who had been sent without words, she lifted her chin into it and thought, wildly and exactly:

If you run, I shall only chase you.

She had never meant it more.

The rain had become a wall. It hammered the arches, swallowed the road, made even the lanterns look like they were underwater.

"Enough." The Queen's voice cut through it—velvet pulled tight over steel. She came onto the loggia with two ladies and a footman trailing a cloak as if it could bully the weather. Her hair was pinned up but slightly messy. Her eyes took in Rey—soaked, shivering, stubborn—and did not blink. "Inside. Now."

"Mother—"

"Now."

Rey's mouth trembled. She looked once more at the empty road, then turned, muscles loud with exhaustion, to obey.

The horns blew.

Not the cautious single note of inquiry—the full-throated call that puts breath back into men on walls. It leapt along the battlements and crashed through Rey like a door opening.

She whirled.

Out of the trees at the bend—black on black, then shape on storm—Ben came. Not the civilized prince of the lists but the man underneath: soaked to the bone, horse lathered, the crimson scarf darker with rain, blood running from a cut at his hairline to salt his mouth. His gaze, even at a distance, found the light on the loggia like a homing mark.

Rey didn't think. She ran.

Cloak shrugged off, skirt in her fists, bare feet slapping stone, she flew down the steps and into the rain. Someone shouted; boots scrambled; the Queen said her name sharply.

Ben swung down before the gate had fully opened, staggered once, caught himself. The ribbon at his hilt—hers—was mud-streaked and stubborn. His hands—the one with her favor tied inside the leather—came up as if to warn her about the blood.

She went through his warning like the storm itself.

She caught his face in both hands, rain-slick and copper-warm, and kissed him.

Not the careful brush allowed to princes and audiences. A kiss that spent every hour she'd waited, every prayer she'd bullied into the dark, every beat the storm had stolen and made it pay interest. She tasted rain and iron and the impossible relief of a heartbeat that wasn't hers. He made a sound she had never heard from him—wrecked, grateful, unbelieving—and bent into her as if the only dry thing in the world was the space between their mouths.

Her wet hands just cupping his cheek, praying it’s real. Tears streaming down her face as she trembles kissing him. His taste. His warmth. She took every little moment in.

She broke, sobbing once into him, the sound swallowed by the downpour. "You're late," she gasped against his lips, accusation and gratitude tangled.

"I know." He laughed, ruined, breath hitching. "Forgive me."

She kissed him again for yes, for don't do that to me again, for I would wait in a hundred storms and still run like this when you came. He steadied with his hands at her waist, careful of every place he might be hurting, and then not careful at all because she pressed closer and he caved, kissing her back like a man who had crossed a map to deserve it.

When she finally tore her mouth from his, tears were everywhere—hot where they could be, cold where the rain claimed them. She pressed her forehead to his, thumbs smearing blood and water from his cheekbones, laughing and crying at once because there was no category for this kind of mercy.

"I told you to keep up," she whispered, shivering with relief and fury and love.

"I chased," he said, eyes smiling even as the cut bled, "and I found you."

Behind them, the gatehouse shouted orders; men ran; a groom caught the horse's reins; Rose's sobbing laugh hit the air like sunlight under water. The Queen stood very still on the loggia, one hand over her mouth, composure choosing—for once—not to win. The King didn't move and somehow that was permission.

Ben swayed; Rey tightened her grip, fierce as any barracks sergeant. "Healers," she called without looking away from him. "Now."

He tried for his grin—the charming, wolfish one—and got half of it. "I brought you something," he said, absurd, earnest.

"You'll bring me yourself," she said, and kissed him once more—slow now, a promise banked for later—before she let duty put hands on him too.

"If you run," he murmured, because even soaked and bleeding he couldn't help it.

She laughed through fresh tears, guiding him toward the steps with her shoulder under his. "I shall only chase you." He pressed his forehead to hers. His cold shaky hands stroked her wet hair. Seeing her so fragile, for him. Almost broke his heart. He could feel her coldness shivering against his metal armour. His arms wrapped around her tightly as he held like he’d never held before.

They didn't give him time to be a patient.

Healers pressed linen to his brow and bound his ribs as he walked; grooms took the reins of the blown horse; the Master-at-Arms cleared a corridor with his voice alone. The great doors to the court boomed and the storm came in on Ben's cloak like a guest that refused to wipe its feet.

He refused the offered chair.

"I'll speak," he said, steady, and the King inclined his head once. The Queen's fan was shut as a verdict. Rey stood a half-step at his side, one hand fisted white in the soaked edge of his scarf, as if she could keep him upright by will. Blood and rain had made a mess of his hair; a red wash tracked the line of his temple and vanished into the stubble at his jaw.

"What happened," the King said—iron, not unkind.

"An ambush at Blackwater ford," Ben answered, voice low and precise. "I left at dawn on the east road. I intended to cross by midmorning and be back before the lamps." His mouth tipped—the ghost of a smile for the promise broken—then cooled. "At the ford, the south rope was cut. Caltrops scattered under the water where the river thins—meant to lame a horse stepping easy. Crossbowmen in the alder stand. Five men on the near bank. One captain."

He unsheathed his hand from the bandage and set three objects on the map table: a black-feathered bolt, its string-wax still beading rain; a caltrop too regular to be village iron; and a narrow ivory tally-rod stamped with the crown and a smaller mark—neat, bureaucratic, ugly in its tidiness.

Murmurs rolled like a second storm. The Queen's eyes narrowed a fraction. Hux, at the edge of the circle, stood immaculate and still; if his mouth had twitched, it did not admit it.

"Bandits," someone offered, eager to give the fear a small name.

"Bandits don't carry tally-rods," Ben said, soft. "And they don't wax their strings against a storm they counted on."

He didn't look at Hux when he said it. He didn't have to.

"How did you come away?" the Master-at-Arms asked, because men like to hear about work done cleanly.

Ben's gaze flicked once to Rey—as if asking permission to go on living in front of her—and then returned to the room. "I went into the water to make them choose between shooting and losing sight. Two bolts—" he touched the bandage at his ribs as if it were an item on a list, not pain "—caught cloth, not lung. I broke the near man's leg at the knee with the flat. The captain tried a rush. He was skilled." Ben's mouth tightened; the aristocratic irritation that lived under his control flashed and was leashed. "He learned a different skill. The two at the alder stand reloaded slower than they meant to. They died before they could correct the error."

"So," the King said, dry as old steel, "you killed them."

"All but one," Ben said. "He ran into the willows. I followed to the river bend. He slipped." A beat. "I didn't help him up." No apology, no ornament.

"And then?" the Queen prompted, voice like a blade under velvet.

"I cut the caltrops out with my knife and led the horse across the shallows. The storm took the track. I borrowed a mount from a charcoal-burner's yard nine miles east and left him mine to walk. I kept moving when the river tried to climb into the road. A tree came down at the marsh turn; I went through the marsh. The lanterns at the outer gate went out and came back; I kept coming." The last three words were for Rey; he didn't pretend otherwise.

Silence learned how to listen again. Ben reached into his soaked cloak as if remembering he had hands, then set a small, battered oaken box on the table, no bigger than a palm, its filigree clogged with mud, its hinge dented.

"For her," he said simply. "Why I went."

Rey's breath broke. She didn't touch the box yet. She didn't need to prove anything to know the weight of the thing inside.

"Who ordered it," the King asked—not the box; the ambush—voice cold as the rain at the eaves.

Ben did not look to the edge of the circle where neatness watched him. "I don't know," he said. "They wore no colors. No livery. No rings. Discipline enough to wait for me alone; not enough to keep their captain from showing pride in his work." He touched the tally-rod with one finger. "This was in his pouch. A warden's stick for the east road tolls. It shouldn't leave the booth."

Eyes slid to Hux with the ugly relief of a direction to look. Hux's smile belonged to a man soothing a nervous horse.

"Tally-rods are stolen," he said mildly. "Or mislaid. Or counterfeited by men who find legitimacy improves their income. It proves nothing except that roads are untidy in storms."

"Roads," Rey said, voice quiet and lethal, "and men."

Hux inclined his head to her as if she'd complimented the weather. "Highness."

The King's hand flattened on the table; tokens jumped. "Enough," he said. "We will learn who planned this with patience and a rope. For tonight, we are done speaking of it."

"Majesty," the Master-at-Arms began, already eager for orders and permission.

"Tomorrow," the King cut. "When the storm remembers who owns these stones." He looked at Ben, and for a breath the sovereign receded and the father of a once-young soldier stood where the crown had been. "You will go to the healers."

"Yes, Sire," Ben said, and meant it only because Rey's fingers had found his wrist and squeezed once—a command he intended to obey.

He bent then—not to the thrones, not to the court, to Rey—and touched his mouth to her wet knuckles, a quiet thing after a loud day. The room murmured; it had learned to expect scenes and had been given one in the rain. This one was smaller and somehow harder to survive.

"Forgive me," he said again, just for her.

"For being late?" Rey's smile shook and held. "You kept up."

He turned to go and found Hux in his way by accident or design. They stopped within the civility of a pace. Ben's eyes cooled exactly one degree.

"Unfortunate," Hux said, bland concern poured into a mold. "The roads. We must make them safer."

"We will," Ben said. "For everyone."

He stepped past before Hux could choose the next polished cruelty. The Master-at-Arms took his arm; Rey took his other, ignoring the linen and the blood; between them they made a corridor out of bodies and storm and rumor and carried him from the room like a vow that refused to be tidied into anything smaller than what it was.

Chapter Text

The healers left them to the quiet crackle of the fire and the soft hiss of rain against the shutters. Someone had set a kettle near the coals; steam pillared up, faintly scented with clove. Ben lay propped on pillows, shirt open to clean bandages that ran white over rib and shoulder. The cut at his temple had been stitched with neat, infuriating efficiency.

Rey sat sideways in the chair drawn close to the bed, one knee tucked up under her, Ben's scarf—hers—draped over her lap to finish drying. She had changed into a simple gown; her hair was loose and clean, heavy down her back. The daisy from the fitting, battered by the day, stood in a small cup on the mantle as if it, too, had survived something.

He watched her watch him.

"You should sleep," he said, voice roughened by the storm he'd swallowed.

"I tried," she said, honest. "My bones refused."

He shifted carefully, grimaced, then found his mouth again. "I'm here."

"I know." She looked at the fire, at the steady orange that did not care how loud the rain was. "There was a hour"—her breath caught; she made it behave—"when I thought I would never hear you say that to me again."

He was very still. "Rey."

She set her knuckles lightly to her mouth, as if to keep the words from scattering, and then let them go anyway. "I stood in the rain until I couldn't tell what was fear and what was weather. I kept thinking about our stupid refrain, and I hated it for a minute—I hated it because I thought you wouldn't chase me again, that I'd run and there would be no one on the road behind me." A helpless laugh slipped out. "I tried to bargain with the storm. It doesn't bargain."

He reached for her hand. He always asked, even for small things; she always gave. He took her fingers and set them against his cheek, careful of the stitches, eyes closing like the touch corrected something inside him. "I will always chase you," he said simply. "Even when it costs me. Especially then. I'm sorry I was late. I'm even more sorry for making you live inside that hour."

She leaned forward and pressed her forehead to his, breath mingling, the two of them a small country where weather didn't get to rule. "Don't make me live there again," she whispered. "Promise me something sensible. Give me a plan in place of an oath."

"Done." He opened his eyes. The protective thing wasn't hidden in them at all now. "No more riding out alone. Escorts, even when it offends my pride. A route logged with your father's captain. A signal every mile marker when the weather turns. And if the storm looks like this again, I stay under a roof and hate it, and you can gloat later."

She tried for stern; failed into relief. "Good."

He exhaled, then remembered. "Your gift."

On the table beside the bed sat the small oaken box he'd set down in the war room, now wiped clean of mud. He reached awkwardly for it with his unbandaged hand; she took it before he could pull anything he shouldn't and brought it into the circle of firelight.

"It was in a smith's keeping two valleys east," he said, watching her face instead of the box. "An old promise I asked him to finish the night we vowed in the court. I meant to fetch it before the lamps." His mouth tipped. "I'm late."

She opened the lid. Inside, on worn velvet, lay a plain silver band, twin to the one she'd slid onto his finger—a fine line of red enamel hidden inside the curve, a daisy engraved so delicately on the inner edge you'd only find it if you looked for it. Along the outside, at the thinnest part, the smallest etched phrase: keep up.

Her breath left her. "Ben."

"It matches mine," he said, as if she couldn't see. "The red thread where no one can tidy it. The daisy for what you chose in front of everyone. And the words because—" He stopped, then let the honesty stand. "Because I would rather you drag me through a life I have to keep up with than ever lose sight of you."

She slid the ring onto her finger. It fit like something that had been waiting. She turned her hand so firelight ran along silver and secret red and discovered that the fear had somewhere gentler to sit now.

"Thank you," she said, and the two words weighed more than talk.

He lifted her hand and kissed the center of her palm—slow, exact. "For your heart," he murmured, because he couldn't help it. "For your love."

Tears climbed her eyes again, traitors and friends both. She didn't hide them. "I thought I had run out of those," she admitted, laughing at herself.

"Let me have them." He touched the corner of her eye with a knuckle, reverent, amused at his own audacity. "I intend to collect."

She breathed, steadier, and then, because she knew the way back to their lightness, tipped her chin. "If I run—"

He smiled, wrecked and sure. "I shall only chase you."

"Keep up, milord." She leaned in and kissed him—not careful, not heedless; a kiss negotiated around bandages and stitches and promises—soft heat, gratitude with weight, the taste of clove from the kettle and rain from his skin. He made a sound she could have lived a year on and relaxed under her hands as if the bed had finally forgiven him his pride. Her still shaky hands cupped his face. Tears made their way down her face, between their lips.

“I fear there is no worse fate than a life without your presence” Rey whispered against his lips.

“You shall never know such a fate” he returned, his lips claiming hers once more, hungrily. He pulled her from the chair and over him. Her dress poofed as she leaned over him. Her lips tasting his. His lips claiming and owning hers like a secret.

They stay like that a awhile, switching between kissing and her on the chair's edge, his fingers laced through hers, the fire persuading damp clothes into warmth and the storm consenting, at last, to become only weather. When his eyes began to drift, she shifted to the edge of the mattress and tucked herself against his uninjured side, careful as a cat, blanket pulled up over both of them.

"You'll sleep?" he asked, already half under.

"When you do," she said. "I'm on watch."

He huffed a little laugh. "Bossy."

"Now rest."

He did. She lay there and counted his breaths the way she had counted the seconds between lightning and thunder, and when her own eyes slid closed it was only because there was nothing left to guard that the night could steal. The ring warmed against her skin, the red thread secret as a pulse, and the last thing she thought before sleep took them both was not a prayer or a vow but the ordinary, solid fact of it:

He kept up.

Rey woke with her cheek on warm skin, the steady thrum beneath it telling her more than any horn or herald could. Ben's arm lay heavy and protective across her waist; her hand—ring bright with its hidden red—rested over the slow rise and fall of his ribs beneath the linen and bandage. The fire had gone to embers; rain had thinned to a hush against the shutters, like the storm was apologizing for its manners.

She breathed him in—smoke, clean wool, the faint iron of yesterday—and let her body remember it didn't have to brace. He'd slipped a fraction closer in sleep, as if even unconscious he'd negotiated for less distance.

"Pretending to be asleep won't keep me from staring," she murmured.

His mouth curved where she couldn't see it. "I deserve to be admired," he rasped, eyes still closed, voice stitched with morning and stitches both.

"You're insufferable."

"Correct." He opened his eyes. They were clearer than last night, the protective thing not hidden at all. "Hi."

"Hi," she whispered back, the silliness precious. She lifted on an elbow, careful of his bandages, and pressed a kiss to his brow, then another to the place just below the fresh line of stitches at his temple. "How is your pride?"

"Worse than the rib." He winced when he laughed and did it anyway. "The healers say I'm not allowed to duel any more rivers."

"Good," she said, relieved into bossy. "You're confined to being adored."

"Cruel sentence." He caught her hand and turned it, kissing the center of her palm with ridiculous reverence. "How's your heart?"

She considered. "Bruised. Loud. Functional." A breath. "Better."

They lay a moment just looking—collecting each other in the kind of silence that works like stitching. Her fingers drifted, tracing the clean edge of bandage, the strong line of his shoulder, the scarf she'd dried and set back loosely at his throat as if it could keep him anchored. He watched her do it like a man relearning a map.

"I dreamed you ran," he said softly, almost smiling, "down the east road, hair loose, laughing, and I couldn't catch you."

She tipped her chin, wicked and tender. "You did."

"I always will." He sobered. "And I'll keep the sensible promises, too."

"Good," she said again, and let the word mean everything.

A soft knock; a healer's voice through the wood: "Broth on the tray, Highness. And orders: no heroics."

"Tell them it's wasted on me," Ben called, and Rey laughed, bright and helpless, because morning allowed it.

She slid from the bed long enough to fetch the tray, veil-less and barefoot, hair a dark spill down her back. His eyes followed her the way men look at the first safe light after a long night. She returned, set the tray between them, and fed him like a tyrant—bossily, tenderly—scolding when he tried to sit too straight, praising when he obeyed.

When the bowl was empty and the room had remembered how to feel ordinary, he caught her hand again, thumb brushing the thin silver band with its secret red. "Three days," he said. "If the King keeps to his word."

"He will." She leaned in, forehead to his. "And so will you."

"If I run—" he started, because habit and vow share a doorway.

She smiled against his mouth. "I shall only chase you."

"Keep up, milady," he whispered, and kissed her like morning—gentle, certain, the kind that makes a day believe it can be good.

Chapter Text

The keep woke up looking like a promise. Banners climbed the walls—ivory and black with a thin red line stitched through each as if a single heartbeat had been threaded around the castle. Garlands of early roses and quince leaves ran along balustrades; lanterns hung from every arch like caught stars. Somewhere, Mira was bullying a team of footmen into learning the sacred geometry of drapery; somewhere else, a pair of stonemasons argued about which ledge would best flatter a cascade of daisies.

Rey slipped out to the south gardens with a contraband bottle and three good accomplices.

They took over the quince corner, as always—low wall, fountain whispering, a little brazier to keep the night kind. Rose arrived with a basket and a look that said she'd smuggled snacks past a siege; Poe brought a second bottle "for symmetry"; Finn carried actual glasses because he refused to drink out of anything you could accidentally plant.

"To survivors of storms," Poe announced, slinging himself onto the wall. "And to princes who know how to make an entrance."

"To princesses who wait in the rain and then sprint like cavalry," Rose added, pressing a cup into Rey's hand.

Rey clinked, already laughing. "To accomplices who threaten to tackle horses."

Rose took her sip with the solemnity of a vow. "I was ready."

They sprawled. The wine grew honest. Lantern-light made the garden look like a conspiracy.

"How is he?" Finn asked, gentle.

"Stubborn," Rey said, fond and exasperated in equal measure. "He keeps trying to sit up like a hero; I keep bullying him flat like a tyrant. He calls it love; I call it compliance."

Rose gleamed. "And does he keep making scenes?"

"He tried to make a scene with the healers," Rey said. "They gave him broth and told him no heroics. He said, 'tell them it's wasted on me.'"

Poe clutched his chest. "Arrogant and correct. I hate him," he lied. "What did he bring you, by the way? That morning run into the mouth of danger had an errand attached."

Rey held up her hand. The simple band winked in the lantern glow, and when she turned it just so, the hidden red flashed like a secret deciding to be seen. A little daisy sat inside the curve.

Rose let out a noise that sounded exactly like every bell in the chapel. "He put the thread in the ring? That man is trying to marry the continent to you."

"And succeeding," Poe said. "Allow me to rehearse my toast: 'To the alarming competence of Ben Solo, and to the even more alarming fact that he's somehow worthy of our girl.'"

Finn made a face. "That's actually good."

"I know," Poe said sadly. "I hate when I'm sincere."

They drank to that, to each other, to the unlucky moth who insisted on loving the lantern. The conversation drifted to Hux with the natural malice of the tipsy.

"Today," Rose said, conspiratorial, "I saw him measuring a garland with a ruler."

Finn, deadpan: "He irons his gloves while wearing them."

Rey snorted wine through her nose. "He's a man who would laminate a threat."

"He already did," Rose said. "In the stable. We'll un-laminate him later."

"We could swap his ink for plum syrup," Poe mused. "Imagine the memoranda."

"Sticky," Finn said. "Like his conscience."

Rey leaned back against the quince, warm with wine and friends and the relief of an ordinary night. "He denies everything," she said. "Even the weather. But the river remembers who walked into it."

They fell into the easy chaos of story-swapping then, the reckless ones you only admit after the second bottle: Poe's midnight ride on a half-broken mare to impress an opera singer 

"It worked; don't ask me to sing"

 Rose's campaign to replace the Chancellor's ceremonial candle oil with orange blossom 

"He smells delightful now and thinks it's divine intervention" 

Finn's quiet tale about sneaking extra bread to the guard who'd torn a tendon and couldn't stand his post without pain 

"He cried; I pretended I had dust in my eye"

Rey told them about the corridor kiss six summers ago, finally, the apple smell and the stupid, certain way they'd found each other in a keep full of rules. 

"He chased me through the entire castle just to steal a kiss.” she said, smiling at how far they'd come.

“But was it just a kiss?” Rose teased

“It may have lasted longer than a single kiss. A princess never tells” Rey giggled, a hiccup escaping her.

Rose tipped her cup against Rey's. "You two are a hazard to precedent."

Poe nodded sagely. "Also to upholstery."

Finn raised his glass. "To hazards worth taking."

They drank. They laughed until the brazier hissed complaint at the amount of joy near it. The wine made the stars feel closer and the future less heavy.

"Tell us one more Ben story," Poe demanded, stretching like a satisfied cat. "Preferably one that would scandalize andconvert a bishop."

Rey toyed with the ring, the hidden red a private warmth. "In the chapel courtyard," she said, "after he won Mercy, he took off his glove and kissed my palm like a vow." She looked at her hand as if the skin remembered. "It felt like the whole world had to learn our language."

Silence fell kindly for a moment.

Then Rose ruined it with affection. "I can't wait to watch him cry when he sees you in that dress."

"He'll be very irritated at his eyes for crossing him," Rey said, giggling. "Then he'll leash it and pretend it's dust."

Poe toppled sideways onto the grass, laughing. "I love him. I said it. I'll deny it in daylight."

Finn yawned, stretched, and looked up through the quince leaves. "We're happy," he said, surprised. "I can tell because I'm not counting exits. No more quick exits."

"Count them anyway," Rose advised, practical to the end. "Then drink to them."

They did. The bottle sighed empty. The garden breathed. Somewhere across the courtyard, a light moved in Ben's window—the small, steady pace of a man who'd been told to rest and was exploring how to obey without cheating.

Rey stood, swaying just enough to be dignified about it. "If we don't go in, Mira will find us and pin us to the lawn."

"Tradition," Poe said, scrambling up. "Race you to the door."

"If you run," Rey called, gathering her skirt, laughter warm in her throat, "I shall only chase you."

Finn groaned. "Every time."

"Every time," she echoed, thrilled and tipsy and brave.

They tumbled back toward the keep—three conspirators and a bride who'd learned to be loved loudly—while the castle kept stitching red thread into everything it could, as if it had decided to memorize their story on purpose.

They'd reached the cloister arch when Poe, tipsy-bold, slowed and looked at her sideways. "Are you scared?"

Rose elbowed him, then didn't take it back. "We mean—about getting married."

Finn said it gentler. "It's all... a lot."

Rey leaned against the warm stone, lanternlight turning the wine in her cup to a ruby she could drink. For a moment she watched moths hurl themselves at the light and survive it anyway.

"Yes," she said, honest and easy. "And no."

Poe blinked. "Useful."

She laughed. "I'm scared of the ceremony—of tripping over three miles of silk and giving the dowagers a new religion. I'm scared of the court, because it remembers everything except mercy. I'm scared of being measured forever against a crown that doesn't know how to love anyone back."

She turned the little silver ring, letting the hidden red catch the lantern just once. "But I am not scared of him. Not even a little. Ben is the part I don't have to be brave for—he's the part that makes me brave about everything else."

Rose's grin went soft around the edges. "That's the correct answer."

"I'm scared of how much I want the ordinary," Rey added, voice small and daring. "Tea that goes cold because we got distracted kissing in the corridor. Arguments we win with stolen kisses."

Finn's shoulders loosened like a man hearing good weather. "You'll have that."

"And the rest?" Poe prodded.

Rey lifted her chin the way she did when she chose trouble on purpose. "The rest can learn our language. We'll set the rules and make scenes and tie red thread through anything that holds still." She smiled, wicked and warm. "If I run—"

"We know," Rose groaned, laughing. "He'll only chase you."

"Exactly," Rey said, and for once the refrain didn't sound like a dare. It sounded like a map.

Up in the east wing a single candle moved behind a window—Ben obeying the healers at a slow pace, wearing her scarf like a commandment. Rey watched it for a breath, then tipped the last of her wine into the quince, an offering to whatever listens when girls say yes to lives that scare them and fit them both.

"Am I scared?" she repeated, stepping back under the arch with her conspirators. "Yes. But I'm not running from it."

Poe bumped her shoulder. "Good. Because we couldn't keep up."

Chapter Text

Night draped the keep in quiet that felt ceremonial. The moon made a white road across the stones; the quince leaves whispered like they were keeping a secret.

Rey had not been able to sleep. Her gown hung like a hush on the dress stand; the veil breathed at the open window. She stood barefoot in her nightgown and a dark robe, hair loose, ring warm against her skin, counting heartbeats and pretending she wasn't.

A shadow moved on the balcony.

"Don't scream," Ben said softly, already smiling.

She didn't. She went to him.

He stepped over the sill with the care of a man breaking ten household rules at once—shirt open at the throat, bandage edge neat under the linen, that ridiculous scarf she'd dried thrown on like he'd needed it to find the way. He closed the shutters with a thumb and leaned there a breath, looking at her like the rest of the world had been the waiting room.

"You're not supposed to see me," she said, delighted and appalled in equal measure.

"I'm very bad at doing what I'm supposed to do," he murmured, crossing the floor already. "And I wanted to see you." His eyes flicked to the gown, softened, came back to her. "Tomorrow I behave. Tonight I'm greedy."

"Then be greedy," she said, because permission had always been their language.

He stopped close enough that the cool air between them had to make choices.

He kissed her—careful for the first beat, as if confirming the room was real, then deeper, the kind of kiss that kept every promise they had ever slipped into a corridor. She rose onto her toes; his hands framed her jaw, reverent and sure, and when she pressed closer he took the hint and let the control melt just enough to make the rest of the night believe in itself.

"Tomorrow," he said against her mouth, "I'll say everything in front of everyone."

"Say something now," she whispered. "Just for me."

He did, voice low, steady. "I love you. I love your trouble and your mercy and the way you choose what scares you. I will love you when rooms are loud and when they forget our names. You are my route. I'll keep up."

She laughed, wrecked and happy. "You're late," she teased, because even on this edge she couldn't help it.

"I know," he said, smiling like a man who intended to be early for the rest of his life. "Forgive me?"

She answered with her mouth and then with her hands, drawing him to the fire. The room was a small world of orange light and linen, of her breath catching when his fingers found the ribbon-tender inside of her wrist, of his own breath going rough when she pushed his shirt off his shoulders with a care that remembered the bandage and ignored everything else. He was warm and alive under her palms. He watched her watch him, pride leashed and pleased to be.

"I kept thinking," she said, palms flat to his chest, "of the hour I thought you wouldn't chase me again."

"Then we waste it," he said, and kissed her once like a vow, once like a dare, once like they had all the time in the world and intended to spend it well.

He traced the silver band on her finger; she touched the hidden linen under the leather at his wrist, still tied where he'd kept her kiss.

"Tomorrow," he said, quieter now, "I kneel in daylight and promise the same things."

"You already did," she said, nose brushing his throat, smiling where he could feel it. "Now you'll have witnesses."

They were silent awhile. The keep made small night sounds; somewhere a bell tried a single note and thought better of it.

"Afraid?" he asked, not teasing.

"Yes," she said, honest. "And not at all. I'm scared of the spectacle. Not of you."

"Good," he said. "Be scared of the shoes. Not of me."

She laughed, sleepy and bright. "If I run—"

He didn't let her finish. He rolled her gently onto her back, braced on his good side, and kissed her palm, slow and deliberate, right in the center, as if laying a seal on the night. "I shall only chase you."

"Keep up, milord," she whispered, and he smiled like a man who'd waited six summers to hear it said that way, in his arms, on the last evening before forever started.

They dozed and woke and kissed like thieves stealing minutes. When the east window finally went gray, re-tied his scarf, and stood in the half-light looking at her like a prayer he'd talked into coming true.

"Go," she murmured, mock-stern. "Be respectable for four hours."

"Impossible," he said, but he obeyed. At the shutters he paused, glanced back, and grinned—wolfish, civilized, entirely hers. "Watch me ruin their composure."

"I'll be first," she said, unable to stop the smile breaking over her face. "Now go."

He slipped through the window and into the pale, leaving the room smelling of smoke and vows. Rey lay for a moment longer, hand over the ring with its secret red, heart steadier than it had been in any night she could remember.

Chapter Text

Morning arrived like a held breath let go. Bells tested their voices one by one, then agreed to ring. The keep, already dressed in garlands and pennants stitched with a thin red line, woke into the day as if it had been waiting a century to do so properly.

Rey stood at the tall window while the bath steamed and the maids laid out the arsenal. She pressed her palm to the glass the way she'd pressed it to his mouth last night, smiled at the memory she could feel in her bones, and turned toward the business of becoming ceremonial.

Mira clapped once—general, priestess, friend. "In."

The water smelled of quince and orange blossom. Rey sank until heat loosened what the night had asked her muscles to do, closed her eyes, and let them wash the storm out of her hair for good. When she rose, skin flushed and clean, the world felt deliberate.

They worked with the brisk tenderness of women who know what armor looks like when it's silk. Lotion on wrists, oil combed through dark hair until it gleamed; the faintest kohl at the lashes; a mouth stained red with a tiny brush—her color, his disaster.

On the dress stand, the gown waited: ivory cut close and clean through the bodice, then falling into a sweep that could hush a room. If you knew where to look, a hair-thin scarlet thread ran along the seam lines—promise disguised as craftsmanship. At the waist, small onyx stars caught light only when they wanted. The veil, sheer as a dare, wore its rim of finest black lace so innocence could lean against a line and not fall over.

"Hold." Mira lifted the bodice. "Arms."

The fabric found Rey's shape like a recognition. Hooks and eyes whispered shut; the weight settled, good and honest. The skirt sighed when she moved. Mira's clever hands found the hidden pocket she'd sewn into the side seam and patted it as if she'd smuggled luck itself.

"Old, new, borrowed, blue," Rose recited, gleeful and bossy. "Humor me, or the gods will sulk."

"Old," Mira said, bringing the lacquered combs—the ones with the two black thorns that never quite touched. The maids placed them high, anchoring the half-up coils. Rey felt their teeth and chose to like the bite.

"New," Rose continued, sweeping a hand toward the gown like a master of ceremonies. "Obviously."

"Borrowed," came the Queen's voice from the doorway.

They turned. She was a column of amber and composure, and in her hands a small velvet box. She opened it to reveal a slender hairpin set with a single onyx drop—modest, precise, old enough to have seen five queens try not to blink. "My mother's," she said. "She kept her head in storms."

Rey lowered hers. The Queen slid the pin just beneath the veil's comb, fingers brushing hair, a touch so light it felt like a permission instead of a correction. When she stepped back, her eyes did that almost-smile the court had learned to fear and crave. "There."

"Blue," Rose said, triumphant, producing a tiny ribbon. "Hidden in the hem at the back. Let no one say I didn't protect you from traditions."

Mira crouched, lifted the train, and stitched the faint blue into the underside with three fast, priestly bites of the needle. "Done."

A knock. Finn's voice through the wood: "Is everything... stable?"

"Barely," Rose called. "Go away before you see ankles and die."

"Poe is rehearsing his 'don't cry' face," Finn added, conspiratorial. "It's not going well."

"Tell him the Queen will blink twice and he's permitted one tear," Rey said, and heard the soft bark of Poe's laugh from the corridor.

Mira brought the sash. It wasn't a sash. It was the crimson scarf, rinsed and pressed so the storm couldn't claim it, its black shot threading catching new light. "For the waist," Mira said, neutral and knowing.

"Bold," the Queen observed.

"Honest," Rey returned. She let Mira wrap the silk high and neat, knotting it flat at the small of her back. A thin line of red flashed and then behaved.

Someone had cut a single daisy this morning and set it in a narrow glass on the vanity. Rey picked it up, held it against her lips for a second, then turned it stem-down and tucked it under the right comb, white scandal amid the dark.

"Breathe," Mira ordered.

Rey did. The dress breathed with her, promise and armor and yes.

The King came to the threshold like weather deciding to be gentle. He didn't cross the sill; he walked every room like a border. He looked at his daughter and, in a rare, unhidden motion, let pride move his mouth. "You look like victory," he said, and then softened it. 

Rey, who had learned to bend to iron and lift her chin at it both, met his eyes. "Thank you for the riders," she said simply. It was not the room for that; he made it the room for that.

"I keep my word," he replied. He glanced at the Queen, at the maids, at the veil. "Try not to terrify the clergy."

"No promises," Rey and the Queen said in the same breath. They looked at each other, and something unblinking and fond passed between them like a private treaty.

A page slipped in, terrified of elbows and pins. He held out a folded square of linen, edges scalloped, a small sigil stitched in one corner. Rey's breath hitched. She unfolded it. Two words in Ben's exact, soldierly hand: Watch me. A kiss of red—that wicked, deliberate stain—marked the corner like a seal.

Rose made an inhuman sound. "Put it in the pocket," she hissed, as if luck could be trapped like a moth.

Rey did, and felt the weight settle against her hip—a secret she could touch when the aisle went too long.

The veil came last. Mira lifted it with a reverence no priest could outdo. "Close your eyes."

Rey obeyed. Lace fell; the world turned pale and near. When she opened them, she saw herself twice again: once in the mirror, once in Rose's face gone unexpectedly wet.

"You'll make him cry," Rose declared, unapologetic. "He'll be very irritated at his eyes for crossing him. Then he'll kneel into it."

Poe and Finn were allowed in then, strictly to stand in the doorway and not breathe too hard. Poe put a hand to his heart and swore without saying a word. Finn's grin looked like promised weather.

"You ready?" Finn asked.

Rey looked down at her hands. The silver band with its hidden red winked at her like a conspirator. She set her palm flat over her own heart and felt it answer steady and strong.

"Yes," she said. "I'm ready."

Outside, the bells found their full voice. Somewhere below, a stir of horses and people and rumor arranged itself into a procession. The palace inhaled.

Mira pressed a small kiss to the air near Rey's shoulder; the maids stepped back in a rustle like a field. The Queen adjusted the onyx pin by a fraction no one else could see. The King offered his arm, formal and human at once.

Rey took one last look at the room—the bath steam gone to nothing, the daisy's white impertinence, the gown she wore instead of it wearing her—and then at the door, where the world waited to learn their language.

"If I run," she whispered to the mirror, to the daisy, to the thin red thread stitched everywhere it could be, "he'll only chase me."

"Keep up, milord," Rose echoed under her breath, and laughed through a fresh tear.

Rey smiled, lifted her chin, and stepped forward. The veil breathed. The bells pealed. The keep, dressed in promise, opened its doors.

The doors opened like a held breath.

Light poured into the nave—gold on stone, on garlands of quince leaves and early roses, on pennants stitched with that hair-thin red line running their length like a pulse. Bells rolled overhead. Somewhere, a bow touched strings and the first notes found the seam between ceremony and miracle.

Rey stepped over the threshold on her father's arm.

The gown moved the way a promise does—close and clean through the bodice, then a quiet river behind her. The faint black edge of the veil drew a line around the light. At her temple, the daisy flashed impertinent white beneath the lacquered comb; at her waist, the crimson silk lay flat as a secret. In the hidden pocket, Ben's handkerchief—Watch me—pressed warm against her palm each time her heart said yes.

The aisle ran long, a bright corridor through a sea of faces that turned toward her like flowers toward the heavier gravity. She heard the smallest things: the whisper of silk, the soft catch of Rose's breath (oh, Rey), Poe's very dignified sniff (definitely dust). The Queen didn't blink. The King kept his arm steady as a road. Hux stood immaculate at the end of a pew, smile ironed flat, hands folded as if trying to crease the moment in half.

Halfway down, the world narrowed to a single point.

Ben.

He stood at the altar in formal black cut like a verdict, the discreet silver star at his breast, a narrow band of crimson silk at his throat answering hers. The faint new line at his temple made him more himself. He had intended not to cry; she saw the exact moment his eyes discovered they were crossing him. Irritation flashed—honest, aristocratic—and was leashed by control that failed just enough to shine.

He looked wrecked and certain and entirely hers.

They reached him. The King placed Rey's hand in Ben's, and whatever the court saw, Rey felt only the warm, steady weight of his fingers closing over hers like a door set gently, finally, into its frame.

"Hi," he said, useless and perfect, voice roughened by a thousand held breaths.

"Hi," she whispered, the veil's pale world making him nearer. "You kept up."

"Always," he answered, thumb brushing the edge of her ring—the hidden red winking between them like a conspirator.

The officiant cleared his throat; the bells found a softer peal. Ben didn't look away from her. Neither did she from him. Together, they turned toward the vows, hands still linked, while the aisle behind them exhaled and learned their language in full.

Rey and Ben stood hand in hand before the altar, the thin red lines stitched into their world finding each other—the silk at her waist, the band at his throat, the hidden enamel inside both their rings.

The officiant lifted a palm and stepped back. "Your vows," he said, and left the air for them to fill.

Ben didn't look away from her. He spoke like a man who had rehearsed the truth, not the speech.

"I vow to love you in ways that are useful," he said, voice low and steady. "To be quiet when you speak and loud when you are silenced. To count our people as you do, to choose mercy over tidiness, to stand wherever danger must pass to reach you. I will keep the sensible promises: no lonely roads without a word, no storms without a signal, no pride when you say 'stay.' And I will keep the reckless ones: to chase you when you run, to laugh when you dare me, to make scenes they can't tidy away. Rey—" his mouth softened, the irritation that always lived under his control showing and then leashing as he let feeling through— "I put my heart in your keeping, and I will spend my life learning how to deserve yours."

A ripple moved the room; it didn't make it to them. Rey's fingers tightened around his.

"My turn," she said, and it came out lighter and fiercer at once. "I vow to choose you on loud days and on the small, ordinary ones. To remind you we are more than victories, to be your measure when rooms turn to smoke, to insist on laughter. I will be brave when the court is not, gentle when the world forgets how, and I will be the hand on your scarf when you need it tighter. I promise to run when it's worth chasing and to stay when it isn't. Ben—" her voice dipped, private in public "—you are my route. Keep up."

He almost laughed, almost broke; he didn't. His eyes did, and he let them.

They exchanged rings—plain silver warming on skin, the secret red pressed to pulse. He took her left hand and kissed the center of her palm once, because some languages belong at the foundation. She lifted his right, where the hidden linen favor still tugged under leather, and touched her mouth to his knuckles like a seal.

The officiant recovered his breath. "By your word and before these witnesses, be husband and wife." A beat. "You may—"

Ben had already lifted her veil.

He didn't rush. He raised it like a standard, slow and sure, the black-edged lace breathing once and then falling back over her crown. For a breath they only looked—wrecked, certain, relieved like survivors and greedy like thieves.

Then he kissed her.

Not the polite pressure the court expects. Heat, restraint, and promise braided—his hand at her waist, steady and sure; her fingers hooking in the knot of crimson at his throat and tugging him closer with a private, fearless claim. She rose into him; he bent into her; the whole chapel seemed to lean with them. Bells swelled as if they had been waiting for this exact note. Somewhere, Poe's dignity died loudly; Rose forgot to pretend she wasn't crying; Finn's laugh cracked like sunlight. The Queen blinked—once, twice—and then simply watched. The King did not move, which in this language meant permission. Hux's mouth made a line so tidy it could cut.

Ben broke the kiss for breath and didn't go far, forehead resting against hers, mouth barely a breath from her still-red lips.

"For your heart," he whispered, wrecked and smiling.

"For my love," she answered, and dragged him back in—deeper this time, the kind of kiss that says this is ours now in front of everyone. His thumb traced the edge of her jaw; her palm splayed against his chest over the silver star, feeling the confident hammer of him. When at last they came up again, both of them were laughing—quiet, shaken, sure.

"If you run," he murmured, because vows can hold a dare.

"You shall only chase me," she threw back, wicked and bright, and the court learned their refrain as a married language.

They turned together then, fingers laced, faces flushed, composure politely ruined, while the chapel rang and the garlands breathed and the red thread they'd hidden everywhere hummed like a pulse the whole realm could finally hear.

Chapter Text

The great hall glowed like a heartbeat—lanterns nested in quince boughs, garlands stitched with that hair-thin red line draped from gallery to gallery. Tables curved around a polished floor like a crescent moon; silver caught candlelight; laughter braided with strings tuning for the first dance.

Ben's hand found Rey's at the threshold as the steward's staff kissed marble.

"Your Majesties," the herald intoned, and then softer, almost smiling, "Their Graces."

She felt him laugh under his breath. "Ready?"

"Yes," she said, meaning everything.

They stepped into a rain of gentle applause and a small, delighted cheer that absolutely wasn't Poe. Ben's bandage hid cleanly beneath formal black; the discreet star at his breast gleamed; a narrow line of crimson at his throat answered the silk at Rey's waist. Her gown moved like a quiet river; the daisy glowed indecently innocent beneath the lacquered comb.

The musicians struck a slow waltz—strings and a patient piano, the kind that invites a room to breathe. Ben turned to her with that ungovernable softness he kept for her alone and bowed, not to the court, but to the woman he'd chased all the way here.

"May I?" he asked, ceremony turned private.

"You must," she said, and put her palm in his, the hidden red of the ring warm against his skin.

They came together, an easy close, his right hand settling at her waist with a care that knew where her breath lived; her left lifted to his shoulder, thumb grazing the faint line at his temple like a benediction. For the first measure, they did nothing but look—wrecked, steady, a little surprised at their own luck.

Then he led.

He didn't show off. He drew her through the turn like a promise—measured, attentive, a half-smile tilting when she anticipated him and chose to be led anyway. The floor opened, and the crowd softened to the edges; everyone else became weather. Rey's skirt whispered over lacquer; the crimson knot at her back flashed and hid with each pivot. He guided her into a slow spin; the veil's fine black edge described a tender circle in the light. When she came back to him, he caught her smile as if catching breath.

"You're not supposed to make me cry again," he murmured, eyes shining and amused at themselves.

"I'm very bad at doing what I'm supposed to do," she teased, and he laughed, ruinously gentle.

They drifted along the long windows where the storm had once hammered and now only the night watched. He grazed her knuckles with his mouth in passing—public, devastating—and she answered by stepping closer than the dance required, a deliberate little trespass that turned heads and started rumors they would not tidy away.

Around the edge of the floor, their people glowed: Rose with both hands to her mouth and an expression that could power a city; Finn, happy and failing to hide it because he was smiling too hard; Poe already improvising a toast in his head and pretending not to; the Queen still as a lit candle; the King allowing himself one small exhale that wasn't quite a smile. Hux, immaculate, held his glass and looked as if someone had alphabetized the horizon.

"Tell me what you're thinking," Ben asked, low, as they crossed the center and the strings folded into a swell.

"That I want a hundred ordinary nights," she said, almost laughing at the audacity. "Tea that goes cold. Boots in the hall. Your scarf left on my chair."

"Done," he said, like an oath.

"And that I like this," she added, wicked, "when you lead."

His brows tipped in pleased surrender. "I'll try not to abuse the privilege."

"You won't," she said, sure as breath.

He eased her into a slow promenade; she let go and walked out alone for three steps—the room inhaled—then turned back, lifting her chin in that dare he loved. He opened his arm without moving his feet, and she came home into his chest like a door closing on a well-built hinge. Applause rippled; someone sighed; someone else decided to believe in something again.

"If you run," he whispered, because even now the refrain was a language.

"You shall only chase me," she returned, bright and soft, a promise braided through a joke, and he grinned—wolfish, civilized—before guiding her through the last turn, the music spilling into a gentle cadence.

On the final chord he didn't bow to the room. He bowed to her, lifted her hand, and kissed the center of her palm, slow and exact—foundation stone, first brick of an ordinary they would build with both hands.

The hall erupted—cheers, laughter, the clatter of glasses. Poe whooped and hid it in a cough; Rose wiped tears with zero shame; Finn clapped like a man who'd seen weather break. The Queen blinked once and let it stand. The King lifted his wine in a little arc that felt like consent and blessing both.

"Again?" Ben asked, soft conspiracy.

"Always," Rey said, and they slipped off the center of the world to let it turn, threading between friends and flowers and a future that had decided to be kind, their palms still joined, the thin red line they'd hidden everywhere humming like music only they could hear.

The reception had found its golden hum—lanterns nested in quince boughs, garlands stitched with that hair-thin red line, silver chiming politely as courses learned when to arrive and when to leave. Music threaded the room without insisting; laughter answered back. The polished floor held a second set of stars in its shine; the bride and groom sat beneath a spill of early roses that smelled like mornings that come on time.

Poe stood on a chair he absolutely had not been given.

"Esteemed personages and delightful troublemakers," he called, glass aloft, "I will be brief so everyone else can be eloquent."

Laughter. Rey hid a smile in her cup; Ben's thumb traced the hidden red inside her ring, grounding.

Poe sobered just enough to make the room listen. "Rey once told me love isn't the opposite of sense—it's sense with nerve. Today she proved it by marrying a man who thinks kindness is strategy and romance is a public service." He tipped his glass toward Ben. "Your Highness—thank you for meeting her where she lives: in the open." Back to Rey, warmer: "And you, Princess—thank you for choosing the kind of happiness that feeds other people. To scenes they can't tidy away." He lifted his glass higher. "To Rey and Ben."

"Rey and Ben," the room echoed, and Poe hopped down before the Queen's fan could so much as blink at him.

Finn rose next—no chair, no theatrics, just a steadiness the hall leaned toward. He cleared his throat and smiled like good weather.

"I've had three settings most of my life: leave, endure, or fight. Rey taught me a fourth—stay. Stay for the people who make the room feel safer just by being in it. She does that. And today I watched Ben do it too.

"I saw it in the chapel when he kissed her palm and the whole court learned a new custom. I saw it in the storm, when coming home was a promise and not a guess. Strength can be loud; you showed me it can be gentle on purpose. You two don't cancel each other—you calibrate each other. Rey reminds us where we're going; Ben makes sure we all arrive. So here's my wish: may your house be the place everyone breathes easier, may your arguments end in better plans, and may your ordinary be the kind you brag about in secret" he paused.

"To Rey and Ben—keep choosing each other, and keep up. Cheers."

Glasses rose; the applause that followed sounded like relief finding its voice. Rey's eyes went bright; Ben's attempt at stoic dignity failed exactly enough to matter.

Rey stood into the quiet that followed, daisy bright under the lacquered comb, crimson at her waist a neat heartbeat.

"I thought today would swallow me," she said—clear, unafraid. "The aisle, the eyes, all the old stories. It tried. He didn't let it." She turned to Ben, wrecked and radiant. "Ben taught me that love can be loud without being a spectacle. That vows aren't about being seen, but letting others breathe easier because you made them." Her smile went wicked and tender. "I asked him to make scenes they couldn't tidy away. He kept up." A breath; the room leaned closer. "If you run," she finished softly, "I shall only chase you."

Ben laughed once, undone and delighted, and lifted her hand to kiss the center of her palm—slow, exact. The strings behind them sighed into a chord for the audacity of it.

The Queen rose, fan closed—a benediction. "As a mother, I am supposed to praise virtues," she said. "Rey's are not tame. Courage that doesn't need applause. Mercy that costs her first."

A small tilt of her fan toward Ben. "His are not tidy. Devotion that is a plan, not a mood; protection that does not smother. If you must gossip, gossip faithfully: they chose each other in public so the rest of us might be braver in private."

Applause.

The King stood with no theatrics, iron warmed by pride. "Duty," he said, and the word did not frighten anyone. "Keep it to one another. Keep it to bread before banners. If a law gets in the way of your mercy, bring me ink and a reason. If a road gets in the way of your people, bring me spades." His mouth tipped half a degree. "To stubborn, sensible love."

Silver chimed. The steward bowed to release the room back to music—

—and the great doors at the far end opened on their own timing.

A breeze moved. The hall inhaled.

Queen Leia Organa stepped in on the arm of King Han Solo—travel-dusted, luminous, smiling like people who had wrestled a headwind and won. Their standard—starfield on white—breathed once and stilled.

Ben's chair scraped. He was already standing. "Mother," he said, and every rank in him surrendered to son.

Leia's eyes went straight to him, then to Rey with a recognition that felt like kinship. Rey moved before protocol could catch up, dress a soft river, crimson flashing like a pulse. They met halfway—hands, then arms, then laughter that sounded very much like relief.

Leia took Rey's palm and—perfectly improper—kissed its center. A small oh tripped through the crowd. "Thank you," she said, voice low and certain, "for loving my son."

Han grinned as if formality had tried to wrestle him and failed. "We're late," he told Ben, clasping forearms and then, unabashedly, hugging him. "Blame the wind." He turned to the hall with a rogue's benediction. "Two bits of advice: don't get cocky; do get stubborn—about mercy, about ordinary, about each other." He lifted his glass toward the King and Queen, conspiratorially respectful. "Thanks for keeping the place upright until we could crash it."

Laughter broke like good weather. Hux's smile ironed flatter than a ledger; Rose cried openly and made no apology; Poe scribbled three words on a napkin and tossed it aside; Finn exhaled like a man whose map had just added two very steady landmarks.

Leia faced the room—not as a queen, but as a mother with excellent timing. "I was told there would be speeches," she said, amused. "Here is mine: may your kindness be inconvenient, your joy unembarrassed, and your palms always kissed in public. It educates the powerful."

Applause on purpose. Ben looked at Rey like a miracle had taken a seat and asked for wine.

"Since history has decided to attend," Poe blurted, already halfway onto a chair again, "play the music before it changes its mind!"

The strings laughed and obliged. Ben turned to Leia and Han with a half-bow that belonged to family, then faced Rey—already wearing the smile that made the room more honest.

"May I?" he asked.

"You must," she answered.

They took the floor—again, and for themselves—not because custom commanded it, but because love did. Halfway through the turn, Ben brushed his mouth over Rey's knuckles; halfway through the next, Rey stepped closer than propriety and rumor both allowed, and the room—parents, friends, subjects—decided to live with the noise.

"If you run," he murmured, because their refrain felt like breathing.

"You shall only chase me," she returned, bright as bells.

Chapter Text

The door to the great hall sighed shut behind them, and the corridor felt like a secret they'd both been waiting to tell.

Rey didn't bother with ceremony. She fisted a hand in Ben's collar and pulled him down; his laugh broke against her mouth and turned into a hungry kiss. Silk hissed as her skirts brushed the wall; his palm found the small of her back and pressed—gentle first, then not at all as their composure collapsed between breaths.

"Make a scene." she whispered, smiling like trouble.

He did. She hit the stone softly as he crowded close, the world narrowing to the heat of his mouth and the way his hand bracketed her waist as if he meant to memorize every inch. She teased him for it—fingertips skimming the knot of crimson at his throat, tugging just enough to ruin his dignity again. He retaliated by kissing the curve of her jaw, slow, until her knees admitted they were decorative.

"Wife," he said, reverent and low.

"Husband," she answered, voice wrecked with delight. Then she slipped from under his arm like a ribbon from a knot.

He caught air; she caught his grin and ran.

Barefoot now, veil a pale comet behind her, Rey flew down the dim corridor, laughter skittering off the arches. She glanced back once, wicked. "Keep up, milord!"

Ben was already after her—boots easy on old stone, jacket open, that ungovernable smile hunting her shadow. "If you run—"

"I'm counting on it!" she called, turning the corner toward their wing, the daisy flashing impertinent white above the comb.

She reached their door, heart sprinting, and had it open a handspan when he caught her. One arm banded around her waist; the world spun; she squealed, delighted and scandalized, as he tossed her over his shoulder.

"Ben!" she protested, laughing so hard the veil tickled his neck.

"Yes?" he said, grinning up at the ceiling, steady as a standard with her held there.

"Chase me quicker next time."

"As you command," he said, and shouldered through the door. It swung wide on candlelight and flowers; he kicked it shut with a boot, the latch catching on their new life.

He set her down only to lift her again, properly this time, one arm under her knees, the other at her back—princess and thief at once—before letting her slide slowly to her feet, silk pooling like a sigh. She landed chest-to-chest with him, breathless and bright.

He set her on her feet and she slipped from his arms like a ribbon out of a knot.

"Rey—" he started, breath laughing.

She backed away with that wicked little smile, circling the small table the staff had left piled with flowers and two abandoned glasses. Candlelight made a halo of the veil; she hooked one finger under its edge and drew it off slowly, laying it across a chair as if she were undressing the room first.

"Watch me," she said, soft and pleased.

He did—hands braced on the table's far edge, jaw working, composure hanging on by a thread he'd happily let her cut.

Gloves next—one, then the other—peeled with patient care and set beside the veil. She trailed her bare fingertips across the polished wood as she moved, a circle that kept him exactly an arm's length and a lifetime away. When he shifted to follow, she shook her head, delighted. "Patience, husband."

"Cruel," he murmured, wrecked and smiling.

She reached her hip and found the crimson knot he'd untied once already tonight. This time she loosened it herself, the silk sighing free and sliding across the table like a line of heat. Ben's hands tightened on the wood. She tipped her head, satisfied, and kept walking.

Hooks at the back of the bodice whispered under her fingers. Not rushed—never rushed. The daisy came down and she tucked it behind a candle; the combs followed with a small, victorious shake of dark hair. She paused opposite him, the table between them, shoulders bare where the gown had slipped a breath lower than was strictly diplomatic.

"Rey," he said, voice rough with every vow he'd meant.

"Yes?" she teased, circling again, the skirt brushing her ankles like a secret.

He huffed a laugh that wasn't quite a plea. "You have me wrecked"

"Good." She let the last hook go. The bodice loosened under her hands; silk re-learned gravity. She caught the edge and held it there, playful as sin. "You said you'd make scenes for me. Tonight I'm making one for you."

He swallowed, aristocratic irritation flashing at how thoroughly crossed he was by wanting. "You're succeeding."

"Keep up," she said, and let the gown drift lower another inch—no hurry, just permission.

He moved then, finally, all patience burned to intent. She darted away with a delighted laugh, one last loop around the table, bare feet silent on the rug. He rounded the corner the other way; she misjudged by a heartbeat and squeaked when he caught her at the waist.

"Got you," he said, grinning like a thief.

"Ben!"

He carried her the last steps, slamming Rey against the wall. He didn't even let her take a breath; just stole her mouth. She tried to match his pace, but he wouldn't show mercy. He was ravenous, and she was his dinner. His knee wedged itself between her legs. Moving on instinct, Rey shamelessly humped Ben's thigh with her groin. The innocent facade fading. 

Ben bent down on Rey's pebbled nipple. He stuck out his tongue and licked—one long taste of her flesh, until his teeth came out to play.

"Ben" Rey moaned.

Ben bit. Bruising her skin and shot electricity through her body. "You want this, don't you," he snarled. "You want me."

"Yes!"

He dropped his pants to his ankles and slid his predatory cock up and down her slit. The spunk pearling at the tip lubricated her cunt.

 "Feels good, doesn't it," he rasped "That's because you were waiting for me."

Locking their lips together, Ben lunged inside Rey's body. He didn't pause, never hesitated. Just savagely pushed through her tightness. Her unstretched muscles both resisted and welcomed him. 

"I dreamed you'd feel like this," he lauded, seating himself to the hilt. "I'm gonna ruin you"

"Y-you've dreamed about me?"

He grabbed her chin and licked her lips roguishly. "Every second of every day since I first saw you."

Ben's hips snapped against Rey's. She took it like a good girl, so he plunged again. And again. Deep. Her body ached for his. He was free to ravish her until she died of pleasure.  He just kept drilling her and felt her on the edge. 

"Let go, sweetheart. Come for me. Say my name!"

He pumped, bucked, and felt Rey capitulate with a sudden shout. "Bennnn!"

"Yes, don't stop," Ben hissed. "Take some evil inside you princess" His balls bounced sharply against her butt as a bolt of carnal electricity hit him like an avalanche. It tore through his veins, splitting though his fingers and toes, and taking his breath with it.

Ben lowered Rey's legs so she could stand on her own. He pressed his forehead to hers, panting heavily.

"We're not done yet." He whispered.

Chapter Text

Rey woke to warmth and a very smug ache—a pleasant inventory of everything last night had rewritten into yes. Morning leaned through the shutters like a friend; the fire had gone to amiable embers. Ben's arm was heavy across her waist, his breath slow against the back of her neck. When she tipped her chin down, she found a scatter of love bites along her collarbone and throat, the map of a night with nothing to regret.

He stirred. "Ow," he murmured cheerfully.

"Where?" she asked, smiling into the pillow.

"Everywhere I want it to," he said, nuzzling the line where silk had failed and his mouth had gotten ambitious. He kissed one of the marks with a satisfaction that should've been illegal. "I did good work."

"You did," she said, shameless, and wriggled back until his laugh vibrated through both of them.

They stole a slow, soft morning—kisses for breakfast—until the day finally knocked by way of a discreet rap and Mira's voice through wood: "Highness? Packing waits for no romance."

"Rude," Ben said into her shoulder.

"Indeed," Rey corrected, stealing one last kiss and then another, because patience should be rewarded. "We move today."

"My home," he said, the word tasting new. Then, quieter, reverent: "Our home."

The suite bloomed into industry. Trunks yawned; tissue sighed; Mira and two maids became a small, benevolent army. Rey stood in her nightgown while the world folded around her: the veil, carefully boxed; the combs wrapped like relics; the crimson scarf coiled as if it had its own pulse. She tucked Ben's scandalous handkerchief—Watch me, kissed red—into a hidden pocket of a traveling cloak purely to please herself later.

By midmorning, the trunks were labelled; a last pot of tea evaporated in useful sips; the corridor beyond their door softened with the shuffle of porters. Ben appeared briefly—already in riding black, a clean bandage hiding neatly beneath linen—to kiss her brow and pretend not to look pleased by the marks he'd left.

"I'll see to the horses," he said, thumb at her jaw in a promise disguised as a touch. "Meet me in the east gallery."

"Yes Master Solo," she teased.

"Oh with words like that, I wish we had more time princess" he returned, and was gone with a grin.

She meant to go straight to him. Instead, her feet found an old map and carried her down a smaller, quieter passage—the one that ran from the south garden to a narrow corner no one used unless they were twelve and brave.

The hall remembered.

Summer light from six years ago lived here if you tilted your head: the smell of apples warming on stone; the sound of two children teaching themselves what a dare feels like.

The memory arrived clean as a bell.

She'd flown in from the garden, hair a tangle, palms stained with grass, laughing without permission. Her dress flowing behind her. Behind her: Ben calling with mock outrage and something else.

"Rey! If you run—" he called, breathless and delighted.

"I shall only make it interesting Prince Solo!" she'd thrown back, sprinting the last ten paces and skidding to a stop at the bend.

He caught up, slower on purpose at the end, caging her neatly without touching: palm to stone by her head, the other hovering, that look in his eye neither hadn't learned to name yet—seduction and astonishment sharing a face. He'd lifted a strand of her hair, ridiculous gentle, as if the whole world might spook if he moved too fast.

"If you run," he said then, softer, meaning it differently than he had in the garden, "I shall only chase you."

She'd giggled—because slightly due to nerves—and then he'd kissed her.

It wasn't practiced. It was innocent and inevitable and so precise she'd remembered the exact temperature of it for years. He'd pulled back a heartbeat later like a boy startled by his own courage, eyes wide, mouth open to apologize.

"Ben" she'd said, dizzy and certain. "Do it again."

He did. With a smile.

"Rey!"

The corridor snapped back to this morning and Rose, breathless and delighted, waving an empty glove like a flag. Poe and Finn flanked her, already girt for travel—Poe with a satchel bulging suspiciously (snacks, bribery, contraband champagne), Finn with that even competence that makes doors behave and plans work.

"There you are," Rose said, skidding to a halt and immediately fussing over Rey's cloak. Her eyes flicked to Rey's throat and went positively feral with glee. "Oh good, he did."

"Rose," Rey protested, laughing, hand covering the worst of the evidence and failing.

Finn mercifully looked at the ceiling. "We're all packed," he reported. "Your trunks are loaded. The bay is pretending not to be proud; Ben bribed him with an apple anyway."

Poe leaned on the wall where Rey had just been remembering. "I brought enough food to feed a small diplomatic incident," he announced. "Also a pen, because someone's bound to say something worth writing down, and it might even be me."

Rey took them in—these best conspirators—and felt the brave part of happiness settle where fear used to live. "Thank you," she said, simple and full. "For staying. For coming."

"We are your council" Rose smirked "We follow the future Queen wherever she may go"

"First we let Ben look at her properly when she rides in. Then we bully."

Finn's grin was good weather. "He's already looking," he said, tipping his head toward the gallery beyond. "Try not to run or he'll chase you, and then we'll never keep a schedule."

They fell in around her—Rose adjusting the lay of the cloak, Ahead, down the long spine of the keep, the east gallery spilled daylight and the shape of a man who'd learned to be a prince and preferred to be hers.

She touched the wall once as she passed the old corner. "Thank you," she told the stone that had kept their first kiss safe.

Then she stepped into the day that would take them all to a new house with a new corridor that would learn their names, while behind her the hall kept its memory like a pressed daisy—ordinary, indelible, still bright.

They gathered on the east steps where departures are meant to feel like beginnings: standards lifting in the mild breeze, the escort in neat lines, the carriage dressed in quince leaves and one impertinent daisy tucked into the lamp bracket. Trunks were already lashed. Ben stood at Rey's side in riding black, the discreet silver star at his breast, a ribbon of crimson at his throat answering the silk at her waist.

Rose, Poe, and Finn waited with their mounts below—Rose waving at every stableboy until they waved back, Poe pretending not to be emotional while very much being so, Finn counting just enough details to make the road behave.

The Queen and King came last. The court, sensible for once, kept its distance.

The King looked at his daughter the way a map looks at a road that just proved it could hold weight. "You have what you need?" he asked, which meant: bread? courage? friends?

Rey smiled. "Yes."

"Good." His mouth tipped half a degree. "If a law gets in your way, send for ink."

Then the Queen stepped close and made the world smaller. She adjusted the lay of Rey's cloak by a fraction no one else could see, brushed a stray hair to where it belonged, and leaned in so only her daughter could hear.

"Return with an heir, my love," she whispered, not as an order but as a blessing threaded with mischief and hope. Her eyes warmed. "And with whatever else your joy decides to collect."

Rey laughed, helpless and bright. "Yes, Mother."

Leia—travel-dusted, luminous—touched Ben's cheek with two fingers, light as a vow. Han clapped Ben's shoulder with the authority of a happy accomplice. "Keep her laughing," he said.

Ben's smile went wrecked and certain. "Yes, sir."

The little rites went in their proper, old order: the King's hand on Rey's head—brief, iron and tender; the Queen's fan closed—a benediction. It was time.

Ben offered his hand—not possession, invitation. Rey placed her palm in his. He didn't move yet. He turned it and kissed the center, slow and exact, their language smuggled into ceremony.

"For your heart," he said, quiet enough to be just theirs.

"For my love," she answered, the daisy bright above the comb.

He led her down the steps. The footman opened the door; the carriage breathed cool shadow and flowers. Ben steadied the fold of her skirt with one hand and the small of her back with the other, careful and sure, helping her in as if the whole realm were a delicate thing he intended to carry.

Inside, Rey settled on the near seat and reached back. Ben took the hand she offered and climbed in after, the long line of him folding neat into the space beside her. Outside, leather creaked; harness jingled; the escort shifted like a thoughtful animal.

Poe's voice rose, cheerful and bossy: "Try not to scandalize the first village until we get there!"

"No promises!" Rey called back, which made Rose crow with delight and Finn shake his head, smiling like a man who didn't believe in perfect plans and liked this one anyway.

Ben leaned very slightly into Rey, enough that her shoulder knew the weight of him. The coachman looked to the King; the King gave a small iron nod; the whip cracked once like punctuation. The wheels rolled.

They passed under the arch and into the bright. Garlands caught and released their shadows; the keep's windows watched them go like old friends at a station. Rey glanced back—just once—at the corner of wall that had kept their first kiss safe. Her home, getting smaller and smaller. She would miss the memories. Her parents. But it was tradition. She lifted her fingers to it in a small, a small wave.

Ben followed her look. "Thinking of outrunning me?"

"Always," she said, wicked and soft. "If I run—"

He grinned, wolfish and civilized. "I shall only chase you."

"Keep up, milord."

The road took them. The escort fell in behind; Rose, Poe, and Finn spurred gently to the flanks, their laughter clipping at the edges of the crisp morning. Rey threaded her fingers with his. Neither of them looked away as the keep grew smaller and the world ahead went wide, bright, and ready to learn their language.

Chapter Text

They left the keep to good omens: clear light, a breeze that made the standards behave, the mild clop of hooves that sounds like a promise when the world remembers its manners. Leia and Han rode a little ahead with two outriders; Rose, Poe, and Finn drifted back with the rest of the escort, their laughter clipping the edges of the morning. Inside the carriage, Rey sat shoulder to shoulder with Ben, hand threaded through his, the scandalous square of linen—Watch me, kiss-stained red—warm in the hidden pocket of her cloak.

They were a league from the river turn when the road decided to argue.

A fallen tree lay across the lane where the hedgerow tightened into a green throat. The coachman checked the team; harness jingled; an escort captain raised a fist. Three things happened at once: smoke pots hissed into the ditch, caltrops skittered behind like thrown stars, and a rope snapped tight across the gap ahead.

Ben didn't say ambush. He said, "Down," already moving.

The carriage door tore outward; a gloved fist caught Rey's wrist and dragged. She twisted, one hand braced on the jamb, the other clawing for purchase on leather and mail. Momentum won. She hit the rutted lane hard enough to lose her breath in a bright, painful rush.

Ben was out a heartbeat later. He took the first attacker in a clean, efficient blur—heel to jaw, stamp to knee—then lost sight of Rey in the smoke and the swift, ugly scramble of men who think surprise is a skill. "Rey!"

"I'm here," she coughed—then the weight hit.

A body crashed over her, pinning her to the cold grit. A hand found the back of her neck and drove her cheek into mud; another flattened her wrist. She wriggled, bucked, raked backward with her free hand and found a mouth—skin, teeth—dug in viciously. He swore, slammed her twice into the ground. The final time her eyes opened to his fist coming down, again and again. Pain burst hot— her lip, nose—an iron taste in her mouth.

"Get—off—" She jammed her knee up, caught thigh, kicked again, meaner. He shifted, swore again. Rey sucked air and drove her mother's onyx hairpin—hidden in her veil—straight into the meat of his forearm. He howled, and slapped her hard along the cheekbone, then bent, breath sour through a mask, words for her alone.

"Lord Hux sends his compliments," he whispered, voice soft as corrected ledgers. "And a correction. The roads belong to him now."

The knife found her side.

It went in on a breath—a bright, shocking wrong. Heat bloomed under her palm where she tried to catch it. The world rocked and narrowed to a point.

"Rey!"

Ben came out of the smoke like purpose. He wrenched the man off her collar-high and back, slammed him into the carriage wheel; wood answered with a sick honesty. Steel flashed in the attacker's hand, then clattered when Ben's short sword cut the tendons that make a hand obey. A second cut took the back of the knee; a third motion promised to finish the conversation if breath persisted.

"Run," Ben told him, voice flat as winter.

The man crabbed into the hedge. More figures ghosted in smoke at the edges, beating a retreat under the escort's re-formed line. Behind, Poe wheeled out of the fog with a cudgel he definitely hadn't borrowed honestly, Finn's borrowed sword moved with the even competence that makes men regret their hobbies.

All of that happened in Rey's periphery. Ben was already in the mud beside her, his face the only steady thing in a moving world.

"Hey," he said, the terror in him tamed into gentleness. "Look at me."

She did. She was in a lot of pain, a gash on her head had blood trickling down her face. She forced herself to smile anyway.

"Keep... up," she managed.

He glanced down once. The blade had gone in low, left of the navel; the blood was warm and wrong, but not flooding. "Low left," he said, and in saying it he ordered the universe to agree. His palm pressed just above the wound—hard, precise, not cruel. "Stay with me."

Leia slid down on Rey's other side with a sweep of cloak that made the mud seem sensible for being where it was. She tore linen, bound fast, eyes cool with the kind of calm you earn. "Through-and-through?"

"Doesn't feel like it," Ben said, not looking away from Rey. "No spill."

"Good." Leia's hands moved, sure. "We keep it that way. Rose—water"

"Rey, love—breathe with me. In... out."

Rey breathed. In. Out. The pain sharpened, she counted his lashes and the mud on his jaw and the way his hair had come loose where she'd clutched at it last night. Her hand—clean a moment ago—found his, smeared. He squeezed.

Han crouched in the smoke-break of the carriage door, eyes like weather. "We can move her," he judged. "Slow."

"Carriage," Ben said. "Less bounce."

He gathered Rey with a care that had nothing to do with thrones—one arm under her shoulders, the other under her knees, the pressure on the bandage exactly where Leia wanted it and nowhere else.

They lifted her together—Ben, Leia, Han—into the carriage. Rose climbed in opposite and set her palm on Rey's ankle, a weight that said here, here, here. Finn and Poe took the flanks; the team lurched into motion; the escort closed like a shield remembering itself. The wheels bit the road and the world bucked.

Ben braced her against him so the jolts would spend themselves on his ribs instead of hers. Leia's hands were already there, staunching and tying, turning silk to tourniquet with calm contempt for fear. Blood slipped warm under the binding anyway, making a patient, terrifying puddle in Rey's awareness.

"Breathe with me," Ben said, forehead to hers, voice a bridge over fast water. "In. Out. Eyes on me."

She obeyed—one breath, two. The edges of the world dissolved, darkness feathering inward. The handkerchief in her pocket—Watch me—seemed suddenly too heavy to lift. She reached for a joke, for the refrain, for keep up, but the words slid off the place where breath was supposed to be.

"Rey," he said, sharper. The carriage swung; the light guttered as they hit a rut; Leia cursed softly and tightened the knot. "Stay."

She blinked hard. The ceiling blurred; his face blurred. She tried to hold him in focus and felt the grip of her fingers go foolish on his. Sound stretched thin: the hammer of wheels, Rose saying her name like a prayer with teeth, Poe promising the next village would be scandalized on command, Finn counting under his breath to the rhythm of the team.

"Rey," Ben said again, closer. "If you run—"

She found the ghost of a smile and didn't make it to the line.

The carriage pitched through the next bend; the red thread went dim; the world closed like a door.

Chapter Text

Rey hit the surface of waking like a swimmer breaking bad water—air too tight, the world too loud. Her body got there first: a jolt, a gasp, a stab of pain so clean and mean it erased her name for a heartbeat.

She tried to sit.

Hands caught her—gentle, sure. A voice she knew even when things went dark.

"Easy. Easy. Rey."

Ben.

The infirmary's pale light fell in a square across the foot of the bed; a charcoal scrawl on the wall, someone's idea of religion or anatomy. She felt the anchor of his palm at her shoulder and the other—warm, careful—caging her left hand like it was a bird that wanted to fly out of her chest.

"Rey," he said, softer now, breath controlled like he thought his steadiness could hold her together. "You're safe."

She tried to breathe and discovered her body had decided against it. A tight, tearing fire lit along her left side where the knife had taught her a lesson. Panic swelled stupid and fast, slickening her palms, thinning sound. The room tilted; the world pinwheeled back to smoke and ditch-water and a mouth at her ear.

"Ben," she got out, raw. "I—"

"I know." He leaned into her line of sight until all she could see was his face, wrecked and certain, hair a ruin, eyes intent enough to pin a storm. "Eyes on me. With me. In... out."

He breathed for her until her ribs remembered how to obey, until the pain stopped trying to convince her it was the only thing in the room. She tasted copper and realized she was biting her lip; he stroked a thumb along her jaw in a path that had nothing to do with stitches and everything to do with here.

A healer's voice threaded in—low and practical.

"Don't fight the wrap, Highness. Stitches are clean but cross-grain. You'll feel like you're tearing in half if you twist."

"How bad—" Rey's voice broke on the edge; stubbornness stitched it back together. "How bad?"

Ben didn't let go of her hand. He smoothed a stray strand of hair back as if that, too, were medicine.

"Not as bad as it tried to be. Left side. Shallow. No organs. You lost a lot of blood." His mouth tipped, irritation flashing at his own eyes for crossing him again. "You slept for two days. I stayed mad but I also never left your side."

Rey's chest shook with a laugh she hadn't meant to trust. It turned into a hiss when her side remembered its grievances. Ben's hand tightened at her knuckles; his gaze didn't leave hers.

The healer—older, unalarmed—checked the neat, brutal bandage cinched low and left.

"Pulse is sensible. Fever's sulking, not rising. You'll live if you let us be boring." A nod toward the table. "Tea or something more persuasive?"

"Tea," Ben said, and Rey watched the muscles in his jaw take orders from discipline.

"Good." The healer slipped away and left them a square of quiet.

The room resolved around her. Ben's scarf—hers—was looped around the bedpost like a vigil. His coat had become a blanket for a chair he clearly hadn't left much. His hands were clean; the line at his temple looked angrier in this light. There, on the tray by the water pitcher, lay her silver ring, threaded onto a ribbon of red.

"My ring," she said, and felt foolish for how much relief pumped through her at the sight. "I thought—"

Ben reached for it immediately, contrition and care vying in his mouth. "Healer took it off when you, while they stitched and cleaned you. Your hands were bloodied and dirty. I confiscated it before anyone else could get ideas." He slid the ribbon free and eased the band back onto her finger, turning it so the hidden red enamel kissed her pulse. "There."

Her breath steadied another notch. Fear returned to being a loud guest instead of the landlord.

The memory came anyway—the weight, the grit, his voice in smoke. She flinched. The pain sharpened in sympathy, then settled under his thumb where it rested at the heel of her hand.

"He said Hux," she murmured, the words tasting like rust. "He whispered—"

"I know." Ben's eyes cooled exactly one degree—aristocrat's composure over wolf-teeth. "Finn ran one of them down. He's downstairs getting acquainted with a rope and my patience. He had a tally-rod from the east road booth and exactly zero imagination." His voice stayed inclined to calm; the fury under it seemed content to do math. "Your father has doubled riders. Roads will belong to us by sundown."

"Oh my parents" Rey gasped

"Rey. It's okay" He calmed her "You mother visited you yesterday but you slept. She had to leave before the roads got too bad. She said she would return next week"

Rey blinked at the ceiling until it stopped trying to be the underside of a carriage. "Han and Leia?"

"Unhurt. Already insufferable about it." His mouth twitched—tender, grateful. "Your mother is furious. Your father wants the head of whoever attacked us and planned this" She let that sit in her blood like good medicine. "Rose? Poe? Finn?"

"They terrorized the infirmary until the healer threatened to throw them out. Finn posted himself at the door and is counting hands first, exits second." He leaned down, brushed his mouth across her knuckles with a reverence that didn't ask the room's permission. "They're waiting to come in until I say you're ready to be bullied."

"I'm ready," she lied, and he smiled like a man who speaks panic's language and refuses to let it drive.

The healer returned with a cup that steamed a reprimand and smelled like gardens arguing with apothecaries. Rey took it, sipped, coughed once, and made a face worthy of Rose. Ben held the saucer and pretended not to be savage with gratitude for the way her hand steadied.

"You'll doze," the healer warned, satisfied. "Wake to broth. Limited visitors. We need you rested. If the prince tries to be brave all night, knock him senseless with this." She set down a second cup. "It tastes worse."

"I'm immune," Ben said, mild. The healer snorted and left them.

Silence settled, this time like a blanket and not like a weight. Rey let her head tilt toward him until her brow touched his shoulder. He shifted so she didn't have to reach for any part of him she already owned, then stayed very still—his favorite kind of stubbornness.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "It's ugly. I know it's uglier for you."

He exhaled, the sound full of things he'd said and not said and meant.

"It's uglier without you. This is... livable." He nudged his temple against hers, careful of both their wounds. "We'll make the road ours. We'll make them pay for trying to teach you fear."

She closed her eyes. The tea dragged at her like a tide that had decided—finally—to be kind. The pain retreated to the border and stood there, watchful, a thing that would obey rules if she did.

"Stay," she said, unnecessary.

"Try and move me," he said, absolute.

Her mouth curved. The last thing she saw before sleep tugged her under again was his hand on hers, ring bright, secret red warm against his thumb. The last thing she heard was his voice, steady as a bridge over fast water.

"Keep up, milady," he murmured, a smile in it like a vow. "I've got you." Her eyes fluttered shut with a smile towards him.

Chapter Text

Rey woke to shouting—clean, purposeful, wrong.

Boots hammered the corridor outside Ben's infirmary; a door hit stone and rebounded. Someone barked lock it down, someone else double the east gate, and over it all, Rose's voice, too soft for the chaos and somehow cutting through it anyway:

"Ben—listen. The Queen rode home at first light. She found him—" The word broke. "She found the King stabbed. He's dead. Hux has vanished."

Silence hit like a blade turning.

Ben answered with a single, strangled curse, then the sound of anger being harnessed. "Get me the captain. Roof, gate, posterns—everything shuts. Riders on the river road. If he breathes in this province, I want to feel it."

The world tilted under Rey. The room swam; pain in her left side ignited, bright and feral. She tried to sit. The stitches objected with teeth.

The healer got two steps toward her—"Highness, don't—"—before Rey's voice cut the room clean.

"Bring me a horse."

Ben was at her bedside in a heartbeat, fury leashed behind his eyes, gentleness bolted over it like armor. "Rey—"

"A horse," she repeated, colder now, as if every warm thing in her had gone to ground. "Saddled. Now."

"Your stitches won't—"

"Then sew me again when I get there." She swung her legs over the side; the world flashed white. She rode it out with her jaw locked. "I will not sit here while my father lies alone."

Rose surged to her, hands hovering, eyes wet. "We'll get you home," she whispered. "We'll get you there, I swear it." Rose pulled Rey in close, Rey crying into her shoulder. Nothing but her heart shattered. Her cries echoed through the hall.

Ben didn't argue again. He pivoted, voice iron. "Gather the horses. One litter—springs high, straps double. We ride in ten." To the healer: "Bind for travel. Tight."

The healer glared like a saint denied, then obeyed. "You'll hate me," she warned, and cinched the bandage until Rey had to breathe on purpose not to make a sound.

"Good," Rey said, because pain was something she could fight. "Hate keeps me upright."

Ben steadied her while Rose tied back Rey's hair with hands that shook and Finn checked buckles like a prayer. Poe appeared in the doorway with a face gone pale and practical. "Gate captain's been bribed with a promotion he hasn't earned yet," he reported. "Road's clearing."

Rey took none of it in and all of it at once. The red thread of their life—tea gone cold, notes in pockets—snapped back behind her like a line. Ahead, only the road.

"Rey," Ben said, low, when the healer stepped aside. She just looked up at him with watering brown eyes. So much sadness in suc

"He slid an arm behind her shoulders, the other under her knees, lifting as if the world were fragile and he refused to be. The litter waited at the steps because he had already won that argument for her body even if her will had refused to sit; her horse stood tacked and trembling with someone else's adrenaline. Rey set her jaw at the sight and put out a hand for the reins anyway.

"Five minutes," Ben said, trying his best to try and not break at her state.

"Five minutes."

They moved.

The courtyard spat them to the road; Ben climbed into the litter with her for the first stretch and took the jolt of every rut into his own shoulders. Leia and Han were already mounted, travel-dusted and terrible with purpose; they took the point without fanfare. Rose, Poe, Finn bracketed the flanks; the escort closed like a fist that could walk.

"Breathe with me," Ben said when the wheels found a seam and pain punched. "In. Out."

She did. She hated it. She did it again.

At the first rise, she hissed, "Now," and Ben swore under his breath and helped her up—slow, ugly—into the saddle. He mounted on her other side like a wall that had learned to move and set his hand at her knee without asking.

"If you start to fall," he said, very calm, "I will steal you back midair. Don't test me."

"All I want from you is to find Hux," she said instead, voice raw enough to cut.

"I will," he said, which wasn't comfort; it was a vow with teeth.

They left on an order, not a prayer.

By the sixth minute, Rey was in the saddle. The litter Ben had insisted on rolled behind, empty for now, swaying like an argument she refused to have.

Pain lit under the fresh bandage with every rise and sit. She rode through it—hips loose, hands quiet, eyes fixed on the line ahead. Her mare wanted to climb out of her skin; Rey made her answer the bit with a steadiness that felt like spite.

"Breathe with the stride," Ben said at her knee, voice calm enough to convince wind it had overreacted. His bay ran close, a short lead from his saddle to hers, slack but there. "In on the post. Out on the sit."

"I don't need coaching," she said without looking at him. Her voice came out flat and cold, like water that won't take a reflection. "Tell me when we crest."

"Half-mile," Finn called from up the line, already turned into pure competence and a horse that didn't question him.

Rose eased up on Rey's other side and pressed a water-skin into her hand. "Sip."

Rey didn't take it. Rose didn't move her hand. Rey took it, drank, handed it back. Pain flared, settled. She kept riding.

They ate distance the way a wounded thing eats time. Hedgerows. Ditches. A bottleneck lane where a brook shouldered the road. Twice Ben called walk, and twice she rounded a glare at him like a blade.

"You lose me if you bounce your stitches open," he said, not unkind, not soft.

"You don't get to lose me," she replied, and put her mare back up without waiting.

"Lower your shoulders," Ben said when they found a stony stretch. "Don't fight the wrap. Make it do the work."

She obeyed because he was right, because obedience now was speed. She didn't thank him. Her mouth had no room for anything that wasn't forward.

The pace tightened. Leia and Han pulled them like a lodestar at the point of the line, two dark figures who had decided the day would learn manners. Poe peeled off at crossings to heckle carts into a sensible fear of royalty and rejoined at a canter with a grin he didn't feel. Finn rotated riders the way a surgeon changes blades. Rose matched Rey's breath when it faltered and lied about the distance with the accuracy that counts as medicine.

A rut bucked the road. Rey's vision went white at the edges; the world lurched left. Ben's short lead snapped taut, his hand finding her forearm with a grip that said No. The gelding blew through it, offended and grateful.

"I've got you," he said.

"I don't need—" She cut herself off before the lie finished. "Don't slow us."

"I'm not."

Blood made a thin red fact along the bottom edge of her cloak and stayed. Ben saw it, didn't flinch. "We should switch mounts at the way-stone," he said.

"No."

"Rey."

She kept her eyes on the line ahead. "If I get off, I won't get back on."

"I'll put you back on."

"Over my dead body."

"That's the part I'm arguing with."

She said nothing and kept riding.

They reached the way-stone. He didn't ask again. He swung down, caught her, and took the weight she refused to admit she couldn't carry that second. She shook—not from fear, from fury—and wanted to hit him for absorbing it. He absorbed it. They switched horses. Rose retied the sash under Rey's cloak with hands she made steady by will; the bandage had bled through in one precise line. Ben pressed his palm above it for a slow count of five, then checked her stirrup height like a man counting the only numbers that still mattered.

"Three breaths," he bargained, voice low.

She gave him one and launched.

They cut across the mill track to avoid the thickening market. Finn and two riders went ahead to clear a path. Poe shepherded a donkey and three offended geese into a legend by swearing at them like a poet. Rose told Rey a story about a mule that tried to bow and fell off a stage; Rey didn't smile. She rode harder.

"Now," Ben warned when her shoulders crept up and stayed. "Drop them. Belly soft. Let the gelding carry. Don't make me put you in the litter."

"Try," she said, and even she heard the frost in it. Rey's breath hitched. Pain came vicious and bright out of hiding. She rode through it on numbers: four strides post, two sit; in, out; count fence posts; count swallows; count the seconds until she could force the next breath into obedience.

"Rey," Ben said, softer now, too close to pleading. "With me. In."

"Save it," she said, not looking at him. "Use your breath on orders. Not me." It wasn't fair. She didn't want fair. She wanted forward and a horizon that would stop moving away.

He took the hit. "Finn—rotate the rear. Rose—take left carts at the bend. Poe—if anyone stands in our line, buy them or move them."

"Buying!" Poe yelled, already moving. "Moving!"

Rose glanced across. "You'll give me an answer later," she said, voice like a hand around a hot coal. "I'll wait. Ride."

Rey rode.

The light thinned to the color of old vows. The road turned mean in little ways that add up. The gelding's breath went loud and honest. Rey's hands stayed steady by force. When memory tried to climb up—her father's hand on her head that morning, his ink and bread first—she slammed the door on it so hard her jaw ached.

Ben tried once. "If you run—"

"Don't," she said, and this time it wasn't frost. It was a crack. "Not that. Not now."

His mouth tipped—hurt, acceptance, discipline. "Understood."

They took the last cutting at a walk because to do otherwise would have been vanity. The lane smelled of water and crushed mint; the pain relented an inch and took it back on the next jolt. Ben's hand brushed her knee—nothing to steady, just proof of heat—and then withdrew because she had set a border and he meant to keep it intact until she dragged it herself.

"Half an hour," Finn called, and didn't add and then because he wasn't cruel.

"Twenty if the road remembers its manners," Poe said, and the joke sounded like scaffolding.

Rey nodded once. "We're riding it," she said, and her voice came colder and truer than steel. "No more stops. No litter. If I fall, you catch me and throw me forward."

Ben's answer was the simplest vow he knew how to make. "Yes."

They pushed. Rose started counting under her breath—one through ten, again, again—a metronome you could ride a life to. Ben matched his bay's stride to Rey's gelding until the two horses breathed like one animal with four hearts. Finn argued with a cart and won without raising his voice. Poe made a fishmonger into an ally for life by promising a royal permit he had no authority to grant and every intention to deliver.

Rey's world shrank to three facts: the line ahead, the pain obeying rules she hammered into it, the heat of a hand that didn't touch her anymore but could if she needed it. Anger moved through her like clarity—cold, clean, directional. It didn't make her cruel. It made her fast.

"Keep up," she said at last, and didn't look to see who she was speaking to. It didn't matter. The city had finally shouldered up out of rumor into stone, and the road had run out of excuses.

Chapter Text

The city rose out of dust and distance like a verdict. Pennants on the outer towers snapped to attention; bells found the low, steady toll that teaches streets how to grieve. The gate captain saw who led the column—Leia and Han, travel-dusted and terrible with purpose—and flung the doors so wide even rumor couldn't wedge between them.

Rey did not slow.

Her gelding hit cobbles with a hollow drum. Sweat darkened its shoulder; foam ringed the bit. Rey sat tall because rage had welded her spine; her cloak hid the hard, thin line of blood the day had drawn across the bandage. Ben kept the bay at her knee, stirrups almost touching, lead slack but ready; Rose rode the other side, close enough for a wrist if the world tilted; Finn and Poe flared the escort into a moving wall that turned crowds into currents that parted.

The city tried to kneel; Rey's voice cut it clean.

"Stand. Make way."

It obeyed. Shopfronts stilled. A fishmonger lowered his knife as if it had become improper to be sharp. Children learned the shape of silence on the faces of their mothers. Eyes went to the daisy tucked in the lamp bracket of the leading carriage and then away, as if that impertinent white had suddenly become a sacrament.

Up the hill. Through the second gate. Courtyard.

The keep waited dressed in mourning it had had no time to learn—cloth thrown over colors, guards in plain sashes, the great doors unbarred like a mouth about to speak. Mira stood on the steps with her hands clasped hard enough to whiten the knuckles, eyes raw, mouth iron. Behind her, servants lined the walls, steadying each other with elbows and breath.

Rey slid her right leg over and dropped before anyone could catch her.

Pain bit. The world whitened at the edges and then decided to be kind out of respect for the way she refused to fall. Ben's hand lifted as instinct; she didn't look at it.

"Don't touch me," she said, cold because if she warmed she would break. Then, after a breath that tasted of copper.

"Yes," he said, and the word came out like a vow filed under obedience.

She took the first step. Rose was there, half a stride back, a shadow you could lean on without admitting you needed to. Finn moved ahead, clearing the stair with a voice like good discipline:

"Make way for the Princess."

Mira wanted to curtsy; she didn't. She took Rey's left hand like it was a fragile valuable and said the only thing that mattered. "Your Majesty."

The doors gave. The hall swallowed them with a hush that had nothing to do with acoustics. The portraits breathed in oils; the long runner swallowed hoof-dust; the air tasted of crushed chamomile and hot iron. A boy with a tray of clean water realized he was in the way and disappeared with a sound like a prayer.

"Take me to him," Rey said. "Now."

Mira turned without a word. Ben matched the pace a fraction behind Rey's left shoulder, not touching, making the corridor learn what would have to pass through him first. Rose and Poe took the rear; Finn ghosted ahead to the Queen's antechamber and had it cleared by the time they reached it—men and women scattering with relief at being told what to do.

The outer door stood open on purpose. Inside, faces tried to be useful. Leia was a lit, un-guttering candle; Han's hand sat on her shoulder like weather taking a side. The Queen's fan—dark, shut—rested on a table like a small, lethal verdict.

Rey didn't stop for any of them.

She crossed the room in a line that made sense out of everything that hadn't, cloak kicking at her heels, jaw set hard enough to break. At the inner door, Mira's hand trembled once; Rey looked at it and the tremor stopped.

"Open it," Rey said.

Mira obeyed.

The hinge breathed. Cool air slid out—steel and crushed flowers and something that had once been incense and was now only memory. Ben took exactly one step closer and stopped, the heat of him a wall against her left side, his hands loose because her order stood and he would not break it unless physics forced him.

Rey put a palm to the jamb because the bandage pulled when she inhaled too fast, and because stone doesn't move when the floor gives out.

"Let no one else in," she said, voice thin and sharp as a wire.

Ben answered without hesitation. "Clear the passage," he told the room, and they did—Mira standing guard with pins like weapons, Rose and Poe bracketing the doors, Finn a dark shape at the threshold with orders already moving through him like a river.

Rey lifted her hand from the stone.

She stepped over the threshold to where the curtains waited.

The inner chamber was colder than the hall, the air full of steel and crushed flowers and the last breath of incense. The curtains around the bed hung heavy; somewhere behind them a candle guttered, making the light uneven, as if the room itself were flinching.

She crossed the floor without grace. The bandage tugged; her breath caught; she put a palm to the carved post because stone and wood don't move when the floor gives out. Then she gathered the royal cover at its edge—deep crimson, the crest stitched bright as command—and pulled it back.

Her father lay very straight.

The details were small and devastating: the careful combing of hair the living would have mussed; the mouth that had learned not to lie set at an angle that suggested nothing anymore; the wedding band he had worn to every argument. Someone had folded his hands. Someone had tried to keep the blood from showing and had not entirely succeeded.

Something inside Rey made a clean, terrible sound and broke.

She dropped.

Her knees hit the rug hard enough to send pain lancing up her left side; the wound flared, hot and bright; she didn't feel it or she felt all of it at once. The sob that tore out of her wasn't a sound rooms are meant to hold. It shook her shoulders and then shook the bed when she reached for the coverlet and clawed it into her fists like a child begging a tide not to go out.

"Papa," she said, and the word came strangled out of both her lives at once—princess and daughter. "Papa, wake up. Please—please—"

Outside, a chair scraped. The door didn't open. Ben kept his hand on the latch and his body in the frame and didn't move, because she had told him not to touch her unless she fell and she had fallen and still he waited the length of a heartbeat for permission that would not come. Then his voice—low, wrecked—spoke through the seam:

"Rey," as if the name could keep blood from cooling.

The sound of her heartbreak rattled the corridors. Her cries and screamed echoed. Tears ran hot and then went cold; her hands loosened on the cloth because they had to; her eyes fixed on the line of her father's knuckles under the sheet and didn't blink.

The world narrowed. The light went dull. The pain in her side turned into a far-off bell. She stopped moving.

"Rey." Closer now. Ben had stepped inside and stopped three paces away, as if a line had been drawn on the floor and he meant to keep it unless physics insisted. "Rey—look at me."

She didn't. Couldn't. The room was a tunnel and she was at the bottom of it. She heard her own breathing like something happening in another house. .

Ben was there in the instant she would have hit the floor—no permission, no speech—catching the back of her head with one palm, her shoulder with the other, kneeling with her so her body remembered how to be held. He didn't lift her. He didn't try to make her look away. He only put himself where the fall should have gone.

"Easy." The word was sanded down to gentleness. "I've got you." He reached for the cloak on the chair without letting go and brought it around her with the efficiency of someone who has kept fever off people in harder rooms. "Stay with me."

Nothing.

"Rey." He set two fingers at her wrist, gentle, counting. "Breathe with me. In. Out."

Her chest moved because bodies obey simple orders. Her eyes didn't.

He eased one hand over Rey's clenched fingers and pried them open by degrees, not to free the cloth, but to give her something living to hold. "Here," he murmured. "Take my hand. That's it." Her fingers curled without meaning to. He let them close hard enough to hurt.

"Highness?" Mira's voice at the edge, syllables careful. "Do you need—"

"Not yet," Ben said, and because of the way he said it the room obeyed.

Minute by minute, shock made itself a country. Rey stared at the space where her father's hand would never move again. Her breath came shallow and even; her face went white around the mouth; her jaw set in a line that would leave a bruise. She didn't hear the bells. She barely heard Ben.

He adjusted nothing and stayed. He moved when the pain in her side insisted—shifted his knee under her to take the pull out of the stitch, lifted the cloak higher, anchored her back with his chest without caging her. He kept his voice in the place where weather happens. "With me, Rey. In. Out. You can break here."

Her lips moved. No sound.

"It's all right," he said, and because he didn't ask her for anything, it didn't bounce off. "You don't have to speak. I'll do the talking."

He told her the facts the body needs: her pulse was steady; she was warm; the floor was solid; the door was shut; no one would cross it until she said. He didn't say Hux's name in that room. He didn't say later. He didn't say stand. He named what would not move and let everything else be ruin.

After a long time—ten minutes or an hour—her blink returned. Once. Again. Her mouth opened and closed on a little sound that might have been no and might have been the breath before a wave.

Ben didn't push it into meaning. He lifted her hand—slow, obvious—and pressed his mouth to the center of her palm, not a vow, not a custom, just the only language he trusted not to break. His lips were warm. The touch was exact. "I'm here," he said against the skin. "I'm not letting go."

A tear slid; another. She didn't sob again. The shutting down had taken that, for now. But her fingers closed harder on his, as if something in her had remembered that grip before it remembered words.

He stayed where physics had put him—between her and the ground, between the bed and the door—until her breathing steadied into small, ugly shivers and heat began to come back into her cheeks. Only then did he lift his head and say, very quietly, "Mira—broth. And a chair. We'll do this the long way."

He didn't ask Rey to stand.

He didn't move her from the floor until she moved herself, and when she didn't, he built a country around the place where she'd shattered and waited with her in it, holding her hand while the room—finally—learned how to hold them both.

Chapter Text

The garden didn't try to be kind. It rained the way grief does—without hurry, without apology.

Rey sat on the low stone bench under the quince, black dress heavy with water, veil clinging to her cheeks. The world had narrowed to the puddle at her feet: a small, mud-brown mirror that took the rain in quick, neat rings and never filled.

She didn't speak. She hadn't since the room took her.

Tears slid under the veil and disappeared into rain. No sound. Just breath and the ache where breath lived now.

The puddle remembered things.

An apple corridor in summer. She was five, bare feet on warm flag, the air thick with wasps and laughter. Her father stole an apple off the windowsill and split it on his thumb, offered her the larger half, juice running down his wrist.
"Bread before banners," he said around a bite, like a conspiracy.
She'd tried to repeat banners and said bananas. He'd laughed, then made it law for a day: Bananas before banners.

Rain ticked. The puddle took it.

A saddle that didn't fit yet. Seven years old, knees like knotted twine, a mare patient as a better uncle. The King had walked at her stirrup while she bobbed, stubborn and proud.
"Fall in front of me," he'd said, hand light on her boot. "I'm easier than the ground."
She fell. He caught. He always had.

Another ring widened and vanished.

Ink-stained fingers. Ten, hunched over a ledger she wasn't supposed to touch. He'd dropped a blotter by "accident" and sat beside her, rolling a quill between iron-fingered hands.
"If a law gets in your way," he'd said, "bring me ink."
"What if ink isn't enough?"
"Then bring me the people it hurts," he'd answered, not looking away. "We'll write something truer."

Rain darkened the stone under her hem to black. The leaves shook water onto her shoulders. She didn't move.

A storm on the west wall. Fourteen, hair whipped wild, sky a green bruise. Guards barked; tutors scolded. He'd come up quiet, set his hand on her head—brief, iron, tender.
"Count hands first," he'd said over the wind. "Exits second. And when it's too loud, you can borrow my quiet."
He'd stood there with her until thunder decided it wasn't frightening, merely loud.

The puddle took a leaf, held it, let it go.

A feast night, late. Seventeen, shoes in her hand, crown lopsided from dancing when no one was looking. She may or may not have been slightly tipsy. He'd found her in the back corridor and pretended not to see the crown's angle.
"A crown," he'd said, straightening it anyway, "is a doorstop, not a mirror. Hold doors. Don't admire yourself in them."
She'd bumped him with her shoulder. "Shhh, my father will hear us!" His low chuckle still vibrated through her.

Rain gentled, then found itself again.

A chessboard he never finished. Last winter, a candle guttering between them, her piece a knight that never learned to move sensibly. He'd tapped the board.
"You don't have to win pretty," he'd told her. "You have to win for someone."
"For who?"
"For whoever eats because you did," he'd said, already losing on purpose.

A tear fell, hot, and vanished like all the rest. The veil stuck to her mouth when she tried to breathe deeper. She let it. The rain didn't mind her quiet. Somewhere, bells tolled the low, steady note that teaches streets how to grieve. She didn't listen. The puddle was enough.

Footsteps came to the edge of the garden and stopped—soft, deliberate. She didn't turn. A shadow stayed outside the quince's reach, indecently careful, as if not to frighten a wild thing.

She kept staring at the small world at her feet: rings widening, overlapping, learning how to vanish. Her tears obeyed the same instruction.

The day he taught her to sign her name like a verdict. He'd guided her hand once—just once—and then let go.
"You sign for bread first," he'd said, tapping her wrist. "Then banners. If they make you choose, you already know which pen to pick up." She'd looked up at him, ink on her knuckle. Her trained her to be a queen.

Rain softened. The puddle held the sky in a ragged circle. The veil slid colder against her cheek. She folded forward over her knees and finally let the sound out—not sharp, but an exhausted grief.

Footsteps came and stopped—three sets, careful, announced by the sound of people who know better than to arrive loudly.

Rose went first, because she always did. She stepped into the reach of the quince and crouched, rain flattening curls to her cheeks. "You can be soaked and stubborn," she said, trying for light, "but not soaked, stubborn, and alone."

No answer. A tear fell straight from Rey's chin to the puddle, broke and disappeared.

Poe eased in next with a ridiculous umbrella he'd stolen from somewhere too fancy. He held it over Rey's head and immediately realized it didn't matter. "I brought contraband," he offered, waggling a pocket. "Bread. It's illegal to be sad with warm bread. I checked."

Silence. Another ring widened, then forgot it had ever been there.

Finn didn't crouch or joke. He sat on the wet stone beside her, close enough to share breath, far enough not to crowd. His voice lived in the place where weather steadies. "We'll sit as long as you want," he said. "And we'll walk when you point."

Rey stared at the puddle and cried like a leak in a ship—slow, constant, nothing to do with permission. It undid the three of them in different ways: Rose's mouth pressed thin; Poe's eyes went bright and furious; Finn blinked once and then didn't blink again for a long time. There was nothing they could do in this moment other than be there for her.

Rose reached, very gently, and smoothed the veil where it clung to Rey's cheek. "We can't make this smaller," she whispered. "We can carry you while it's big."

Rey flinched a little, then didn't. The puddle took three raindrops at once and gave them back as nothing.

They didn't choose a moment; it arrived. Finn stood and offered a hand. Poe braced his shoulder against Rey's back like a wall that could move if pushed. Rose slid her palm under Rey's elbow, careful of the left side, and spoke like a promise. "Inside. He's waiting."

Rey let them lift her. Her knees argued; the wound burned; the world tilted and then gave up. They got her to her feet without making her feel small and walked her through the wet like four points of a compass: Rose matching her breath, Finn setting a pace her body could keep, Poe holding the umbrella over nothing and everyone, because it made him feel useful.

Under the arcade, Ben was waiting.

He hadn't bothered with a cloak; rain had darkened his hair and the black of his coat; the scarf at his throat looked like the only warm thing on earth. At the sight of Rey, something in his face fractured and held. He took one step forward and stopped, asking with stillness what he would not force with hands.

Rose answered for Rey, because grief needs translators. "She needs carrying," she said, voice soft with instructions.

Ben nodded once, learned the rule, and obeyed it. "I'm going to lift you," he told Rey—not a question, not a command. "If you want me to stop, touch my shoulder."

She didn't touch his shoulder.

He came in close—slow, obvious—slid one arm behind her shoulders, the other under her knees, and gathered her like something you don't put down until it tells you it's ready. Rey's hands didn't clutch; they didn't have to. She folded into him as if gravity had found its rightful direction.

Poe stepped back, eyes hot. Finn swallowed a lump. Rose's hand hung in the air a second longer than it needed to, then fell, empty and shaking.

Ben carried Rey through the echoing hall, each footfall careful as a vow. Water slid from their hems onto the runner; servants looked away the way good people do when love loses its pride. At their door, Ben shouldered it gently with a practiced motion that never jarred her and crossed into the room already warmed by coals and the kind of quiet that keeps.

He set her on the bed as if the world might learn manners by watching, then went to his knees to take off her soaked slippers. The veil he lifted last, slow, laying it over the chair like a flag at half-mast. He dried her body while she sat there just staring at this one spot on the wall. A chip in the wall. Her eyes red raw, darkness under her eyes. Her cheeks red and cold. Ben returned with a clean nightgown and pulled it over her head. She didn't do much to help. Just kept staring blankly. He then wrapped her in the thick wool blanket sat—not on the mattress—on the floor at her side, both hands around the one she let him hold.

Rose, Finn, and Poe hovered a breath in the doorway, all of them on the verge of tears for the same reason: seeing the strongest person they knew be this broken. Ben looked up once, grateful and wrecked; Finn inclined his head; Rose mouthed we're here and closed the door.

Rain talked itself quiet against the windows.

Ben didn't ask Rey to speak. He didn't speak much himself. He just held her hand and, after a while, pressed his mouth to the center of her palm—slow, exact—because in a world that had stopped making sense, he still trusted this one sentence to carry its meaning.

"I'm here," he said. "I'm not letting go."

Chapter Text

Rain stitched the window into gray, a thousand tiny needles working without pause. Rey lay on her side in her nightdress, hair unpinned and dark against the linen, the black veil folded on the chair like a small, obedient shadow. She did not leave the bed. She watched the rain drops race and lose and start again. When she breathed too deep, the fresh bandage along her left side protested; the pain wasn't sharp anymore—just territorial, a border that insisted on being respected.

Ben sat on the floor with his back to the bedframe, her hand cupped between both of his. He hadn't changed his coat; the rain he'd carried in last night had dried in rough salt along the seam at his shoulder. Every so often he lifted Rey's knuckles to his mouth—slow, exact—and set them back as if returning something sacred to its place.

"Rey," he said once, very quietly, as though asking the rain's permission. "You need your mother. I'll bring her."

He hesitated—one heartbeat, a listening—and went.

The room listened to the rain after he left. Coals shifted, breathed. Somewhere in the corridor a servant's shoes remembered how to be quiet. Rey watched the window and tried not to blink because blinking meant finding out she was still here.

The latch turned.

The Queen entered in black without jewels, hair simply bound, sleeves plain. She closed the door with that unstartled poise that had seen rebellions and first steps and didn't confuse them. Ben came to the threshold with a tray, bowed his head—son to a mother who wasn't his—and stopped when the Queen touched his sleeve in thanks.

"May I?" her mother asked, voice pitched like a question that wouldn't take offense at a no.

Rey made the smallest space with her shoulder. The Queen set the tray down, crossed to the bed, and lay behind her the way mothers do with fevers: one arm under Rey's head so the pillow became a shoulder; the other across her waist, careful of the wound; the long certainty of her body turning into a shelter.

They did nothing first. They shared breath until Rey's ribs remembered someone else's rhythm. Rain laced the panes. The quiet had weight, but it didn't lean.

When the Queen spoke, it was into Rey's hair—wrecked and ruler-steady at once.

"Don't be too sad, my love," she murmured, and even in grief she smiled at herself for the absurdity of the sentence. "He died knowing you would be safe. Happy. Never alone. Some girls don't get their princes, sweetheart. Some girls are very unlucky." Her mouth softened against Rey's temple. "You have Ben. A childhood sweetheart. Your happy ever after."

Rey's eyes moved—the smallest, driest flinch of surprise. A raw whisper dragged up from too far down. "Childhood... sweethearts?"

A breath that was nearly a laugh warmed the back of Rey's neck. "You thought we didn't see?" the Queen asked, amused and tender. "All those summers with a boy who always found the same garden path. All those summers just for a girl who always found a reason to be in the garden. The way you two flirted as if it were a foreign language only you spoke—his bow always a fraction too low for a mere princess, your curtsy always a fraction too long for a mere guest."

She shifted, propping on an elbow so she could talk into Rey's ear like a conspirator. "I knew from the first year he came with his tutors. He arrived all elbows and seriousness, and then he saw you steal an apple and forgot every courtly speech I'd been promised he knew. The next morning you insisted your lessons be 'taken in the garden,' which was suspicious, given it had rained. Your father and I kept the corridors lit and looked away at the right moments." A smile in her voice again, sad and full of pride. "And then they sent him to war and he came back with a scar and the very same eyes. Eyes for you Rey"

Rey's fingers curled in the sheet until the linen made faint noises of surrender.

"I watched you at dinners," the Queen went on, gentle. "He'd forget to pretend he wasn't looking. You'd go crimson when he kissed your palm in front of bishops and then do it again simply to teach the room what devotion sounds like. Do you remember the winter you lost your comb in the south corridor? He found it. He brought it to me first so I wouldn't think ill of you for being there." A low, wry note. "As if I had not been a girl in a corridor of my own."

Silence stretched and held.

"Don't be sad," she tried again, truer this time, not hurrying the words. "Be as sad as you need. But don't be sad that he didn't know. He knew, Rey. He was proud. He told me you were becoming exactly the woman he'd prayed for: brave in public, tender in private, impossible to bully, stubborn" Her voice thinned on proud; she steadied it. "He died certain you had a partner who would stand where danger must pass to reach you. That is no small grace."

Rey turned, slow as someone crossing ice, and curled into her mother's front like a tide finally allowed to come in. The Queen took her weight and the wet of fresh tears and didn't flinch. Guilt tried the door; the Queen barred it like a sentry.

"I should have—" Rey began, breath tearing at the edges.

"No," her mother said, iron under ruin. "This isn't yours to carry. Leave the blame where it belongs. I failed to keep the door. I will forgive myself later. Today I love you harder."

They breathed. The rain granted them another inch of quiet.

Ben reappeared at the bedside with the tray, not intruding—two cups of something that steamed like gardens arguing with apothecaries, a folded cloth warm from the kettle. He set them down without clatter and knelt to Rey's free side. He didn't reach for her face. He wrapped her hand in both of his and, because grief had stolen his better languages, kissed the center of her palm—slow, exact.

"I'm here," he said.

"She knows," the Queen answered for Rey, thumb circling once at Rey's hairline, the motion mothers learn when babies will not settle. "Stay."

He stayed.

The Queen spoke again, softer, as if teaching a child to read by tracing letters. "Do you remember when you demanded travelling around to...what was it study?" Rey mother smiled "But you were in fact going with those three troublesome friends to follow a poet around?" her mother shook her head "Your father, had every man in this keep out searching for all four of you. The castle had never been so quiet"

Rey's mouth twitched under the weight of sorrow. The Queen smiled into her hair. Rey's breath hitched; it didn't break.

"He knew who you were," the Queen said. "And who you'd be. You make rooms breathe easier, Rey. You make mercy look easy. He saw it growing in you and he was proud."

A long, quiet moment. The rain softened; then found itself again.

"What do I do," Rey whispered finally, hoarse and small, as if the question had to be smuggled past her own throat.

"For now?" The Queen pressed a kiss to Rey's hair. "You breathe. You eat when we put a spoon to your mouth. You let others stand the door." She shifted, looking over Rey's shoulder to Ben. "After the bells and the light changes twice, we'll sit vigil with him. Then we'll open the chapel for the old women to approve the flowers—Rose will bully beauty into the right places. We will not speak in the council until we have to. I will keep the lists. Poe will teach rumor who its master is."

Ben's mouth slanted at the corners; when the Queen said other people's names, his shoulders eased—the world had weight again and therefore could be lifted.

"And then?" Rey asked, smaller still.

"Then," the Queen said, and there was a tremor in the word that she allowed to live in it, "we bury your father. We come back to a room that will suddenly feel too large. And we stand where he stood." She smoothed Rey's hair back so gently it felt like a benediction. "You will be Queen."

Rey made a sound that wasn't quite a sob. "Not yet," she said, begging the morning to hold.

"Not yet," her mother agreed. "But soon. And you won't do it alone." She glanced at Ben over Rey's head, the look of a woman who has no patience for ceremony and an unlimited appetite for truth. "Ben will be King. He will keep the door. You will hold the pen. And I—" a ghost of a smile—"will show you which ink refuses to dry until the right names are written."

Rey's fingers tightened on Ben's hand. The admission shook free, naked and ordinary.

"I'm scared."

"Good," the Queen said simply. "Keep it. It keeps you kind." She tipped Rey's chin with two fingers—careful of the bruise—and made sure their eyes met. "Courage is a decision made with shaking hands. Today you do not have to decide anything. Today you borrow my quiet and Ben's steadiness and Rose's stubbornness and Finn's competence and Poe's inappropriate timing. We will build a bridge of other people until your feet can stand on their own."

Ben swallowed once and set a cup in the Queen's reach; the Queen took it and brought it to Rey's lips. Rey didn't want it; she drank anyway because obedience now was survival.

"Again," the Queen murmured after a sip, gentle. "Good." She set the cup aside, pulled the wool higher over Rey's shoulder, and lay back, wrapping her daughter in the uncomplicated geometry of a mother's embrace. "He loved you," she said to the ceiling, as if he could hear it better that way. "We will honour him, every day until our breaths join his."

He bent and pressed his mouth to Rey's palm a second time, a prayer with a pulse. "I'll keep the door," he said, voice steadying into the soldier's promise. "I will not let pride argue with sense. I will make scenes when mercy needs a stage."

The Queen's hand found his shoulder and squeezed; it was the closest she could come to a knighthood in this room. "See that you do," she said, fond and unforgiving.

Rain leaned its forehead to the glass and stayed. The coals settled. Somewhere in the hall, the city's great bell rolled once, then again, teaching streets how to grieve.

Rey let her eyes close. Not to sleep; to rest the muscles that hold back the tide. Her mother's breath braided with hers; Ben's thumb traced slow circles over the band of her ring like a man reminding himself what promises sound like when the room is quiet.

"After the light changes twice," the Queen whispered into Rey's hair, the old measure of a day returning like a rope thrown across a river, "we'll rise. Not before."

Rey nodded—once, honest, terrified. The world didn't get easier. It got bearable.

For now, that was the shape of mercy.

Chapter Text

Days passed. tears fell. Silence filled the halls.

The rain had gentled to a silver mist. The keep moved with the quiet coordination of people who had been given a list and meant to honor it. Candles had been approved by the old women; Rose had bullied beauty into obedience—quince branches, rosemary, white lilies where they would not overwhelm—then cried in the vestry where no one could see and came back with her sleeves rolled.

The chapel wore mourning without theatrics: black cloth over bright banners, stone washed, brass polished until the candlelight had something to hold. A dais had been raised before the altar; upon it, the King lay in state beneath the royal cover, the crest bright as always and terrible for being still. Bread and salt rested at the foot of the bier; a small bowl of ink stood beside them, as if the room meant to remember how he’d ruled.

Rey dressed in silence. Mira buttoned the plain black gown, smoothed the long sleeves, pinned the veil. The bandage at Rey’s side pulled when she breathed; Mira’s hands slowed only when they had to, looking briefly like a prayer. Ben cinched the black sash at Rey’s waist himself and stepped back without letting his eyes linger where grief had thinned her.

The Queen came last, in unadorned black, fan shut. She did not ask if Rey was ready. She held out her hand. Rey took it.

They crossed the quiet hall together—mother and daughter, grief and its instruction—Ben a half-pace behind at Rey’s left shoulder like a door she could lean on without acknowledging it. Leia and Han waited at the chapel threshold; they stepped aside and bowed their heads as if to a weather front.

Inside, the first bell tolled.

Rey did not speak. She did not need to; the room knew her silence already. The Queen led her forward to the bier and let go. Rey stood very still, the veil making the world small and bearable, and put one gloved hand to the fold of the royal cover near his shoulder. She did not lift it again. She listened to the bell count.

Ben took his post at the door—no sword drawn, just the kind of attention that makes men consider their intent before they move. Finn ran the lines outside with gentle competence, turning grief into order without scolding it. Poe turned himself into a steward, guiding people with a hand and a whispered joke that worked only because his eyes were wrecked.

The people came.

They filed in by households and trades: the kitchens first, faces scrubbed, hands red from soap; stable lads smelling of clean straw; seamstresses with pricked thumbs; the ledger clerks with ink on their knuckles like a badge. A fisherman from the river walked all the way up, set his cap against his chest, and said nothing at all; he had already given a lifetime of words to weather. An old nurse who had outlived three princes leaned on her stick, peered at Rey through the veil as if to make sure, and nodded once—approval, sorrow, assignment.

Boys who had learned how to be tall in a year bowed and tried not to stare. Girls who had not yet unlearned skipping walked like queens for an afternoon because the floor required it. A child, too young for rules, broke from her mother’s hand and toddled to the rail; Rey bent a fraction through pain and put her fingers to the little palm through the carved wood, a single point of contact that made three people cry at once. The child solemnly left a daisy stolen from a hedge on the step. No one moved it.

A farmer offered a loaf he had clearly baked at dawn and carried unwrapped to keep it warm. The Queen herself took it and set it on the cloth beside the salt; later, Rose would cut it and send it out to the gate watch because Rey had ordered—by pointing and nodding and a look that meant now—that the guard would eat.

Every so often, the Queen touched Rey’s elbow to remind her when to incline her head. Rey obeyed: the kneeling old soldier with a tremor; the apprentice mason who had learned his letters copying the King’s decrees by moonlight. Rey’s throat burned against speech. She gave them the only language she had left—presence.

Leia and Han stood like a pair of steady posts at the back of the nave; when a petitioner looked lost between sorrow and fear, Leia’s eyes found them and made a path.

At sundown the bells paused. Lamps were lit; the vigil proper began.

The Queen moved to the foot of the bier and took her place in the first watch. Rey should have been in a chair—the healer had said it, Ben had repeated it—but grief has its own mathematics. Rey stood. When the pain in her side turned mean and bright, Ben shifted six inches closer so his shadow fell across her and she could borrow his breath without taking his hand. Twice he moved fractionally to break the drafts she couldn’t name. Once he tilted his head because he heard the stitch in her breathing change. He did not touch her.

Between the psalms, small rituals found their rightful place. Finn knelt and placed a short ledger on the rail—the first page blank, the second headed with names. He set the pen beside it, turned the inkstand so the nib would not blot. The Queen nodded; people came forward and signed—crooked, careful, proud. We witnessed. We ate because you ruled like this.

Poe and Rose carried baskets down the side aisles, offering slices of the farmer’s bread and cups of watered wine to those who had waited longest. “Bread before banners,” Poe said, low, because he had learned what that sentence could do in a room. When someone tried to refuse, Rose looked at them in a way that made refusal feel like heresy and, somehow, kindness.

Near midnight, Mira and two maids brought a chair. Rey did not sit. The Queen glanced at Ben; his jaw flexed once, anger biting at sense; he let it go. He adjusted nothing and stayed.

An hour later, Rey’s body decided to betray her. The wound grabbed when she shifted; dark swam at the edges of her sight. The veil kept the world small enough to survive; her knees did not. They bent. She would have fallen; she didn’t. Ben was already there—no show of it, no disturbance—shoulder under her hand before her palm knew it was reaching, moving the chair the last inch with his boot, lowering her into it as if the whole realm would learn manners by watching.

Rey sat. The room exhaled for her.

She bowed her head because it was the only position in which the pain consented to be something she could outwait. Through the veil she watched wax build at a votive’s lip and thought of every letter her father had signed, every ugly, useful law he had passed because bread mattered more than tidiness. The daisy on the step had wilted; someone (Rose; it was Rose) had quietly laid a second one beside it so this could be a custom later if it wanted to be.

At the turn of the night, the Queen moved aside and Leia came forward, laying a slender hand on the rail and bowing her head in a way that taught the room how to respect and grieve at once. Han took a place beside Ben at the back, weight balanced like a man who would happily be mistaken for furniture until furniture needed to be moved.

The healers floated at the edges with their small, infuriating cups. When they finally brought one to Rey, Ben took it first, tasted it, and handed it over without comment. Rey drank. The medicine softened the corners, not the center.

Somewhere near dawn, when the candleflames had begun their low dance and the bells waited to be told what to do next, an old woman in a gray shawl shuffled to the rail and signed the ledger with three patient strokes. She turned, peered through the veil, and said in a voice that sounded like clean laundry, “He was a good man.” Then, after a beat, just as firm: “You will be a good queen.”

Rey didn’t speak. She looked up. The old woman read the answer in those eyes and made a satisfied noise. When the night at last recognized morning—the light going from blue to a tentative pearl—the Queen’s hand found Rey’s shoulder.

“Enough,” she said, not unkind. “For now.”

Rey rose. The pain objected and was ignored. She stepped to the bier one last time, laid her palm on the fold of the cover she had touched first, and let that be language: I am here. I saw. I will remember how.

Ben opened the door. The day smelled like rain deciding to forgive. Outside, Rose, Finn, and Poe stood as if they had been carved there—red-eyed, purposeful, unruly in their devotion. Leia and Han fell in beside them, the column that had brought Rey yesterday becoming the company that would carry her through today.

Rey did not speak.

She didn’t have to. The bells took her silence up and carried it through the city, and the city, already learning her, understood.

Chapter Text

Their room was a hush of coals and lamplight, the kind of quiet that doesn’t insist—just holds.

Ben had changed the moment they returned from the chapel, but he hadn’t left the doorway long enough to cool. He eased Rey out of her black, unpinned the veil with hands that asked permission without words, and set both over the chair like flags that needed gentler wind. He drew the heavy wool up, then climbed in behind her and lay on his side the way he had the night after the ambush: one arm under her head so the pillow became a shoulder, the other across her waist above the bandage, his palm wide and warm, steadying without pressing.

She was all edges at first—cold hands, salt-damp lashes, breath caught high like it feared the descent. He didn’t try to guide it. He only matched it, patient, until hers began to borrow the longer shape of his.

“Tell me if anything hurts,” he whispered into her hair. “I don’t mean the obvious. I mean the parts I can fix—blankets, light, tea, my talking.”

A shiver ran through her and eased. “Don’t… fix,” she breathed, voice rough from a day of not using it. “Just… be.”

“Easy,” he said, and it wasn’t a correction. It was a vow.

He stroked her hair the way you learn to touch silk you’re mending: slow, one hand, in a line from crown to nape. After a while he found a small comb and, asking softly, worked through two gentle snarls like a man threading a needle in poor light. The sound of the teeth moving through was almost a lullaby. When he finished, he gathered the length and, because his hands needed something tender to do, he braided it loosely and tied the end with the ribbon that always lived on his wrist. The little bow looked absurd and perfect and made something in his throat tighten without warning.

“Tea?” he asked after a time, offering the cup to her hands but keeping most of the weight himself. She drank two careful sips and breathed through the catch when the bandage reminded her it had opinions. He took the cup back, set it aside, and found her fingers in the wool again, warming them between both of his.

“Your mother said I should borrow quiet,” she whispered, the words soft and astonished, as if they were learning how to walk. “I didn’t know how.”

“You’re doing it,” he murmured.

A sound that was almost a laugh ghosted across the pillow and faded into a small, wrecked sob. He didn’t shush her. He let her cry the way rain runs out of a roof seam—slow, irregular, honest—his thumb moving an absent circle over the band of her ring, as if reminding both of them what promises feel like under the skin.

“When I was fifteen,” he said at last, because stories sometimes hold you together better than anyone’s hands, “your father found me in the old library trying to copy his signature. I wasn’t forging”—he smiled into her hair; she could hear it—“I was practicing a bow for a paper I wanted to show him, and I thought if it looked like his, he might read it twice.”

“What did he do?” The question was a whisper, worn at the edges.

“He handed me a fresh sheet,” Ben said, “and told me to write in my own hand. Then he pointed at my elbow and said, ‘It’s honest when you smudge there. Keep that.’ I messed the next line on purpose, to prove I was listening. He pretended not to see me being a child.” Ben’s breath changed, a small unevenness. “And—he said something else. ‘If you love her, never give up.’ He was never vague, your father.”

“Of course he did” she chuckled through a sob.

“He knew. Thats why he kept inviting me back each summer,” he said, and kissed the top of her head.

They were very quiet then. Coals whispered. The rain, returned, softened its knuckles against the panes. From somewhere in the keep a bell marked a practical hour—too late for work, too early for sleep—but the day had not been interested in either.

Ben shifted a fraction, careful of the wound, and curled closer until his chest became a wall the night could lean against. He set their joined hands on the quilt and turned her palm in his, tilting it until the hidden red enamel of her ring caught the low light.

Her shoulders softened a little, the kind of release you only see when you’re close enough to count eyelashes. He felt it and let his own breath go, unbrave, a man who had been trying to be a door all day and was relieved to be allowed to be a person for a minute.

“I’m angry,” Rey said into the wool, and the floor of truth dropped again. “And I’m… small.”

“You get to be both,” he said. “I’ll keep the size of things off you while you are.”

“Promise me,” she whispered, and the words were wet. “If I can’t stand in front of them—tomorrow, after—if my legs don’t remember—”

“I’ll stand,” he said, already there. “And when yours remember, I’ll move.”

She was quiet, and the quiet wasn’t empty. After a while: “I didn’t say goodbye.”

He closed his eyes. When he opened them, the lamplight had turned the braid into a dark rope across the pillow.

“He knew, Rey,” he said, the way one soldier tells another the ground will hold because he has stamped on it himself. “He knew from your face at the door. From the way the city made space for you to walk.”

A breath that was almost a laugh trembled through her, then broke into another few tears. He caught them with the pad of his thumb, then did what he always does when words run short and the truth needs a body: he lifted her hand and pressed his mouth to the center of her palm—slow, exact—like a seal you can keep even when paper burns.

“For your heart,” he said, very quietly—as if the room might carry the message to the chapel without dropping it.

“For my… love,” she managed, the old answer frayed and brave, and the smallest, fiercest part of her unclenched at saying it.

He tucked the quilt under her shoulder with the hand that wasn’t holding hers, then shifted again so that his knees made a frame around the curve of her legs, sheltering without trapping. The braid slid; he hooked it gently back over her shoulder.

“If you run,” he started, reflex and prayer; then he stopped, remembering the road, the garden, the places where the sentence had been too much. “When you run,” he tried again, softer, “I’ll keep up.”

She turned her face just enough that he could feel the brush of her lashes against his wrist. “You already did,” she whispered.

The rain thinned, then remembered itself; the coals gave a polite sigh. Rey’s breaths evened into that fragile rhythm tired people slide into when a room has finally promised to hold. Ben stayed, counting with her—not to keep her from sinking, but to be there when she woke if the floor tried to tilt again.

He didn’t say be strong. He didn’t say tomorrow. He said the simple things, the ordinary they had promised to hoard. “Tea in the morning,” he murmured. “Bread before banners. Your mother at your right hand. My hand at the door.”

Her fingers tightened once around his. Sleep came on her like mercy with no explanation to make. Just before it took her, she turned her palm in his again and, without lifting her head, found the strength to give him the smallest gift she had left.

“If you run,” she breathed, ragged and sure, “I shall only chase you.”

He smiled into her hair, eyes closing finally, and let the room be the quiet they had borrowed all day.

“Deal,” he whispered, and kept watch while the light moved a little on the wall.

Chapter Text

They woke to a sky the color of old iron. The chapel bells were quiet for now, saving their voices. Somewhere in the keep, buckets clinked and whispers learned to carry, the way sound changes in a house that’s about to grieve in public.

Mira lit three lamps and drew the curtains halfway, leaving a steady gray to work by. On the dressing table, she had laid the ritual things in a neat line: a bowl steamed with rosemary and cloves; folded linen edged in black; the jet pins; an onyx circlet that was not a crown and felt like one; gloves the color of rainwater at night.

Rey sat very still in her shift while Mira unwound the night from her hair. The comb moved slow as prayer, teeth whispering through dark lengths Ben had braided loose before dawn. Each pass found a snarl and softened it. When the brush stilled, Mira wrapped the hair in a long, even plait and pinned it low, so the veil wouldn’t tug. The room smelled of rosemary, lamp oil, rain.

“Breathe,” Mira reminded, the way she had when Rey was eight and couldn’t stand still for buttons. “In. Out. Slow.”

Rey obeyed because the dress would not forgive impatience and because the fresh bandage at her left side demanded tribute. The healer had bound it tight and clean before the water boiled; Rey could feel the cross-grain stitches hold when she filled her lungs too fast. She didn’t speak. She hadn’t spoken much since the room took her; the morning did not insist.

“Wash,” Mira said softly, and offered the basin. Rey dipped her hands, palms up, letting heat and rosemary run across knuckles that had learned new vows. When she lifted them, Mira pressed the black-edged linen into her fingers and stood back.

The gown was plain, it was merciless. Black silk, matte as charcoal, fell from a fitted bodice to the floor in a single, impeccable line. No red thread hid in these seams; mourning allowed no private rebellions. The sleeves were long, buttoned from wrist to elbow with jet; the collar was modest, meant to make the throat a clean line for a veil to claim. Mira worked the closures with practiced fingers, talking only to the cloth.

“Left,” she warned—one breath—“now right—good,” when the fabric cleared the bandage without friction. She looped the sash low and flat, fastened it with a jet brooch that had belonged to Rey’s grandmother, and stepped away so Rey could see the shape she would wear to say goodbye.

On the table, wrapped in white, lay the King’s signet. The Queen entered while Rey was still looking at it—black without jewels, fan shut, her presence the only ornament a room like this permits. She didn’t ask if Rey was ready. She came at once to the table, unwrapped the ring, and held it in her palm as if it might break.

“He would want you to carry him,” she said simply.

Rey held out her hand. The ring was too large for any finger but her thumb; even there, it would travel. The Queen threaded a narrow black ribbon through it and tied it at the nape of Rey’s neck so the weight settled flat against her sternum, hidden under silk, heavy as a thought that would not leave.

The veil waited. Mira lifted it—black tulle edged fine as a confession—and set it from the circlet’s base to Rey’s waist, a steady fall that turned the world into a smaller, bearable thing. With the veil down, Rey’s field of vision became a soft-edged square that contained lamp, table, and the patient line of her own hands in her lap.

Ben knocked once—quiet, respecting the grammar of the morning—and entered at the Queen’s nod. He wore formal black cut like a sentence that doesn’t waste words; the discreet star at his breast had been turned dark with a strip of crepe; the ribbon at his wrist was black today, not red. He stopped halfway across the room because this was the sort of room that teaches even brave men where to put their feet.

“Your gloves,” he said, and only then did Rey notice he was carrying them, warmed between his palms. He came close enough to be weather without being anything else and pulled them on for her one finger at a time—thumb, forefinger, middle, ring, little—like counting. When he reached her left hand, he paused, eyes flicking once to the bandage under silk. Rey turned her hand so his work would be easier. He finished, smoothed the buttons, and stepped back.

The Queen lifted the onyx circlet. “Head high,” she murmured, which was not correction but remembrance. She set it in the smooths Mira had made, then rested both hands at Rey’s temples for a heartbeat—blessing, apology, instruction.

“You look like yourself,” she said. It was what mothers say when daughters.

Mira brought the last two tokens forward: a sprig of rosemary bound with black silk, to tuck into the sash for remembrance; and a folded square of linen, border stitched with a single hair-fine white line, for tears. Rey took the rosemary and slid it under the brooch. She took the linen and did not hide it. It sat in her right hand like a truce with the day.

Finn knocked and didn’t come in; his voice—steady, respectful—carried through the door. “The first bell in five minutes.” Behind him, Poe murmured to someone about the order of households, the new queue at the north transept, the daisy that would not leave the step. Rose’s quick feet went and came and went again; she paused long enough at the threshold to whisper, “You’re beautiful,” and ran before she could cry and make Mira start over.

Ben moved to Rey’s left, exactly where he always does, and offered his arm without speaking. He waited long enough for her to refuse. She did not. The Queen took Rey’s right hand—mother to daughter, ruler to heir—and together they made a small, deliberate tableau the room would remember: grief at the center; steadiness at the flanks; love at the hinge.

“Before we go,” the Queen said, very low, for the three of them only, “one thing.” She pressed two fingers just above the ribboned signet, feeling the weight there, the heat of Rey’s skin under silk. “He was proud,” she said, and did not let the words shake. “You will carry that better than any crown.”

Rey’s throat worked. Behind the veil, her eyes closed once, opened. She nodded. It was almost a bow.

Mira drew the door. Cool hall air found the lamps and made them think twice, then relent. Outside, the keep had shifted itself into a corridor of quiet faces. The first bell rolled up through stone and ribs, unhurried and enormous.

They began: the Queen on Rey’s right, Ben on her left, Mira three paces behind with the spare linen and a needle in her cuff she would not need if the world behaved. Rey walked like a woman in a story she had not finished learning, each step a decision that looked like grace. The veil made the world a measured thing; the signet pressed at her breast like a second heartbeat; the rosemary breathed remember at every stride.

At the corner, Ben leaned a fraction closer—close enough that she could borrow the shape of his breathing if hers forgot. He did not speak. He didn’t need to. His hand hovered at the small of her back, careful not to touch unless physics insisted.

They reached the landing. Below, the chapel doors stood open like a mouth that would learn to bless and to feed in the same day. The second bell joined the first.

Rey tightened her glove around the linen once and let it go. Then she did what her father had taught her to do first in all things: she went forward.

The bells began before the doors opened—slow, deliberate, the kind of toll that makes streets change their posture. Candlelight pooled along the chapel’s stone like warm rain; lilies and rosemary breathed under the rafters; black cloth blunted every bright banner until even color remembered how to bow.

At the top of the aisle the bier waited, covered in crimson stitched with the crest he had made mean something. Bread and salt rested at the foot; beside them, a small bowl of ink and a ledger with one patient line written in his hand and the rest left blank.

The doors swung wide.

They came as the old women had agreed they should: the Queen first, unadorned and unstartled, fan shut; Rey on her right, veiled, signet’s weight a firm, secret circle against her sternum; Ben at Rey’s left, formal black and a black ribbon at his wrist, attention honed to a point and offered to the room like shelter. Leia and Han took the place of steady at the rear of the household; Rose, Finn, and Poe slid into their stations like breath.

Rey walked with the care of someone carrying water to a fire. The gown’s silk did not whisper. The veil turned the world into a measured square: lamp, rail, hands. Twice her breath caught and found its way back. Ben did not touch her; his shadow moved with hers as if he could make drafts forget their business.

At the rail, the Queen’s palm pressed once at Rey’s elbow and fell away. Rey stepped forward, put her gloved hand to the fold near his shoulder, and lowered her head. The signet pressed warm against her skin. The bells went on telling the city.

The chaplain said the right old words without wasting anyone’s time. Between prayers, a plain psalm threaded the nave—no spectacle, only breath stacked into note. Rose’s voice, low and steady, tethered it when it tried to rise too high.

The Queen spoke first.

“My husband was not a tidy man, he was stubborn and passionate” she said, fan closed in both hands like a small, hard truth. “He put bread before banners and would sign an ugly law if it fed more mouths than a pretty one. He taught our daughter that mercy is good. He died in his bed—unforgivable—and we will set that right. But today we say what is owed: he kept us. We will keep each other.” Her gaze lifted, washed the room, landed on Rey and rested. “Grief is a tax the living pay on love. Pay it, and be kind.”

No one applauded. The silence approved her.

Leia came next, and the room tilted a little to make room for her certainty. “I measure rulers by what people dare to ask of them,” she said. “Your King made petition feel like breathing. He stood still when others ran and ran when others stood, and he never confused which was brave. We will miss him. We will imitate him.” She inclined her head to the Queen, to Rey, to the rail. “And we will stand with you until standing is a habit again.”

Han cleared his throat, grief roughening humor into usefulness. “He and I argued, often, about the correct number of laws,” he said. “He liked ‘enough.’ I liked ‘fewer.’ We found ‘the ones that work.’” A small, unwanted smile. “If there’s a heaven, he’s improving it.” Then he looked to Rey and let the smile go. “He was proud, kid. It’s not a weak word. It’s iron.”

At the psalm’s turn, Ben stepped forward—not to stand where the priest stood, but to lay his scabbarded sword on the lowest step, both hands beneath it.

"This man, he was more than a king. A father during the summer. A man who created one of the most beautiful things to grace this soil we walk. He guided me, he trained me, he gave me a wife of beauty and gold. She sparkles in the most darkest of times and I will forever be in his debt. I will live the rest of my days protecting her and loving her" He stepped back, resumed his post, and watched the corners for trouble that had the sense to keep its head down. Rey lifted her hand, sliding her fingers between his and saying nothing. Just small squeeze.

The Queen moved to the bier and, with Mira’s help, drew the crimson back a measured span—enough to show the line of his hand beneath linen, nothing that would teach the youngest the wrong lesson. She set her palm on the cloth and breathed. Then she stepped aside.

Rey went to where her mother had been.

She lifted her head.

Behind the veil, her mouth opened. A breath. Her voice—when it came—was a thread pulled through a too-small needle, soft, hoarse, undeniable.

“Thank you,” she said, looking at the shape under linen, the rail, the ledger, the bread, the city. “Everyone for coming"

Five words. The chapel took them like a sacrament. The Queen closed her eyes once, hard. Ben’s jaw went wrong and right again. Rose let out a sound that wasn’t quite a sob. Finn bowed his head over the ledger as if to keep ink from seeing him cry. Poe put his hand over his mouth and said nothing for once.

The committal began.

Pallbearers lifted; the bells altered their work; the city learned the weight of lowering. Through the nave, down the narrow stair to the royal crypt—the old stones cool and damp, lilies turning their faces to where air moved—bread and salt borne ahead, ink and ledger carried careful as a sleeping child.

In the crypt the world got smaller and truer. The tomb lay open, stone ready, edges dressed. The Queen kissed her fingertips and laid them to the coverlet. Leia did the same, a general giving honors. Han pressed his palm flat, then stepped back quickly because love can be embarrassed by witnesses. Rey came last. She pressed her whole hand and did not lift it until the bearers gently asked her to with the motion of their shoulders.

A handful of earth waited in a silver bowl—the kind taken from a family garden when it learns it has to do more than grow fruit. The Queen dropped the first pinch. Leia, the second. Han, the third, with a muttered something that might have been a blessing and might have been a promise to argue later. Rey took her pinch and let it fall. The sound it made against the cloth was smaller than she expected and infinitely heavy.

The chaplain spoke the final words. The lid sealed—stone speaking to stone in a low, final grammar. A long beat of quiet. Then the bells above found their last toll for the day and held it until the edges of it softened.

Rey swayed. Ben didn’t reach; he shifted—a half step closer, a breath she could borrow, a wall that learned where wind came in and leaned there. She stayed on her feet because she had decided to, and the room learned a new rule: grief does not have to be pretty to be brave.

Chapter Text

The bells were done with the day. The keep exhaled into a hush that wasn’t empty—just careful. In Rey’s room the coals kept a small, obedient glow; the veil lay folded on the chair; her black gown hung like a shadow that had learned manners.

She sat at the dressing table in her nightgown, hair unpinned and clean, the bandage along her left side pulling when she forgot to breathe like the healer taught. Around her, the little proofs of a life arranged themselves: the rosemary sprig from the bier, set to dry on a saucer; a daisy pressed between the pages of a book that didn’t deserve the honor; the handkerchief folded small, its kiss-stained corner hidden and bright; the King’s signet on its black ribbon, warm where it rested against her sternum.

Tomorrow the crown would come out of its box.

She touched nothing for a long time. The window held a sky the color of pewter, then softened to smoke. The quiet gathered itself the way linen does, crease by crease, until it lay flat enough to bear weight.

At last she slid open a drawer and brought out paper, ink, a quill. She set her elbow on the table and watched the end of the feather tremble. When she dipped the nib, she remembered Ben’s story—fifteen, too proud and trying to copy a better hand—and her father’s answer: Write in your own. It’s honest when you smudge there. Keep that.

She let the tip blot once, on purpose.

On the top of the page she wrote, in a clean, unadorned line:

Bread before banners.

Under it: Count hands first. Exits second.

Under that, smaller: If a law gets in the way, bring me ink.

She paused. The signet’s weight pressed into bone like a second heartbeat. Below the rules, in letters that held even with her hand shaking, she added:

Thank you. I will feed them.

She did not sign Princess. She did not sign Queen. She signed Rey, smudged her elbow just enough to please a man who would not see it, and blotted the page as if it were an oath.

Her breath hitched. It came back. She set the paper beneath the handkerchief and, after a moment, slid the daisy between them so the day could learn to make room for both kinds of vow.

Across the room, the robe for tomorrow waited in its muslin—a white that did not belong to weddings anymore and would wear a hair-thin red line at the hem because the seamstress had cried and Rose had said let her. Rey didn’t touch it. She looked until her eyes understood the weight and then looked away.

“Papa,” she said, very softly, because the room had learned to hold small sounds kindly. “I’m afraid.”

The quiet didn’t argue. The coals breathed. Somewhere, a watchman coughed into his scarf and remembered to be quiet for a house that was trying to sleep.

She reached for the signet and pressed it flat against her sternum, over the ribbon, over bone. Through the mirror she watched the rise and fall of her own breath and counted it the way he’d taught her to count thunder until it stops pretending it’s anything but noise.

“Don’t be too sad,” her mother had said, holding grief steady with one arm and the future with the other. He died knowing you would be safe. Rey let that sentence settle in her blood like medicine that tastes wrong and works.

She stood, slowly—ugly and careful, as ever since the knife—and crossed to the window. The glass held her face and not much else: a pale oval, hair loose, eyes that had learned new work. She pressed her palm to the pane and left a small fogged print. It faded. She pressed it again and held it until the warmth took.

“Watch me,” she whispered. To her father. To the city. To the parts of herself that were still crouched behind the door she would have to hold.

She turned back to the table. On impulse she slid the ring from her finger, turned it so the hidden scarlet kissed the pad of her thumb, and put it on again. A private ember. She wasn’t done with black; tomorrow would be black too, beneath the ceremony. But somewhere the red thread had to keep its place or she would forget what they’d promised to make of all this: a life that fed other people and dared joy to keep showing up.

The pain in her side tugged. She obeyed it and sat on the edge of the bed. The room made the small, domestic sounds rooms make when they are trying to be brave: wool settling, the faintest tick of cooling iron. On the chair, the veil waited. On the table, the list waited. By the door, the latch waited for a hand that would learn to be a hinge, not a trophy.

“Tomorrow,” she said, to see if the word would sit without running. It did. “We’ll stand.”

A knock—one, careful—at the outer door; Ben. She didn’t speak. He didn’t enter. His voice came quiet through the seam. “Lamp in an hour,” he said. “Tea at dawn. I’ll be by the door.”

“I know,” she answered.

Footsteps retreated. The room became hers again. She lay back, very slowly, and drew the blanket up. For a long time she stared at the ceiling and rehearsed what the weight would feel like—cool metal, quiet watching, the way people breathe differently when gold enters a room. She pictured her father’s hand at the back of her head—brief, iron, tender—straightening a crown and saying what he always said when things got too loud: Borrow my quiet.

She borrowed it now. She held it to her chest with the signet and the ache and the list.

Chapter Text

The castle woke before Rey did.

When her eyes opened, the air already held a charge—linen being shaken, boots negotiating corridors, a hush of voices made smaller by the size of the day. Bells did not ring yet; lists did. Somewhere, Rose was scolding flowers into behaving;

Mira slid the curtains wide to a pewter sky that promised to mind its manners. “Up, Highness,” she said softly, the title heavier now, truer. “We must dress the morning.”

Rey sat carefully. The bandage along her left side tugged—less argument, more reminder. Ben was already at the door, black and formal, ribbon dark at his wrist, calm made visible. He didn’t cross the threshold. He lifted a hand in that small way that meant I’m here and went to make the corridor obey while Mira brought hot water and a towel edged in black.

The room had turned into a deliberate machine. On the dressing table: a basin steaming with rosemary; folded linen; the onyx circlet set aside, replaced today by the crown’s traveling case—plain oak, no filigree, hinges oiled to silence. Beside it lay the coronation robe in its muslin: white that wasn’t bridal, white you could make vows to a city in; at the hem and inner seams, a hair-thin line of red thread—someone’s quiet rebellion, someone’s blessing.

The Queen arrived without announcement, black exchanged for a deep, steady gray. She looked at her daughter the way a map looks at a road it knows will hold. “Breathe,” she reminded, the old instruction that made new work.

Rey did. “I’m ready,” she said, and didn’t check the room to see if it believed her.

Mira washed Rey’s hands with water that smelled like gardens after rain, then her face, then the pulse-points like a small liturgy. “In. Out.” She wrapped Rey’s hair into a low, even coil and left two loose strands to soften the line without courting vanity. The bandage she checked with a deft press: clean, tight, serviceable. “Stand if you please.”

The robe was an argument with gravity. Mira and a maid lifted it together, the white falling like breath. The sleeves were long, closed with mother-of-pearl—modest and uncompromising. The inner lining was quilted where the weight gathered at the shoulders; the hidden red stitching showed itself only when the cloth moved, a pulse under snow. The sash crossed left under right to keep pressure off the wound; Mira fastened it flat with a clasp carved from jet, old as a grandparent’s story.

“Left,” Mira warned gently, and Rey eased her arm through without pulling the stitches. “Good.” A last tug smoothed the fall. The robe made her taller; grief had already made her older.

A knock; Ben entered at the Queen’s nod, carrying gloves and the little packet from the healer. He set the packet down, broke the wax, and passed Mira the anointing oil with the same hands he uses to hold steel: small bottle, amber light in glass.

“After the oath,” the Queen said, and Ben replaced it with a precise care that looked like devotion because it was.

The crown would come last. Before it: the mantle—white wool edged in sable for winter, today replaced by summer’s lighter weave, the hair-thin red riband running discreet at the inside border. Mira and the maid draped it over Rey’s shoulders. Weight settled; Rey steadied beneath it. The King’s signet, ribbon black, rested warm at her sternum under the robe: a hidden circle, a private weight.

“Gloves,” Ben said, stepping forward just enough to do the work without stepping into her light. He pulled them on for her one finger at a time, counting under his breath—thumb, forefinger, middle, ring, little—like prayer disguised as inventory. At the left, he paused, eyes flicking once to her side.

The crown case opened on its practical hinges. It was not ostentatious—a circlet of worked gold with eight small points, each set with a stone the color of something useful: wheat, water, iron, dusk. The Queen lifted it as if it remembered the shape of her hands.

“Head high,” she murmured, not correction, remembrance.

She did not set it yet. She held it poised above Rey’s hair while Mira pinned the last coil, then lowered it until the metal found bone, found balance, found the place where weight becomes fact. The cool laid along Rey’s scalp; the room adjusted itself around her.

For a heartbeat, nothing moved.

Then the castle remembered it had breath to take. Finn’s voice reached through the door like a measured drumbeat: “First bell in three.”

The Queen stood in front of Rey and set two fingers just above the signet under the robe, where the ribbon cut a dark line over bone. “Remember this when the gold forgets to be light,” she said. “He is not in the crown. He is in what you do with it.”

Rey nodded. Her breath did not shake. Ben, at her left, did not look at the crown at all; he looked at her mouth to be sure she was breathing and at her hands to be sure they were warm.

“Your scepter,” Mira said, and it surprised Rey a little that the word didn’t feel silly. The staff was simple: ironwood banded with silver, head carved with a sheaf of grain. Bread before banners, made into a thing you could hold. Rey took it and felt her shoulders find a new line.

Rey looked at Ben. He didn’t speak. He offered his arm like a hinge she could lean on until the door learned to stand.

She placed her gloved hand there, light, and turned to the Queen. The three of them—grief, steadiness, heir—moved toward the door the way a promise finds a voice.

The corridor outside had arranged itself into meaning. Servants lined the walls two deep, faces scrubbed, hands still; guards in plain sashes held their chins like they belonged to a city learning a new posture. Mira fell in three paces back with a needle in her cuff she would not need if the world behaved. The healer, ghosting at the edges, caught Rey’s eye once and dipped her head—not asking, acknowledging.

At the landing, the household paused. Ben’s hand hovered at the small of Rey’s back—not touching unless physics insisted, ready if it did. The Queen lifted her chin and the palace—very sensibly—followed suit.

The first bell rolled up through rib and stone.

“Bread before banners,” Rey said, very quietly, to the signet and the red seam and the daisy pressed in the book across the room. “Count hands first.”

Ben’s mouth tipped; he did not quite smile. “And ink, if a law forgets itself.”

“Bring me ink,” she said, firmer, to the day.

The second bell joined the first.

They began. The robe moved like agreement. The crown did not slip. Rey’s breath found the timing of the steps; her side obeyed the treaty made with it; the scepter’s weight became sure in her hand.

At the chapel doors, the light changed—candle into morning, mourning into vow. The Queen’s fingers squeezed once at Rey’s right. Ben said nothing and made a door of himself where danger would have to pass.

“Watch me,” Rey whispered, and the morning—chaos contained, preparations finished—did. Then the doors opened, and the city’s old silence made room for a new kind of noise.

The procession paused at the threshold. The Queen—mother and sovereign both—stood to Rey’s right. Ben stood to Rey’s left, a hinge she could lean on until the door learned to hold itself. Behind them, Rose, Finn, and Poe took their places like breath: Rose in the transept with wicks and watchfulness; Finn at the side door, competence turned into quiet law; Poe where the lost might look and find a hand.

The bells rolled once. Twice.

They entered.

Rey’s white robe moved like agreement. The hair-thin red seam stitched the hem where only air could read it. The scepter—ironwood banded with silver, a sheaf of grain at its head—sat sure in her palm. Beneath the robe, the King’s signet lay warm against her sternum on a black ribbon: hidden circle, private weight. The crown waited on a linen-draped cushion held by Mira, who had never once dropped anything that mattered.

At the rail the chaplain bowed to the Queen, to Rey, to Ben, then to the room. He was a plain man with a voice that didn’t waste anyone’s time.

“Who comes,” he asked, “to take the oath and the weight?”

The Queen answered first, because grammar and grief had agreed to share a throat. “Rey,” she said, clear. “Daughter of this house. Chosen by law and living need.”

“And who stands with her,” the chaplain asked, “to keep the door where danger must pass?”

“Ben Solo,” Leia answered from the nave, her voice soft and steel. “Son of my house. Given by vow.”

The chaplain nodded once, satisfied with the names and the way they fit. He raised his book and lowered his eyes to Rey.

“Do you, Rey—” his words were old, honest—“swear to lay bread before banners; to count hands first and exits second; to carry ink where law fails; to keep doors for those who cannot open them; to rule without vanity and with mercy that feeds more mouths than pride?”

Rey’s breath didn’t shake. She felt the signet’s weight against bone and let it anchor her answer. “I do,” she said.

Mira stepped forward with the small vial. The chaplain anointed Rey at the temple, at the wrist, and—at the Queen’s nod—once above the hidden signet, the warm press of rosemary and clove staining silk only in spirit. “Be steady,” he murmured, old phrase to new hands. “Be kind, on purpose.”

Mira brought the crown. The Queen lifted it not like an ornament, but like a tool.

“Head high,” she said, remembrancing, and set the gold where bone knew how to bear it. Eight points—wheat, water, iron, dusk—caught the candlelight and held it without greed.

The chaplain placed the scepter back into Rey’s gloved hand.

He turned then to Ben. “And you, Ben—what will you swear, that we may know the shape of your standing?”

Ben stepped one pace forward. He did not kneel to the priest; he laid his scabbarded sword across both palms on the lowest step and bent his head over it—older than crowns, exact as breath. “I swear,” he said, voice steady, carrying, “to keep the door. To be first in and last out. To stand where danger must pass to reach her or the people she serves. To make scenes when mercy needs a stage. To count hands first, as she does.”

The chaplain’s mouth tipped; he had heard worse vows and less useful ones. “Rise,” he said, though Ben had not bowed for him so much as for duty. “Stand where you mean to stand.”

Leia and Han came forward with two old symbols made clean by use: a ringed key and a narrow baton. Leia placed the key in Ben’s hand—gate, roof, river; all the doors a kingdom owns. Han set the baton in the crook of his elbow—authority that refuses to swagger. Ben took both and turned without show to pass the baton at once to Finn—delegation made public and plain—keeping the key because keys are promises you can count.

The chaplain lifted his hands. “Witnesses?”

The city answered. Kitchen hands and clerks, fishmongers and seamstresses, captains and old women with opinions—all of them said 'Aye' in the grammar they had brought: a murmur, a breath, a soft stomp of boots, a single clap that decided not to echo because today was not for that.

“Then let it be done,” the chaplain said.

Mira and a second maid drew the white mantle over Rey’s shoulders—summer weight, red riband hidden at the inner border. The Queen adjusted it by a fraction. Ben took his place half a step behind Rey’s left, the hinge now load-bearing, the door learning his shape.

Rey stepped forward to the rail. She set the scepter’s foot on stone and lifted her free hand—not high, not theatrical, just enough to teach the room her measure. Through the veil of ceremony she could feel the city’s breath, waiting to hear what its days would be asked to sound like now.

She spoke four sentences. That was enough.

“Thank you,” she said first, because power must learn to say it out loud. “We will feed you before we ornament you. If a law gets in your way, bring me ink. And when fear knocks, I will open the door from the inside.”

Silence took the words and made room for them to live.

Ben’s hand hovered at her back, not touching unless physics insisted. It didn’t, but the heat of him was there, a steady, ordinary miracle.

The chaplain lifted the book high. “Rey,” he said, voice finding the roof, “Queen.” A breath. He tipped the book, turned it, and his mouth softened around the second name as if the day had been waiting to forgive something. “Ben,” he added, with a soldier’s respect for accuracy, “King.”

The bells answered like weather returning.

It began low and then broadened—Long live the Queen! Long live the King!—the old cry learning new names without stumbling. Hats came off; heads bowed; a child near the front waved, because children do, and Rose waved back to teach joy it was still legal.

Rey turned, just enough to find Ben’s eyes. The room watched them commit a small heresy and learn a custom in the same breath. She offered her gloved palm. He didn’t take the glove off. He bent and pressed his mouth to its center.

“For your heart,” he said, very quietly.

“For my people,” she answered, and the answer fit them both.

They faced the doors together. Finn opened them. The Queen stood at Rey’s right, approval and iron. Outside, the balcony learned their weight. The city below, still wet with last night’s rain, lifted its face. Rey stepped into the light with a crown that had remembered to be light, a scepter made to be used, and a hinge at her side who had sworn to keep the door.

She raised her hand once, palm over ribboned signet The cheer ebbed into a listening hush. Wind lifted the edge of Rey’s mantle; the crown settled, sure as a hand. She felt the signet’s weight against her sternum, the scepter’s grain under her palm, Ben’s heat a breath behind her left shoulder—door and oath made flesh.

“My first act,” she said—clear, steady—“is justice.”

A runner brought a scroll and an inkstand to a small table just within the threshold; the quill waited like a drawn breath. Rey did not look back.

“Armitage Hux,” she called, naming him to the air that would carry this day down every alley, “you who murdered a sleeping King. You, who killed my father where he slept and set knives on our roads—hear me. The Crown’s protection is withdrawn from you. You are forsworn, outlawed, and wanted—alive—to answer for your crimes in daylight.”

A ripple moved through the square—not noise so much as muscles remembering they could be used.

“To all who hold our gates, roof, and river: close your hands. To all officers of the watch and riders of the marches: hunt him. Take him alive or stand aside for those who can.”

She lifted the scepter—ironwood and grain—and set its foot on stone.

“To any soul who brings true word that leads to his capture alive, the Crown offers a bounty in silver—a purse sufficient to feed a village for a year—and safe-conduct signed by my hand. To any who deliver him alive into royal custody, thrice that sum and clemency for lesser complicity proved under oath.”

A beat; her voice cooled.

“To any who harbor him knowingly: you choose treason and will be judged as such. We do not punish wives and children for a coward’s sin. Lay down arms, and you will live to cook your own supper.”

She turned a fraction, enough that Ben could hear the next as much as the city.

“Lord Ben Solo, King—keep the door. Lead the hunt with Captain Finn. General Organa will hold the lists.”

Ben’s answer was small enough for only her to hear and strong enough to move stone. “Yes.”

Rey stepped back to the little table. She took up the quill, blotted it once like a blessing, and wrote in her own hand:

Writ of Outlawry and Apprehension — Armitage Hux — To Be Brought Alive.
By order of Rey, Queen.

She signed Rey, smudged her elbow enough to make a dead man smile, and pressed the hot seal the Queen had readied—a clean impression of wheat and water. Ben countersigned, a firm, spare Ben, and set the seal of the Door beside it: a simple key.

Poe took the first copy with a bow that almost turned into a grin and a tear, and sprinted for the criers. Rey returned to the stone. She lifted her gloved palm and set it against her breast—over the signet, over bone, over the red seam only air could read.

“This is our vow,” she said. “We will feed you. We will keep you. We will make the road ours again.”

Chapter Text

They slipped out by a side stair while the bells were still ringing themselves calmer. The keep hummed around them—quiet congratulations, lists finding feet—but the long passage to their rooms was nearly empty, all rug and echo and the steady hush of stone.

Rey reached for Ben’s hand; he gave it; they walked three slow steps.

Then, with a grin that made him look indecently young for a man wearing a crown, he hooked an arm behind her knees and another at her back and lifted.

“Ben—!” It was half-scold, half-breathless laugh—the first laugh he’d heard from her that wasn’t frayed—and he was already moving, not jarring, not foolish, just long-legged and wicked with joy, carrying her down the corridor like a boy jumping a stream.

And then—shockingly, gloriously—she giggled. It spilled out unplanned, bright enough to make the lamps seem complicit.

He slowed at the bend, because the world still had a bandage and he meant to keep it. “You should know,” he said, a little breathless, “I’ve been wanting to run off with you in a corridor since we were children.”

“Since we were twelve,” she teased, eyes shining beneath the crown.

He shook his head, smiling like a thief blessed by a saint. “Earlier.”

He stopped where the runner changed color and set her very carefully on the floor—slow, obvious, the way you set something down you have no intention of ever dropping. It was the corner where apples had once warmed on stone, where two children had once learned what a dare felt like: the corridor that had kept their first kiss.

He leaned against the wall, hands still at her waist until he was absolutely sure she’d found her balance, then slid them away and let himself look at her properly: the crown sitting where bone knew how to bear it, the white robe with its hidden red seam, the small smile she didn’t quite trust yet and he’d die to keep.

“The first time I saw you,” he said, and it surprised her how soft his voice could be when joy was in it, “wasn’t here.”

“No?” Her head tipped, veil gone for the day but the old curiosity still living where it always had. “When?”

“Winter.” His mouth crooked. “At my mother’s house. You and your parents came for a week between storms. You probably don’t remember—”

Rey’s brows drew together.

“It was the year the snow came in too quick,” he said, eyes gone distant with the kind of past that still warms your hands. “You took a horse out with a groom who should’ve known better—we were all too proud of how calm that mare was in weather. The lake crusted over, then blinked, and you—”

“—went through,” she finished, breath catching. The cold was suddenly there in her skin, the bright shock of it, the sound ice makes when it remembers it’s water.

“I saw you from the library,” he said. “Just a flicker of blue scarf, and then the groom shouting and no one close enough. I ran before I thought. There was a coil of rope by the boathouse—I threw one end to the groom and took the other and—” He shrugged, understatement with teeth. “The lake was colder than I could invent in my head. I thought my lungs had made enemies.”

Rey stared at him, the memory sharpening with his words: gloved hands on slick ice; a boy with dark hair and a ripped blue scarf, soaked to the ribs, eyes furious with purpose; a voice he hadn’t finished growing into, saying I’ve got you, don’t be brave, be clever—grab the rope, that’s it— and arms around her under the pits, hauling, holding, refusing to let the lake decide.

“You were the boy who pulled me from the lake?” she asked, wonder and gratitude and something older than both threading the question.

He ducked his head, cheeks coloring like a man remembering the moment he stopped being a rumor to himself. “I was the idiot who went in after a princess with a knot I’d only practiced on boat posts,” he amended, smiling. “My mother scolded me until my ears rang, and then she cried into my hair when she thought no one could see.”

Rey’s laugh went soft and wet around the edges. “We sat by the kitchen fire,” she said slowly, piecing it together. “Someone made cinnamon milk. The cook swore at the groom until he promised never to be stupid again. And there was a boy standing in the doorway, shivering and pretending he wasn’t.”

“I didn’t want to be sent off,” he admitted. “I wanted to make sure you were breathing before anyone decided I’d had enough heroics for one lifetime.” He lifted a hand, hovered, then brushed a strand of hair behind her ear with the carefulness of that same boy. “You looked at me, and I thought—oh. There you are. And then you were gone in a tide of blankets and queens and I only saw you again the next summer here.”

“And you never said anything!”

“I wanted you to choose me without owing me,” he said simply. “Without a debt in it. I already knew I’d spend the rest of my life chasing you—” the grin came back, ruined and golden—“but I wanted it to be because you ran, not because I dragged you out of a lake.”

She took his hand—glove to glove, then, not satisfied, she pulled the glove off and put her bare fingers to his cheek, warm and alive and absolutely hers. “You have saved me more than once,” she said, voice low. “From lakes. From ambushes. From rooms too big. From myself.”

“Say the word,” he offered, lighter—because joy had no reason to hide now—“and I’ll scoop you up again and run you all the way to the kitchen for cinnamon milk.”

She giggled—actually giggled—and then made a regal face with effort. “Your Queen decrees… later.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” He bowed extravagantly to the empty corridor and straightened with that look she’d learned as a girl and would spend a lifetime answering. “For now, I have a confession.”

“Oh?”

“I’ve been wanting to steal a kiss for some time now. Does the Queen permit such an act?" Rey looked behind him and smiled before taking his hand. She dragged him back up the corridor and turned left. A door at the end of a hall. It was Rey's hideout when she was a child. She opened the door pushing Ben inside with a yelp. A cheeky smile on her lips as she closed the door. A small candle lit in the corner. Both faces lit in the dim shadowy light.

He lifted on hand up to her face, a smile on her lips.

"Have your moment milord" Rey leaned forward, she ignored the pain and placed a small kiss on the side of Ben's neck. Her lips warm against his cold skin. A soft moan escaped him the second she touched him. She slowly dragged her lips up to his ear.

"I do hope" She whispered heavily, yet soft against his ear. A teasing purr "You plan on serving your queen in all manners?"

He coughed slightly.

"What does her highness have in mind?" He almost stutters. His brain failing him. She slowly moved back from his ear and moved her hands behind her back, her fingers hooking around the lace and pulling. Her corset becoming loose.

"I mean, serve me, please me, make me scream"

He dropped to his knees like a man praying to god. Rey lowered herself down into the chair behind her. Ben's fingers slowly creeping to the hem of her dress. His fingers brushing over her ankles as his large hands claimed her skin. Slowly dragging them up her legs, her dress lifting with his movements. His warm lips pressing kisses up her legs and around her thighs. His teeth grazing at times releasing a soft moan from Rey. He moved up her body, slowly pulling her down, he was careful how he laid her.

“You’re fucking beautiful, Rey,” Ben said before he lowered himself over her planting kisses along her neck, working his way down her body in an achingly slow manner. He reached one pert breast, teasing her nipple with his tongue while one hand on the other breast. He moved to the other breast after a few moments.

Rey wove her hands into his hair as he worked his way further down her body, trying not to squirm at the feeling already building deep within her. When she felt his warm hands slide onto her thighs before pulling them apart, Rey tilted her head back, his touch searing her skin.

Ben kissed both her thighs before settling himself between her legs, looking up at her after a moment and remarking, “You are so wet for me…” He kissed a slow path to her swollen, achy core, his tongue sliding between her folds as he pushed a finger inside her slowly.

His tongue sliding through her soaked folds with little effort, his finger plunging inside her over and over as his tongue circling her, sending sparks of pleasure throughout her body. Tugging at his hair until he slid up her body, his cock lying thick and ready between them, Rey kissed him hungrily, loving the way she tasted on his lips and tongue.

“I want to ride your cock, Ben,” Rey looked into his eyes before reaching down with one hand to slide her fingers around his shaft and stroke gently.

Ben shuddered, his eyes closing briefly as he nodded at Rey. He wanted to be buried inside her more than anything - and now; he was more than willing to let her take the lead if she wanted to. He slid off her and clambered to his back, his cock shifting so that it lay against his stomach now. He helped her up and over him. Her dress being a problem. She slowly lowered herself onto him.

“Fuck, Rey,” Ben whispered as she sat as still as she could, allowing her body to adjust around him. Finally, she moved, her hips slowly undulating to account for the feeling of fullness he was giving her already. Ben’s hands went to her hips for leverage, his length sliding further inside her with every slow stroke downwards, until he was fully inside her.

The moan that came from his lips was sinful, and Rey grinned as she took another moment to look down at him, his hair splayed on the pillow beneath his head. He looked like a Greek God, her own personal Adonis that the Heavens were blessing her with.

She moved again. His fingers dug into her hips as he held them in place now so he could fuck up into her, setting a relentless pace.

Rey bounced on his cock, letting her head fall back as she moaned incomprehensible words, her hands coming up to pinch at her erect nipples as she rode Ben’s cock until her second orgasm hit her like a freight train, her cunt clenching around his cock, causing him to grunt out his own release.

Rey slumped forward onto Ben’s sweaty chest, both of them breathing heavily as they came down from their high together. All her pains were a distant memory right now.

Chapter Text

It had been weeks. Being Queen had been more fulfilling than she had expected. She enjoyed it for the most part and was loved by the people. She was kind and caring, yet a noble leader but today was the final check on her stab wound. The scar along Rey's left side had faded from angry to honest, a thin line that tugged only when she forgot to be gentle with herself. She kept forgetting.

"Let me see what the road left you," the healer said, voice practical as folded linen. The chamber was warm with steeping herbs; rain fingered the casement without insisting. Rey shrugged out of her working bodice and lay back on the narrow bed, the ribboned signet cool where it rested against her sternum.

Fingers—clean, sure—checked the stitch line. "Good knitting," the healer approved. "No heat. No weep. Breathe."

Rey did. The healer watched the rise and fall, listened in the way old women do—with hands, with bone. She pressed lightly above the scar, then lower, mapping muscle and memory. Her brow gathered, not storm—attention.

"Again," she murmured. "Slow."

Rey exhaled, tried to be a straightforward landscape. The healer's palm paused just below her navel, then shifted, gentle, thoughtful. She sat back a fraction, eyes going somewhere that wasn't worry and wasn't nothing.

"What is it?" Rey asked, too fast. The room suddenly felt very specific.

"Nothing I'll name from a single breath," the healer said, cautious and kind. "But there's a... fullness that is not the work of scars."

Rey blinked. The words hovered in air, unclaimed.

The healer's hands moved to Rey's wrists, two fingers settling at the pulse points. She counted silently, then looked up. "Your heart says you've been busy. Your pulse says you might be keeping time for more than yourself."

Rey's mouth went dry. A hundred practical thoughts tried out for relevance and failed. One entirely impractical one sat down in her chest and refused to move.

"My cycle—" She stopped. Counted backward through days that had not had space for personal arithmetic. The math caught up. "It's late," she heard herself say, very small.

"It could be grief," the healer allowed. "It could be work. It could be a body that took a knife and has opinions. It could be." A breath. "It could also be the other kind of late."

The room changed shape around the sentence. Not bigger. Closer.

"I'd like to do more checks," the healer said, softening the words with the offer in them. "Nothing that will jolt you. Two are simple: I'll listen again in a week when the tide has shifted—a sound I know how to hear. And tomorrow morning, first light, you'll bring me the first water of the day. There are herbs that bloom for truths they recognize." She tilted her head. "And I'd like to send for Mistress Hale—the midwife who taught my hands. Four ears. Two sets of patience. No guesses."

Rey swallowed. The signet felt suddenly heavier and perfectly placed. Beyond the door the keep breathed the ordinary noises of a realm that hadn't been given this room's possible news. "Ben," she said, and the name came out like a hand looking for a hand.

The healer's eyes warmed with a kindness that never confused itself with gossip. "He can wait just outside if you like. Or you can keep this one thing quiet for a night and try your breath on it before it has to share space."

Rey stared at the low ceiling,

"Tomorrow morning," she said, steady enough. "And the midwife."

"Good." The healer set a palm briefly over Rey's, weightless and reassuring. "In the meantime: no heroics. No fasting. No pennyroyal nonsense from old aunties with opinions. If you feel the room tilt—sit. If you feel your breath climb too high—borrow someone else's."

Rey nodded. She sat up slowly; the scar tugged and let go. The healer buttoned her back into her bodice with the same gentle competence she'd used on the bandage weeks ago, then stepped to the door and opened it halfway.

Ben was waiting in the corridor, crown traded for the ribbon on his wrist and a face he had spent all morning keeping useful. He straightened, reading Rey before he looked at the healer, then stopping because he'd been taught not to step over the edge of a private thing.

"Well?" he asked, careful.

"The wound is clean," the healer said, truth first. "Her Majesty forgot to be mortal and the body filed a complaint. I've asked for more rest." A beat, something like a smile threading the space between them. "And a few quiet checks in the morning, for my peace."

Ben's eyes flicked to Rey's, question without pressure. She held his gaze a breath longer than usual and felt the room learn a new kind of silence around them.

"Tomorrow," she said, and reached for his hand like a woman who has discovered a new door and is not ready to open it in a hallway. "Walk me?"

They moved down the corridor together, her fingers folded in his, the secret small and unfrightened between them for one more turn of the keep. Behind them, the healer began laying out what she would need at dawn: a clean bowl, a sprig of rosemary, patience.

Dinner was a low, civilized storm. Voices stacked politely, silver chimed, candles made manners of the dark. Rey sat at the high table and moved her fork through a field of perfectly roasted carrots as if she were drawing borders no one had asked for.

"...the river toll at the south bend—Your Majesty?"

She didn't hear it until the question had become an echo. Ben's hand rested on the table between them, two inches from hers, patient as a door. She blinked, found the steward's careful face, and realized she hadn't answered the last two inquiries either.

"Later," she said, gently, and the poor man bowed himself into grateful invisibility.

Finn's gaze flicked to Ben's, a quiet query. The roasted pheasant cooled. Bread sat untouched beside Rey's plate like a promise she couldn't pick up.

"Rey." Rose's voice arrived from three chairs down, sweet as a bell and exactly as unstoppable. "Walk with me."

"I—"

"Now," Rose repeated, already up, smiling at the table with the kind of charm that means forgive us, we're dramatic, and taking Rey's hand as if they were still girls. To the room: "We're going to talk about lilies."

They were not. Rose pulled Rey through the small side door to the gallery, past a portrait that disapproved of everything, into a corridor that smelled faintly of beeswax and rain.

"What's going on?" Rose asked the instant the door swung shut. No prelude. No softening. She turned Rey to face a window and the last blue of the evening so she couldn't dodge behind a title.

"You've answered 'later' to three men who fear nothing and two women who scare everyone. You haven't touched bread. Finn thinks you're planning a coup. Poe thinks you're composing a sonnet. I think you're somewhere else entirely and I'd like to be invited."

Rey's hand found the sill. Her pulse decided to audition for a drumline. The sentence she had been holding in her mouth all afternoon made the shape of itself and stuck.

"The healer wants more checks," she said, barely above a breath. "About my... stomach."

Rose went very, very still. A dozen expressions walked across her face and remembered they were in public. She exhaled, slow and warm. "Oh."

"I don't know that it's—" Rey swallowed. "She was careful. It could be grief, or my body being untidy. But she said there's a fullness that isn't scar. She'll listen again in a week, and tomorrow at first light... tests. And she's sending for Mistress Hale."

Rose's eyes brightened and softened at once. "Rey." It held three things at once: wonder, caution, and a long, practiced competence that had delivered two of her sisters and nine of other people's babies by sheer force of will. "How do you feel?"

"Like I'm standing on a very high stair and I don't know if there's another one under my foot." Rey tried to laugh; it frayed. "And like an idiot because I forgot to eat and nearly fainted in the garden today. Again."

Rose's mouth pressed to a worried line, then gentled. "Okay. First: you are not an idiot. You are a queen and a person, in that order, on alternating days." She reached, tucked a loose strand behind Rey's ear with sisterly bossiness. "Second: we're going back in there and you are going to eat bread like it's a royal decree, because it is. Third: do you want Ben to know tonight?"

Rey stared at the blue window until it stopped trying to be a lake. "I don't know," she admitted, naked and small. "If it's only the body being... untidy, I—he has enough. I wanted one quiet thing that was only mine until morning. Is that a terrible thing to want?"

Rose's hand found Rey's and squeezed. "It's a human thing. You can have it. I can also stand on his toes later and inform him that his queen will be served a tray at her desk every day until I die of bossiness." mischief broke through. "Also, we're telling him... soon. Because he's Ben and secrets make him itch and I refuse to watch him scratch. He also deserves to know"

Rey's laugh came, watery and real. "Soon," she agreed, relief and terror shaking hands. Rose leaned forward.

"So I guess that means for guys have been being scandalous"

"Well we are husband and wife" Rey chuckled

"Mhm how many times before that?" Rose shot Rey a glance.

"Once. The night he came home in the storm. After being attacked"

"Rey!" Rose pretended to act shocked.

"I know. I know. A true scandal"

"Good. The castle needs some entertainment" Rose leaned her shoulder into Rey's, small pressure, big meaning. "Now: bread. And a piece of chicken. And I'm stealing you early. If anyone protests, I will invent a flower emergency."

Rey nodded. The window gave her back a steadier face. "Thank you."

"Always," Rose said, simple as a door that opens. She tipped her head toward the hall. "Ready?"

"I guess so," Rey murmured, automatic and fond.

They slid into their places with the subtle choreography of people who have learned the edges of a table. Ben's eyes found Rey's instantly. He didn't speak. He slid her the bread.

She took it. Ate. The first swallow was a tug-of-war with a throat full of feeling; the second was easier; the third tasted like rosemary and tomorrow. Poe caught Rose's eye; Rose tilted her chin minutely: handled. Finn relaxed by half a button. Ben's shoulders let down the fraction only she ever saw; his hand drifted close again, patient as tide.

Rey reached under the table and set her fingers, just for a heartbeat, over his. He poured her water. She drank. Dinner remembered how to be dinner. When she could breathe past her heart again, Rey let her palm rest against her belly through the linen—just a fraction. The signet lay warm at her sternum. The world didn't tilt. The room kept its feet.

Tomorrow morning, she told herself, the city, the quiet place inside her where hope and fear had set up two little chairs. We'll listen. We'll see.

For now, she took another bite of bread and let it be what it was: food, and a promise made small enough to keep.

Chapter Text

Dawn came gray and steady. The keep had not yet remembered to be loud. Rey wrapped her shawl close and carried the first water of the day down the quiet corridor, the ribboned signet warm against her sternum like a small, steadying weight.

The healer's chamber smelled of rosemary and steam. A clear glass bowl waited on the table beside a sprig of green, a pinch of crushed seed, and a strip of clean linen. Mistress Hale—broad-palmed, kind-eyed, hair braided like a promise—stood with her satchel open, as if calm itself had unpacked.

"Good morning, Majesty," the healer said, practical as folded linen. "Set it here."

Rey poured. The water took the bowl without a sound. Mistress Hale dipped her head. "We'll do this the old way," she murmured. "Two tests that disagree"

The healer laid the rosemary lightly on the surface. "Truth favors the patient," she said, and let the sprig float. "If the tips bloom milk-white, we take it as a sign. If not, we don't pretend."

Mistress Hale took a long silver pin and let a neat drop of oil fall—one, then another—watching how each lens of light held together or fled. "Stay whole," she whispered to the oil, almost amused, "if there is more than one heart at this appointment."

They waited. The casement let in a slice of winter sky. Rey's own pulse counted the seconds like a drummer who hadn't learned restraint. Under the water, the oil-beads settled and did not fray. On the surface, the rosemary's fresh tips ghosted lighter, as if snow had considered them and decided yes.

Mistress Hale looked up first, not to pronounce, but to meet Rey's eyes. "May I?" she asked, hands already warm.

Rey lay back on the narrow bed. The healer loosened the shawl; Mistress Hale's broad palm settled just below the navel, listening in the way old hands do—with patience and bone. She pressed, gentle, mapping what was hers to know. "Breathe," she said. "Slow."

Rey obeyed. The scar along her left side tugged—honest, not angry. Mistress Hale's hand paused, shifted a finger-width, smiled without showing teeth, and moved again.

"Your wound's knitting clean," the healer said, truth first. "And what lies beneath it is no business of a knife."

Mistress Hale exhaled softly, a sound like someone setting a basket down. "All signs agree," she said, voice gone warm. "By my hands and ears, by water and herb—Your Majesty, you are with child."

The room changed shape without moving. Not larger—nearer.

Rey stared at the timbered ceiling until it stopped trying to be a river. Something inside her rose and broke like quiet surf—fear, gratitude, relief, longing for the man whose hand used to straighten crowns. Her palms found the linen at her sides and closed.

"How far?" she asked, small and steady.

"A handful of weeks," Mistress Hale said. "Early yet. Early enough to keep within these walls until you wish otherwise."

"And the scar?" Rey's voice flickered toward the place where worry had built its little house.

"Far aside," the healer answered, firm. "It will be a nuisance to your comfort, not to the child. We'll mind it together."

"What do I do," Rey asked, because grief had taught her the shape of that question and joy didn't change its grammar.

"Eat," Mistress Hale said, without apology. "No herbal heroics from aunties with stories." She glanced at the healer, who snorted softly. "Walk in the garden when the stones are dry. Sleep when your body orders it. And let us listen again each week—there's a sound I'll know when it's time."

The healer tied back Rey's braid with a ribbon from her own wrist and patted her hand, businesslike to keep from crying. "You may carry the whole realm," she said, "but you will not carry baskets."

Rey laughed then—a quiet, astonished sound that made her throat ache. Tears came without asking permission and she let them, one, two, honest as rain. She pressed her palm—lightly, disbelievingly—to her belly through linen. "Thank you," she whispered, to the room, to the women, to the pair of names she would someday write.

Ben was waiting exactly where he always waits—half in the doorway, half a hinge. Rey came out of the healer's chamber with rainlight on her face and a smile she couldn't smooth away if she tried.

He read it. Hope and caution collided politely in his eyes. She smiled up at him, sliding her fingers into his. "Will you take me into town? I need something."

"Of course my love" he said, already moving.

They kept it small—cloaks, hoods, no escort. Finn pretended not to see them at the postern and murmured, "Left gate; streets are kind today." Rose appeared like a conspirator, pressed a hot hand pie into Rey's palm, and whispered "Eat," like a benediction. Rey did, obedient and smiling.

Lower town was washing its steps. Bread smells leaned out of doorways. A fishmonger sang four notes that made up in cheer what they lacked in tune. Ben kept to Rey's left, attention skimming roofs and corners while his hand stayed in hers.

"What do you need?" he asked.

"You'll see," she said, and the smile tugged again.

At the baker's, the man with ink-stained knuckles bowed without making a meal of it. "Two loaves?" he guessed.

"Just one," Rey said, voice softening, "and one very small roll if you have a practice piece."

He set both on the counter. Ben frowned, puzzled and pleased, until Rey tucked the tiny roll into his palm as if it were a secret.

"For the road," she said, eyes bright. "For... a longer road."

He looked down at the little bread, up at her, and something opened in his face—understanding arriving like sunlight through cloud, slow and then everywhere. "Rey," he breathed, as if the name could hold the whole world steady.

"Walk," she murmured, because joy was suddenly too big for a countertop.

They crossed the square to a stall hung with ribbons. Rey chose a narrow red and a narrow white; the old woman tied them together without asking questions—knot neat, ends even.

"May I?" Rey asked, lifting Ben's wrist. She tied the new ribbon above his black one—old grief and new promise side by side.

"For luck?" he managed, voice unsteady.

"For company," she said. Then, daylight-true: "All signs agree."

He closed his eyes a moment, prayer without kneeling. When he opened them, ridiculous joy and terror stood shoulder to shoulder. "How far?"

"A handful of weeks," she whispered. "Early. Ours."

He laughed—broke and rebuilt mid-breath—and kissed her brow, her cheek, the center of her palm—slow, exact. "Thank you," he said pressing his forehead against hers with a smile on his lips. He pressed a soft kiss to her lips. His hand moved down to her stomach.

"Come" Rey said with a smile. They turned into a narrow lane where a bell tinkled above a door painted robin's-egg blue: Hale & Thread. The room smelled of lanolin and clean rain. Hanks of wool in quiet colors lined the walls like soft weather.

Rey stopped. In the window, folded on a square of muslin, lay a pair of knitted baby boots—cream wool, soles no bigger than a sparrow, a tiny red stitch at each cuff.

Her breath hitched. She reached without meaning to.

A woman with thimbles on two fingers looked up from her needles and smiled the smile of someone who has outfitted three generations and never asked before being told. "For luck?" she said gently, already wrapping them in tissue.

"For... company," Rey echoed, tears arriving without permission and not being told no.

Ben took the parcel when her hands trembled and unwrapped it on the counter, as if reverence needed daylight. He lifted one tiny boot with both hands like a relic and laughed—the soft, helpless kind that happens when a vow finds a body. He dropped to one knee right there on the wool-worn floor—not a king genuflecting, a man folding under the weight of joy—and set his forehead lightly against the place where her cloak fell over her belly.

"I'll protect you both Rey. Both of you until my final breath," he whispered to the small warm future and the woman he loved.

Rey's laugh turned wet as a few tears dripped down her cheeks. She set her palm over his hair and then over his cheek, lifting him.

"We could never repay our love to you"

"Don't need to my love. Just keep me forever," he said, standing, eyes bright and unashamed. He pressed one tiny boot into her hand and kept the other in his, as if between them they could keep a matched pair safe. "We should tell them."

"We will," she said, reckless with happiness. "After I sit. After I eat. After I keep this in my mouth for one more street like a sweet."

Outside, the sky considered rain and decided on mercy. They walked back through the square with a small roll wrapped in paper, a red-and-white ribbon snug against Ben's wrist, and two knitted promises—one in each of their hands.

Chapter Text

Rey had Mira fetch everyone that mattered.

By the time her mother, Rose, Finn, and Poe slipped into the chamber, the coals were humming, the curtains half-drawn, and Rey sat on the edge of the bed with Ben beside her, knees touching. Between them, on the quilt, lay a pair of cream-wool booties no bigger than sparrows, each cuff kissed with a single red stitch.

Everyone stopped the same way—mid-breath, mid-thought—eyes falling to the tiny shoes and then up to Rey's face.

Rey reached for Ben's hand. He laced their fingers, then—because he had no other language when joy threatened to run away—lifted her palm and kissed the center of it, slow and exact.

"We asked you here," Rey began, voice already bright with tears, "for family news."

Ben picked up one bootie and set it gently in her lap; she picked up the other and set it in his palm. Together they looked back at the people who were their hinge and their weather.

"We are with child," Rey said.

Silence—holy and stunned—broke.

Rose made a soft, astonished sound and rushed forward, pretending like she never knew. She stopped herself a heartbeat away, hands hovering like wings. "Can I—?" she asked, and when Rey nodded, Rose threw her arms around her, laughing and crying at once. "Bread," she said fiercely into Rey's shoulder, "and naps"

Finn's smile arrived like sunrise—quiet, unstoppable. He bowed his head, swallowed hard, and when he looked up again his voice was steady. "How far?"

"A handful of weeks," Ben answered, reverent. "Mistress Hale listened."

Poe, already weeping shamelessly, fumbled in his coat like a conjurer and produced a warm roll, a red ribbon, and—God help him—a tiny carved whistle. "I brought... none of the right things," he said, laughing at himself as he blinked. "But I can get the right things, and I will be the most annoying uncle in three provinces."

Finn clapped his shoulder. "Two provinces," he corrected dryly. "I'm taking the north."

The Queen had not moved. She stood with her hand to her mouth, eyes filling, the iron of her posture turning to water at the edges. Then, all at once, she crossed the room and sank beside Rey, gathering her daughter in with care for scar and crown and new weight both. When she lifted her head, her face was wrecked and luminous.

"He would be proud," she said—no tremor on would, as if she'd spoken to him and he'd agreed. "He knew you would make rooms breathe easier. Now you will make the world do it twice. And deliver beautiful children."

Rey laughed, wet and helpless, and pressed her brow to her mother's. "I wanted to tell you first."

"You did," the Queen whispered. She took one bootie from Ben's palm—reverently, as if holding a star—and set it back between them on the quilt like an altar piece. "Bread before banners," she said, voice firming into law. "For two."

"Forever," Ben answered. He slid to one knee, set his forehead lightly to Rey's cloaked belly, and spoke the vow he'd been remaking all morning. "I'll keep the door—for you both. First in, last out. I'll learn new math."

Finn straightened, soldier again. "The watches double—quietly," he said. "Routes change every third day. No galloping. I'll have the kitchens send trays you can't ignore."

Rose swiped her eyes and pointed a lethal finger. "I will bully you lovingly until you eat. And I'm knitting six more pairs of those whether you like it or not."

Poe tied the red ribbon around the bedpost with a flourish and wiped his face with the back of his wrist. "For luck," he declared, then softened. "For company."

Rey reached out, took each of their hands in turn, and drew them in until the five of them stood like a small, stubborn country around a pair of knitted promises. She looked at Ben last, the laugh still trembling in her mouth, and set her palm against his jaw.

"Watch me," she whispered—joy's version of the dare grief had taught her.

"I am," he said, eyes bright, voice sure. "And I will."

They broke bread there on the edge of the bed—literal, warm, passed from hand to hand—and let the news become theirs: not rumor, not decree. Family. Promise. A bootie in each palm and a future big enough to hold them all.

The news didn't stay small for long. It grew the way light does—spilling quietly under doors until the whole floor was honey.

By evening the private dining room had turned into a conspiracy of joy. Someone (Poe) had produced musicians; someone else (Rose) had bullied the kitchens into reckless generosity; Finn had arranged the door guards like punctuation so laughter could run without tripping. The Queen sat near the fire, regal and ruinously happy, pretending not to cry every third minute.

Goblets rose. Wine ran like a red ribbon—through every hand but two.

Rey's cup held watered honey with lemon; Ben's held the same. When Poe tried to smuggle him something stronger with a wink, Ben just lifted the honeyed glass toward Rey's belly and said, "For company," and Poe saluted and went off to invent a toast.

Ben had become—soft, certain, everywhere. He tucked a cushion behind Rey without asking, then pretended it had always been there. He shifted the chair a finger's width to break a draft she hadn't noticed yet. His hand rested at the small of her back like a hinge, warm and unobtrusive, ready if physics changed its mind. When she stood, he stood; when she sat, his palm found her fingers and counted along with her breath as if the room might borrow his pacing.

"Bread before banners," Poe declared, standing on a chair because chairs forgive him. "To tiny boots and the terrifying competence of Aunt Rose!" Laughter. Rose curtseyed with exaggerated menace and lifted a half-finished bootie from her lap like a weapon blessed by grandmothers.

"To the door," Finn added, more quietly, lifting his goblet toward Ben and then toward Rey, "and the one it keeps out."

They all drank. Ben did, too, to lemon and honey and the way Rey's shoulders softened for exactly one measured breath.

After the third toast, the Queen rose with her fan shut like a decree. "To my daughter, who will feed a city and a childhood at the same table," she said, voice steady and wicked at once. She turned to Ben. "To my son, who knows the difference between guarding a door and shutting one." She lifted her goblet, then amended, smiling to herself: "And to naps, which are governance in disguise."

Rey laughed and nearly cried at the same time. Ben became fussily sweet in a way that would have been comical on anyone else: straightening her shawl, stealing the too-rough crust from her plate and replacing it with the soft middle, setting a hand between her and enthusiastic elbows like a quiet fence. When the musicians struck something lively, he held out his palm to Rey instead.

"May I?" he asked, already choosing the slowest waltz in the room and the safest patch of rug.

They didn't dance so much as sway—two people teaching a day to breathe. He kept one hand firm at her waist, the other a warm bracket around her fingers. No turns. No flourishes. Just a private orbit in a public room. He bent, at one point, and spoke to the place where her cloak fell over her belly—nonsense and vows braided:

"Hello, little storm. Your mother's braver than any general, your grandmother terrifies me daily, your Aunt Rose is knitting a militia, and I will be embarrassing forever."

Later, by the fire, Rose pressed a plate into Rey's hands, wearing the expression of a woman who has declared truces with kitchens and has no patience for refuseniks. "Eat," she ordered, softer than the word sounded. "And if you put it down, I'll knit around you until you're wrapped like a caterpillar and sleep against your will."

Finn hovered in the doorway, looking entirely casual while counting exits and faces, then slipped over to murmur to Ben, "Two extra in the courtyard, one on the west stairs. Quiet shifts for a few weeks. I'll walk the midnight."

Ben nodded; Rey squeezed Finn's hand as he passed. "Thank you," she said, and he shrugged it off like weather and looked secretly proud for the rest of the night.

At some point a servant tried to refill Rey's cup with wine by force of habit. Ben's hand landed over the rim before the first drop fell—polite, immovable. "Honey and lemon," he said with the authority of a man who has chosen a hill to die on and it is citrus. "Thank you."

Rey leaned into his shoulder, laughing quietly. "You are going to be insufferable." She chuckled quietly.

"I'm invested," he said, kissing her hair—brief, exact.

Near midnight, Rose gathered the booties back into their tissue with a possessive sniff. "I'll finish these tonight," she said. "You can have them in the morning if I don't get distracted bullying the kitchens."

Finn draped Rey's cloak across the foot of the bed. "I'll meet you at the garden gate at dawn," he told Ben. "Short walk. No steps."

"Under protest," Ben lied.

When at last the room began to yawn and the musicians found their last gentle tune, Ben slid an arm beneath Rey's knees and another around her back—asking with his eyes as much as his hands. She nodded, resting her head at his shoulder, and he rose with the careful strength of a man for whom tenderness is a practiced weight.

The cheer that followed was quiet on purpose—glasses lifted, eyes bright, a handful of clapped palms muffled against sleeves. The Queen pressed a kiss to Rey's brow in passing.

In their room, the coals were still warm. Ben set Rey down like a prayer he trusted the world to hold and dropped to one knee to unlace her slippers. "Tea?" he asked. "Bread? My eternal fussing?"

"Yes," she said, smiling like a woman who had learned how to accept all three.

He poured honeyed water and added lemon like he was making a law. When he handed it over, he touched two fingers to the ribbon at his wrist—the red and white sitting beside black—and then to the place where the small future had turned a room into a chapel.

"A baby" she said quietly "A little, tiny baby" her eyes heavy slightly, sleep already softening her voice. She slid her hand into his and guided it to rest—light, reverent—over her belly. Her head leaning against his shoulder. Eyes fluttering shut.

Chapter Text

They kept it small.

Rose packed the booties in tissue with the reverence of a relic, then slipped them into a velvet pouch knotted with red-and-white. Finn checked the route twice and the horses thrice: gentle pace, frequent stops, guards unobtrusive and everywhere.

Ben fussed—cushions, shawl, lemon honey, the low footstool he pretended had always lived in the carriage. Rey let him, because his fussing made the day easier, not smaller. She climbed in with his hand steadying hers, the signet warm at her sternum, the red seam of love visible now in everything they did.

The road to Leia and Han's keep looked like memory made obedient: hedgerows that had learned to behave, the mill stream Ben fell into at eight, the meadow where Rey once raced Rose and lost on purpose. They didn't gallop. Rose knit and bossed. Finn rode point and pretended not to count clouds. Ben sat opposite Rey with one knee against hers, attention sweeping corners, mouth tipping into unguarded smiles he didn't try to hide. When the carriage swayed too sharply, he tapped the roof and the driver eased the pace; Rey took another bite of bread because Rose had made eating into law, and the world settled.

They reached the lower gate late afternoon. Leia's home—steady, welcoming, not fooled by anything—had the same posture as its lady. Leia stood on the steps, hair simply bound, sleeves rolled like a woman who knows where the spare blankets live. Han hovered beside her with the look of a man pretending he'd been going somewhere else and failing beautifully.

Rey stepped down with Ben's hand; Leia's eyes—politics and love, equally accurate—moved from Rey's face to the line of her cloak and back. Her mouth softened. "Come in before I cry on the steps."

Inside smelled of woodsmoke and cinnamon. Soup kept; bread warmed. Han made a show of carving it and blinked too often to sell the performance.

"We brought news," Ben began, formal through nerves; then he did the only right thing. He sat beside his mother, took her hand, and set the tiny bootie in it.

Leia looked down at the cream wool cupped like a sparrow, the little red stitch at the cuff. Her breath hitched; joy ran the length of her features. "Oh, my loves." She kissed Ben's hair, then Rey's brow.

"Oh."

Han put the knife down because his hand wouldn't behave. Three strides—meant to be casual, weren't—and he had Ben in one of those undignified embraces that fix posture and history at the same time. Then he hugged Rey very gently, very long.

"Look at that," he muttered, voice wrecked. "Took me years to get promoted to 'Dad.' You two manage it in one summer."

"Pure nepotism," Ben said into his shoulder.

Rose and Finn were pulled in bodily the way family is in this house. Leia kissed Rose's cheek, squeezed Finn's shoulder, laughed and cried at once. "How far?"

"A handful of weeks," Rey said.

"Good." Leia's tone turned verdict and blessing. "I'll send the ginger-mint for troublesome mornings." Ben's face pleaded mercy.

Han rummaged in a drawer like a man picking a fight with sentiment and produced a bundle in oilcloth: a small carved bird, wings outstretched, whittled smooth by worry-thumb.

"Made this the winter he was born. Never flew right—still looks like trying." He hesitated, then set it in Rey's hands. "For when small people when they wish to fly"

They ate—broth and soft bread and three kinds of fruit Rey's body decided to keep. Ben ignored the wine; Leia switched to cider in solidarity; Han discovered watered beer is still beer if you're sentimental enough. Rose declared that Rey would sit afterward; Finn disappeared and returned with a quiet shift schedule and the satisfied air of a man who has outmaneuvered risk.

Later, in the tower room with the view of the lake—where a boy had once decided ice was lying—Leia drew Rey aside and pressed a small parcel into her palm: tiny shirts of old lawn, mended with stitches neat as hymns. "From when I was too tired to be tidy," she said. "They're soft. They've already learned how to forgive."

At the doorway, Ben listened to Han tell Finn about cradle-making with the confidence of a man who built exactly one and believes in it absolutely. For once Han's story ran unchallenged except by laughter.

When the lamps burned low and the lake remembered quiet, they all practiced doing nothing together—a skill learned in grief, repurposed for joy. Leia turned the second bootie over in her hands as if reading a prophecy in wool. Han slung an arm over the back of the settle and looked like a man who'd found a new way to be loud without sound. Rose started a blanket without warning anyone. Finn fell asleep sitting up and denied it immediately when he woke.

Ben tucked Rey against his side, palm light across her middle—new habit, old vow. "Anything you need?" he asked, low.

"Just you," she said, leaning into him and the house that had taught him his kind of kindness. He tilted her chin up to meet his eyes fully before lowering himself on to knee.

"Rey. You have given me everything a man could ever desire. Love, a mirage not worthy of any poetry because nothing will ever compare. A beautiful child. I do not care for gender" He pressed his palm against her stomach, pressing a soft kiss on her dress above it "I shall love you both and protect you until my final breath"

She smiled down at him before pulling him to his feet.

"Ben, I'm afraid the baby may have softened you"

"I was always soft for you Rey. Ever since you took my hand in the lake. You sparked something inside me that would forever call you home"

A tear brushed over her cheek as he quickly rushed and brushed the tear away.

"I love you Ben"

"I love you Rey" He said pressing his forehead to hers.

Tomorrow they would ride home; tomorrow the city would keep learning a new grammar for joy. Tonight, in the place where a boy had been loved into a man, a Queen and a King told their news, and four people rehearsed being grandparents, aunt, and uncle with the shameless enthusiasm of the newly promoted.

Chapter Text

Weeks made themselves at home in her body.

Rey sat the morning court with a ledger on her knee, the crown light as it could be, Rose at her shoulder, Finn by the doors. Petitioners from the south fields stood hat-in-hand: a millrace collapsed in the last storm; seed ruined; oxen lame. They needed grain to plant, hands to dig, time to pay.

Rey listened, already building the list in her head. Then the room tilted.

It wasn't drama—just a cold bloom under her tongue, a heat behind her eyes, the very particular wave that said now. She set the ledger aside with a precision that tried to be casual and rose.

"Excuse me," she said, voice even and a shade too bright.

To the farmers: a small, apologetic nod.

To Ben: a glance that carried a whole conversation.

To Rose: a look that was more instruction than request.

Rose was moving before the veil of composure finished falling. She caught Rey at the step and steered her through the side door, braid in one hand, shawl in the other, already calling for Mira and mint water.

Ben turned to the farmers as the door sighed shut. "You have our attention," he said, calm as a field wall. "Tell me everything you told her, and what you were not brave enough to add."

The story came out in good, plain words. Ben didn't sit. He listened the way you do when you intend to spend the listening.

"Millrace first," he said when they finished. "Bread before banners." He nodded to Finn. "Take two crews and the north engineers. Shore the banks, widen the spill. If the river argues, have it argue with you instead of the fields."

Finn was already moving, jotting names, peeling two guards from the wall who looked delighted to become shovels.

Ben turned to the clerk. "Release seed grain from the third store—enough for a double sow. Mark it as a loan, zero tithe until next harvest plus one." To the stablemaster: "Four sound oxen to the south lanes, with feed and a farrier."

"Who's selling you bad tools?" he asked the eldest farmer, gentle as a pry bar. The man glanced at his boots. Ben waited. The name came. "Good. We'll deal with that supplier. No one pays twice for the same lie."

He took up Rey's pen, blotted it once like a blessing, and wrote the orders himself—spare, legible, the kind of ink that moves people and grain alike. He pressed the wheat-and-water seal and handed the packet to the eldest woman of the group. "You carry this," he said. "You look like the one everyone already listens to."

She blinked hard and nodded. Someone at the back sniffed like it might be crying; a moment later it was definitely not crying.

"Eat before you ride home," Ben added, softer. "Kitchen will pack for the road. If anyone stops you, show them the seal and keep walking."

They backed away with the awkward reverence of people not used to being treated like law. The next petitioners stepped up already steadier.

Behind the side door, Rose got Rey onto the cool bench of the antechamber just in time. Rey gripped the basin, breathed through it, and let her body have its say. The worst passed. Rose wiped her face with a damp cloth, set a mug in her hands, and said nothing sanctimonious at all—just, "Sip."

Rey obeyed, mortified and exhausted, and then—because laughter sometimes shows up in the oddest rooms—she huffed. "I just promised them bread and my body disagreed."

"Your body is baking a whole person," Rose said briskly. "It's allowed opinions. Also, you're not going back in there."

Mira arrived with ginger and stern affection. The healer followed with the look that has no patience for queens or excuses.

"You will eat," she pronounced, "and then you will lie in the alcove. Court can manage the shape of you in a different room for an hour."

Rey drank. The wave ebbed to a sullen tide. On the other side of the door, Ben's voice carried—firm, not loud—turning requests into work orders and work orders into a day that would feed people.

"Is he...?" Rey started.

"Handling it," Rose said, proudly "You chose a good man to be king"

He was. By the time Mira declared the psalms complete, Ben had settled three petitions, condemned one crooked broker to a week of public restitution in the granary (supervised by Rose, to the man's visible horror), and sent a rider with parchment and coin to a mid-valley smith who actually knew how to shoe an ox.

He slipped into the antechamber with a plate the moment Finn relieved him—two slices of soft bread, apple cut neat, a little dish of salt. His face was all worry until she looked up; then the worry obeyed him.

"Status?" Rey asked, trying for wry and landing on worn.

"Millrace crews on the road, seed released, oxen shod by someone who deserves the compliment, and you don't owe the south tithe until they can afford to be generous." He set the plate in her lap, crouched to her level, and lowered his voice. "Also, I threatened a tool seller. He repented in under a breath."

"Good," Rey said, biting the bread because Rose's eyebrow was a law of physics. "I left you with the work."

"You left me with our work," he corrected.

Rey ate. The color came back under her skin by degrees. The crown sat on the table like a well-behaved witness. Out in the hall, the shuffle of petitioners resumed—calmer, a line that had been listened to and therefore was willing to behave.

Ben slid onto the bench beside her and rested his palm lightly over hers where it lay on the shawl, eyes flicking once to her middle—habit now, not panic—then up.

"You want to close the morning from here?" he asked. "I can bring them through, one by one."

Rey considered the room, the basin, the mint, the door between duty and sense. She nodded. "From here."

So they did: the court came to a small side room where a queen sat with a ginger mug and a king at her shoulder. A shepherd spoke about wolves; a seamstress about looms; a boy asked—earnestly—if he could borrow two books at once and bring them back on time. They answered, wrote, sent, and smiled, turning the government of a realm into a conversation around a bench until noon made its case and won.

When the last petitioner bowed out, Rose scooped up the empty plate like a victory banner. Finn leaned in with a brief report and the particular satisfaction of a man who has gotten a bridge to behave. Ben stood and offered his arm—not ceremony, only balance.

"Back to work?" he asked.

"To bread," Rey said, letting him lift her carefully. "Then banners."

He grinned. "Fashionable."

The night drew long. Discomfit consumed Rey like a storm. Sleep wouldn't come. The coals had given up their last red; Ben's breath was a slow, even tide beside her. Rey slid from the bed without a sound, drew her cloak over her shift, and slipped into the corridor where the lamps burned to blue points.

The garden met her like an old confidant. Rain stitched her hood, ticked on quince leaves, made the flagstones dark as ink. She walked the long path by the herb beds, palm grazing rosemary, the keep's windows blank with respectable sleep.

The quiet broke.

A scream—one, ragged—tore across the lower court. Another answered from the wall. Then a sound like a crowd inhaling at once, and beyond the hedge a dull, rolling thunder that wasn't weather.

Rey ran.

At the garden's edge the land fell away to the outer fields. In the wash of cloud-blurred moon she saw them: torches pinned to bodies like wasps, shields shouldering forward, the lurching gait of siege engines dragged by oxen that did not want this work. A banner she didn't recognize snapped and vanished in the rain.

Her heart went cold and clear. She turned and sprinted, gathering her dress in one fist, boots skidding on wet stone, past the sundial, under the arcade, through the arch where ivy kept the old bell half-hidden like a secret.

The rope was slick. She set her feet, braced her back, and pulled.

The first toll went up like an iron word. It climbed the tower, struck the keep, rolled over roofs, and ran for the river. Lamps flared. A dog barked and then thought better of it.

She hauled again. Second. Third. With each strike the bell found her bones and made them answer. Somewhere a door slammed; somewhere an officer's voice turned night into orders.

Fourth.

On the fifth, the sound changed the city. Five was not fire. Five was not flood. Five was war.

Shutters flew wide. The watch woke like a drawn bow. Down the corridor behind her, boots hammered stone—Finn's barked commands, Rose's quick breath, Mira calling for runners. In their chamber, Ben jolted upright, the echo of the bell still in his chest, reaching for boots, for steel, for her.

Rey kept her hands on the rope until the last great note spent itself against the rain and the whole keep held the silence after—listening, bracing, becoming the thing that answers.

Chapter Text

The bell's last note was still trembling in stone when Rey ducked into the armory.

Iron lived here—the smell of old oil and steel, the neat ranks of spears, the honest weight of mail on pegs. She didn't touch the long things. She took a small knife: narrow-bladed, palm-length, meant for rope and last resorts. The leather sheath was rough against her thumb as she slid it under her belt, angled low so it wouldn't bite her scar. Her hand went, without thinking, to the small curve beneath her cloak.

"Not here," she told herself—order, not apology. "Not now."

Boots thundered past the door. Two guards swung in, breath white in the chill. "Highness—armory—"

"Take what you need," she said, already stepping sideways into shadow. "South wall first. The fields are crawling."

They bolted for the racks. She pulled her hood and slipped out the servants' passage, the one that ran like a seam between the keep's bright rooms—a narrow spine of stairs and low lintels, the kind of corridor that remembers secrets. Rain chased her under the arcade; the bell rope still swayed like the tail of a struck animal.

She should not be out here. She knew it in the way bone knows weather. She cradled her belly a second, breathed until the edge of the sickness receded, then moved—quick, careful, counting steps instead of fear.

Her chamber door stood ajar. Inside, the coals glowed; the bed was empty. Ben's boots were gone; so was his cloak. On the table: the cup he'd left cooling, lemon and honey painting the air. The ribbon at his wrist had not been abandoned; good. He was where he would always go first—the door between danger and the rest of them.

She turned, running down the halls.

"Mother?" Rey called into the quiet beyond "Rose?"

The antechamber answered with rain and the soft thud of her own heart. She crossed the solar—empty, chairs pushed back in a haste that had manners—then the little gallery where lemons slept in pots. Her mother's rooms were open and ordered, the fan gone from its hook. The shawl she favored in drafts was missing. Good. Someone had moved her. Rey found no one.

Down one landing, then another. The tapestry stair. The chapel hall. The small vestry where Rose bullied flowers into obedience—vases overturned, the quick mess of someone turning holy space into a triage. No Rose. No Mira. No Poe.

"Anyone?" Her voice stayed soft and it felt wrong. War had a way of taking your volume and putting it somewhere else.

Far off, the deep report of the outer gate accepting a ram. Closer, the hard clatter of a dropped shield. From the western gallery a flare of light—pitch pots lit and carried. She hurried that way, then stopped at the corner because her body reminded her it carries more than her.

Think.

They had drilled this. Finn had made them sit through the lists until even Poe could recite them sober. On five bells, the noncombatants fold to the crypt stairs—two levels down, past the ledger vault, to the inner door with the iron bar. Healer to the alcoves. Rose to the infirmary, then to the lists, then to wherever triage turned into policy. Ben to the wall. The Queen Mother... with Poe, more likely than not, because he had sworn to be responsible and he was, in the ways that mattered.

So why did the corridor feel peeled, as if the keep itself had been pulled back like a curtain and there was only wind behind it?

She took the lesser stair and tried the cloister. Empty. The kitchen—churned but abandoned, bread half-sliced and proving baskets scattered like fallen crowns. She grabbed a heel, bit, and made herself chew twice because Rose's eyebrow was a law even at the end of the world.

Another scream—closer. A clash of iron at the second gate. She ran to the window slit and pressed her cheek to cold stone. In the wet dark below, the courtyard seethed: Finn on the inner stair, directing buckets and bodies, a line of archers along the gallery, the first glare of burning pitch. A figure at the middle gate—tall, black, movement like a hinge—Ben.

Relief hit so hard it almost unmanned her knees.

"Good," she whispered, fogging stone. "Hold."

She needed her mother. She needed Rose. She needed... to be where she could be useful without being reckless. The knife dug into her hip—a reminder, not a comfort. She turned, headed for the crypt stairs—empty corridor, the taste of iron and prayers and damp—in time to hear the bar drop into place below. They were already sealed. Locked from the inside. Doing their part.

She was not inside.

"Ben," she said, uselessly, to the wall.

The hall went past like old breath. She took the long way around rather than cross the exposed gallery again, hood deep, eyes listening. Twice she pressed into a doorway while runners tore by—boys no older than summers, carrying orders like hot pans. Twice she flattened to a tapestry while a squad of guards hauled a cart of stones toward the western stairs. None of them saw her; all of them had better things to see.

At her mother's door again. Empty. The little comb dish missing its comb. The polished box gone from the shelf where she kept the letters that made her swear during tea. Good. Moved. Safe. Somewhere.

"Rose?" She checked the infirmary—already a battlefield of bandage and breath. A young guard lay with a tourniquet high on his thigh, face white, eyes steady. Mira's hands were two quick birds. No Rose. No Poe. No mother.

The keep felt too large and too hollow at once, like a lung holding a breath for too long.

Another strike at the gate. A roar answered—men on the wall, Finn's voice carrying the shape of the line. From her chamber the bell rope creaked as if remembering the pull. She reached the threshold and looked at the bed as if it might answer. The cup on the table had cooled completely.

"Where?" she asked the room. It didn't know.

The knife's weight sat just left of the signet on its ribbon. She braced a palm flat there—over steel, over bone, over the small, bright future that had turned every hallway into new arithmetic—and made herself breathe until the edges steadied.

If she couldn't find them, she would make herself findable.

She pulled her hood close and stepped back into the corridor, toward the place where the alarm runners converged and messages became orders, toward the corner where the world was loudest. If she could not be inside the barred door, she would be where a voice could carry, where a hand could sign, where a queen could be a hinge and not a weight.

No mother. No Rose. No Ben she could touch. The keep swelled with noise—the bad kind and the good—and she moved into it, small knife snug against her belt, breath measured against the rain.

Five bells for war.

Rey had a runner by the sleeve and three orders lined up on her tongue when a hand caught her wrist and yanked her hard into the shadow of a pillar.

"Rey." Rose's face was rain-slick and white with fury. "It's Hux."

The name dropped like iron. The corridor seemed to lean.

"He's here," Rose rushed on. "Not just his men—him. He sent a herald to the west wall. Says he's come for you. Says it will rain blood until he speaks with you."

For a heartbeat Rey heard nothing but her own breath. Then the keep came back—the hammering at the second gate, Finn's barked cadence, the bell rope still swaying. Her palm went to the small curve beneath her cloak, brief and steady, before she pulled the hood forward and straightened.

"Good," she said, very calm. "We end this."

Rose blinked. "We end him. From a distance."

"Alive," Rey answered. "The writ stands." She turned into the light and let her voice become a tool. "Runners!"

They were there before the word finished.

"To Captain Finn: hold the inner stair—no sortie. Raise mantlets on the west parapet and clear the murder holes. Archers on my count. Nets over the gate trench—hidden. Pit boards off at my signal."

A boy sprinted.

"To the tower: white pennon for parley on the inner gate only. Drums on ready. Trumpet answers once. No more."

Gone.

She looked to Rose. "Find my mother. If she's below, stay with her until the bar lifts. If she's above, put her behind stone. Then come back to my left and do exactly what you always do—feed sense into chaos."

Rose swallowed, then nodded. "Ben?"

Rey's jaw softened at the name, then set. "He holds the middle gate. He does not come to me. I will not make him choose between me or this kingdom. Because I know he will let this castle burn if I means I live."

They were already moving—down the gallery, through the angled passage that led to the west stair. In the slit window Rey saw the field again in stuttering in lightning: the slow heave of a ram; the smear of torches; the staggered line of shields. Closer, on the soaked stone outside the second gate, a little stage of arrogance: a banner on a pole, a drummer in red, a herald with a brass mouth, and—standing in the runneling rain as if it owed him a cloak—Hux.

He was bareheaded, hair plastered, smile dry as dust. He cupped his hands to the storm and called like a man proposing terms to weather.

"Princess!" he jeered up at the wall. "Or is it Queen now? I'll use either. Come speak. Or I let the men who came for bread find sport in your fields."

Rose's fingers dug into Rey's sleeve. "He knows you'll hear him."

"Then he can hear me back." Rey took the last flight and stepped onto the parapet's lee. Finn was there with a count of men and a look she had learned to trust in every weather. He did not waste breath asking if this was wise; he made it safer.

"Pavise," he said, and two guards slid a double shield into place—a door of oak banded in iron, tall as Rey, set on stout legs. Behind it the speaking cone waited—a leather mouth to catch her words and throw them clean.

Ben was a dark shape at the middle gate, rain making silver out of his hair, his attention never leaving the line where danger had to pass. He didn't look up. He would feel her on the wall and hate it; he would not break the line.

Rey stepped behind the pavise. Finn adjusted it an inch. Rose reappeared on her left like a storm that had decided to help. The rain came in needles; the hood kept them out of her eyes. She lifted the cone.

"Hux," she called, her voice carrying flat and clear over the wet stone, "you asked to speak. You may do so from there. Alone."

A snort from below. "And be shot like a stag? No, Highness. I've come for you."

"You will not have me," Rey said. "You will have my terms."

He laughed, bright and grating. "My terms were simple: you. Do you hear the weather? I've a thousand men who don't mind the rain."

"And I have a city that hates hunger." Rey kept her tone level. "Lay down arms. Bind your own hands. Step forward alone. You'll be taken alive and fed before you hang."

Rose's mouth twitched; Finn didn't quite smile.

Hux tilted his head, curiosity curdling into cruelty. "Alive? You need me alive, do you?" He stepped closer to the light. In the rain his eyes looked pale and mean. "I hear congratulations are due, Your Majesty. A child, is it? Bring me down. We'll see which of your vows you keep."

Rey didn't let the flinch touch her face. Rose's hand slid once along her forearm—no comfort, an anchor.

"You had a writ," Rey said, as if discussing tariffs. "You ran."

"And you had a father," Hux answered. "He stopped breathing when I asked him to."

"Asked. Is that we're calling it?" Rey almost scoffed angrily.

The parapet, the pavise, the cone in her hand—gone. She was already moving, fury narrowing the world to a stair and a man. Rose's fingers caught her sleeve—slid off. Finn said her name—turned it into orders mid-breath. The rain took her hood and flung it back; cold hammered her scalp; she did not slow.

Down the west stair—boots biting wet stone. Along the gallery where the murder holes yawned. The inner gate loomed; the iron teeth were up. Ben, at the middle gate, turned at the angle of her movement—a hawk's check—and shifted without hesitation, snapping a line of shields into a corridor between them, making a door because that is what he does.

Rey strode through the living wall he gave her. Pavises rushed to flank her whether she wanted them or not; Rose appeared at her left like a storm with hands; Finn paced her right, voice cutting rain into obedience.

The killing ground boiled—nets half-spent, boards slick with mud, men yelling because fear makes everybody loud. Hux stood just beyond the trench, bright as a wound in his red coat, hair plastered to his skull, eyes the pale color of cruelty.

Rey stopped a pace from the inner lip, rain running off her lashes. She didn't shout. The quiet in her voice cut farther.

"Kneel," Rey said, rain running off her lashes.

"Come collect me," Hux purred—and moved.

He was quick. A flash of red, a splash through the trench, and then he was on the boards—closer than he had any right to be. His fist caught Rey's cloak at her throat; cold steel found her belly through wet wool.

"Open your gate," he hissed, breath hot and sour. "Or your heir dies before the city learns its name."

The world narrowed. Rain. Knife. His heart stuttering against her arm.

On the wall above, bows creaked and held. Finn's hand cut the air once: stand. Ben pivoted at the middle gate and started forward, shields rippling into a corridor between them, making a moving door with his own body at the hinge. Rose slid to Rey's left, eyes bright, a small knife already in her palm.

Rey didn't flinch away from the blade; she refused to give him the pleasure. Her voice came steady, cold as the stone.

"You kill me and you die in the mud. Anonymous. Starved of your speech. You wanted leverage, Hux. You don't waste leverage."

He pressed the edge harder on the word heir, testing. The knife bit her cloak; it did not find skin. Rose's knife flashed—not at Hux. At the bronze clasp at Rey's throat.

"Now," Rey said, and dropped her chin.

Rose cut clean. The clasp snapped. Cloak, heavy with rain, sloughed off Rey's shoulders and into Hux's fist. For a heartbeat he had a queen by a handful of empty cloth.

Ben hit him.

Not with a blade—with a wall. Two men slammed a pavise forward, iron-banded oak driving Hux back a step and lifting the knife away from Rey's middle. In the same breath Finn's billhook came down, caught Hux's wrist, and twisted. Steel clattered to boards. An archer above took Hux's sleeve to the wood with a shaft through cloth and meat; another pinned the hem of his red coat.

"Take him," Rey snapped, already stepping back under the shield's lip.

Hooks flew. A weighted net came down like weather with opinions. Hux went to his knees in chain and rope, roaring into rain and rage. Guards surged; Ben was first there, yanking Hux upright by the collar, wrenching his arms behind him. Someone kicked the knife into the trench. Rose had one palm braced across Rey's ribs without asking, steadying her until the board stopped feeling like a boat.

"Alive," Rey said, voice flat enough to cut. "Bind him with his banner."

They did. The torn red standard twisted into cord and bit his wrists. He spat, shot her a look full of knives he no longer owned, and opened his mouth.

"Gag," Rey added, and cloth shut him quiet.

Only then did Ben look—really look—at Rey. Mud on his jaw. Rain in his hair. Terror honest and brief in his eyes until she set her hand against her abdomen and gave him the smallest nod. He nodded back, once, everything he wasn't saying swallowed for later.

"Inside," she ordered. "Every bell he's accounted for. Finn, keep the gate cold; no heroics. Rose, water to the archers. Rotate the parapet in quarters."

The line compressed into a moving wall and took Hux through the inner gate. The portcullis slammed. The outer court's roar dulled to a bad dream behind iron teeth.

Rey stood a moment in the rain where he'd held a knife to the life she hadn't even named yet. The cut cloak lay in the mud like a shed skin. She toed it aside, lifted her chin, and looked at Hux, with a certain glitter in her eyes.

"Kneel," she demanded. Guards forced him to his knees.

Rey stepped closer, lowering herself down to his level.

"You will hang in the morning. Your men who attacked us, will serve time in my prisons before I send them off to become real men" She whispered "And you will never speak my name again" Rey got up off the floor and moved past everyone/ Everyone shifted quickly.

"Prepare the docks. We have a hanging in the morning" She said loud, a hint of darkness In her tone.

Chapter Text

Rey's hands were steady because she insisted on it. She peeled the rain-heavy cloak from her shoulders, tugged at the ties of her soaked gown, breath measured while the room tilted back toward ordinary. The cut where Hux's knife had found only wool still burned like an insult.

The door slammed.

Ben filled the threshold—armor slick with rain and mud, a brown smear of someone else's blood across his jaw, eyes blown wide with the aftershock of almost losing. He saw bare shoulder, the line of her throat, the faint tremor in her fingers—and the last of his restraint snapped.

He crossed the room in two strides and caught her, pinning her gently but inexorably to the wall with the flat of his palms braced on either side of her head. His mouth found hers—hard, hungry, salt and rain and fear—like a man who needed proof she was still warm under his hands.

Rey met him halfway.

She opened to him, rose onto her toes, fisted her fingers in the straps of his cuirass, and dragged him closer until the cold metal pressed to her ribs and heat answered it. The kiss broke and returned, rough with relief, the breath between them ragged; she made a small sound in his mouth that almost made him confess sins.

He tore his gauntlets off without looking, tossed them blindly, and cupped her face like he was learning it again. "You're here," he breathed against her lips, voice wrecked.

"I'm here." She tugged him back down. His hand slid to the curve of her waist—then stilled, the memory of a blade and a heartbeat catching him by the throat. He pulled back a fraction, eyes searching hers, terror and reverence warring across his face.

Her palm covered his, pressed it to the small swell beneath.

"We're all right," she said, sure of it for the first time since the rain chose sides.

Something gave in him. The roughness softened without retreating; he bent his forehead to hers and let out a breath that shook. He kissed the corner of her mouth, her cheekbone, the damp pulse at her throat—oaths without words—then dropped to his knees and wrapped his arms around her hips, cheek against her belly, as if he could anchor himself there.

"I need—" He couldn't find the rest.

"I know." She threaded her fingers into his soaked hair, holding him to her, closing her eyes as the tremor left her bones and went into his. Fro a moment he just sat pressed against her stomach.

When he stood again, he did it slow, hands smoothing up her sides—checking, memorizing, asking without words. She pulled him back into another kiss; it was still fierce, but the edges were tender now—possession traded for promise. He tasted of rain and iron and the moment a door slams between danger and the people you love.

"You're freezing," she murmured against his mouth, surprised to hear the laugh in her own voice.

"So are you." He forced himself back an inch, breath sawing, eyes never leaving her. "Let me—"

He stripped the cuirass and tossed it aside, let the wet gambeson drop with a slap, and reached for a dry blanket. He wrapped it around her shoulders first, tucking it close with careful hands, then dragged another over himself and drew her into him, chest to chest, back to the wall, their heartbeats arguing and then agreeing. He kissed her again, slower now—deeper, a long, anchoring press that said mine, alive, mine, alive until her knees softened and her hands slid under the blanket to his bare back, warmth finding warmth.

"I thought I'd lost you," he whispered into her hair—confession, not burden.

"You didn't." She tilted his face up and kissed him once more, gentle as a vow. "You won't."

Then he lifted her—easy, certain—and carried her to the hearth, set her on the furs, and knelt to unlace the rest of her wet things with the same reverence he brings to steel, eyes dutifully up when she laughed at him for trying to be noble after kissing her against a wall. He traded her into dry linen and his largest shirt, wrapped her in his blanket, and only then shrugged into a tunic himself.

He poured hot water, dropped in lemon, pressed the cup into her hands, and rested one palm over the place Hux had threatened, his thumb making an absent, soothing circle there.

"Stay with me," he said, not a plea—an invitation.

"I'm not going anywhere." She tugged him down beside her, tucked herself under his arm, and let her hand slide under his jaw to find the frantic beat there, steadying it with her touch. After a while she tipped her face up, mouth curving. "When the rain forgets us and the stone warms again, you can kiss me like that properly."

He smiled then—wrecked and beautiful—and kissed her brow, her lips, the corner of her smile. "I intend to."

Chapter Text

Morning came hard and bright, the kind of sky that refuses to conspire with sorrow. The bells kept their silence for once; justice didn't need accompaniment.

Mira had laid out black.

Rey shook her head.

"Red," she said, voice even. "His blood, not my grief." Her hand went to the ribboned signet at her sternum, a steadying weight under linen. "A thread of black, because Ben stands with me."

Mira didn't argue. She folded the black away and lifted the gown chosen in defiance—a deep, unfaltering crimson that carried no softness. The fabric fell like a verdict. Its lines were clean, uncompromising; the bodice gave room where room was needed, laced wide and low so the new curve could breathe. Mira set her palm briefly above the scar at Rey's side, checked the ease, nodded to herself. "You'll stand without strain," she murmured. "That's the only rule that matters today."

Ben hovered at the threshold, armor polished and practical, the red and white ribbon he'd tied days ago sitting beside the black at his wrist. He took in the dress and went still, something raw and proud in his face. He crossed the room only when Mira waved him forward with a pin caught between her teeth.

"Your gloves," he said, offering them warmed between his palms. He pulled each on for her, patient, careful—thumb, forefinger, middle, ring, little—and smoothed the buttons without looking away from her eyes. Then he lifted the black sash a fraction and set it with the exactness of a man who has learned what he's allowed to touch, and when.

"Crown?" the Queen Mother asked from the chair by the fire, voice level.

"Yes," Rey said. "Law on my head. Not for him—for the city. For my father" Rey voice almost shook but she controlled it.

Mira set the circlet—gold, eight small points—where bone knew how to bear it. Rey's braid sat low to keep the weight manageable; Rose threaded a single hair-thin black ribbon through the plait, then a red that caught in the light and vanished again, a pulse beneath.

Jewels were offered; Rey declined. She took only the ironwood scepter banded with silver—the sheaf of grain at its head dull in the morning light. Bread before banners, even today.

Finn appeared in the doorway like a punctuation mark. "The yard is ready," he reported. "Platform inspected. Oath-keeper present. Witness list posted. Buckets drawn, sawdust down. No banners."

"No banners," Rey confirmed. "Only the law."

Poe slipped in behind him, color worn sober for once. He handed Rey a folded parchment—the writ, countersigned in a dozen hands from baker to captain—and a small sprig of rosemary tied with red thread. "For remembering the right things," he said, uncharacteristically quiet.

Rey tucked the rosemary into the sash, just above the jet clasp, where the scent could find her. She lifted the writ and read the first line again—By order of Rey, Queen: Armitage Hux, to be brought alive, to answer in daylight. The ink was dry. The day had come.

Mira settled the mantle over Rey's shoulders—no sable; this wasn't ceremony. A short cloak, black at the collar and red to the hem, light enough not to pull at the laces, heavy enough to mean it. Ben fastened the clasp. His fingers steadied for an extra heartbeat at her throat; she let him have it.

"Water," Rose said, putting a cup into Rey's hand as if she were issuing armor. "Then bread." Rey drank, bit, swallowed. The child turned once under her palm—there and not, a promise that re-wrote what justice meant. She set her hand flat a moment over the curve and breathed until the edges of the morning agreed to behave.

"Ready," she said.

The Queen Mother stood, smoothed the sleeve of Rey's cloak, and pressed her forehead briefly to her daughter's—blessing and steel. "Justice is not anger," she said.

"Bread before banners," Rey answered, and something eased in the older woman's eyes.

Finn moved to Rey's right; Ben to her left, a hinge made flesh. Rose fell in behind with Mira, the little troop that had carried Rey through grief, now carrying her into daylight. Poe opened the door with an uncharacteristic lack of flourish.

The corridor outside smelled of rain that had forgiven and fresh-cut wood. Servants lined the walls two deep—silent, heads high. No cheers. No murmur. A city had learned how to hold its breath and keep its dignity.

At the landing, Ben looked to Rey once more—not for permission, but for her measure. She lifted her chin. The crown sat light as it could and exactly as heavy as it had to.

They descended.

The doors to the yard swung wide. Sound met them—not roar, not jeer. The steady murmur of witnesses. Farmers in their work smocks. Seamstresses with pricked thumbs. The watch with sleeves rolled. Leia and Han at the rear like weather that had made room. The scaffold stood bare—no drape, no flourish—just a beam, a knot, a stair, and the Oath-keeper in gray.

Rey stepped into the light in Ben's colors—red with the black that steadies it—and gave Hux nothing he hadn't earned. No veil. No pity. Only the law on her head and the grain in her hand.

The yard was packed and utterly still. No banners, no drums—only witnesses. The scaffold stood bare and honest: beam, knot, stair, the Oath-keeper in gray. Rain had washed the stone clean and then relented.

Hux wore prison tatters, wrists bound with the red banner that had once been his pride. Mud had taken the rest of his colors. His jaw was set; his eyes were small.

Rey mounted the steps. Ben took his place to her left, Finn a pace behind, Rose at the foot with the ledger, the Queen Mother steady as weather in the crowd. Rey's hand closed over the ironwood scepter; the crown sat light as it could and exactly as heavy as it had to. She let her gaze rest on Hux—a last measure—and then lifted it to the square.

Her voice carried clean.

"The man before us—Lord Hux—killed my father while he slept. He has attacked me, sent knives to our roads, had me stabbed" She shot him a cold look "He returned with an army and threatened my unborn child. Today he is found guilty and will hang until dead."

A murmur ran the edges and then died of its own accord. The Oath-keeper stepped forward, opened the writ, and read the law—regicide, treason, murder on the king's road, violation of safe conduct—each word set down in calm ink. When he finished, he asked the old question.

"Do you, Rey, sovereign, confirm this sentence under law?"

"I do," she said. "By my hand and for the peace of this city."

"Do any bring a lawful stay?"

Silence. Only the soft creak of rope, the square breathing.

"Then let it be done."

They removed Hux's gag. He bared his teeth, searching for a last cruelty to spend. Rey didn't give him the room.

"You have said enough, Lord Hux. Send my condolences to the devil." she told him, and nodded once.

The hood came down. The knot was set. The Oath-keeper touched the beam—old ritual, not theatre—and looked to Rey.

She raised her gloved hand, held it a heartbeat in the air for the city to see, and lowered it.

The lever moved. The scaffold answered. No spectacle—only the clean, brutal finality of a law carried out. A long breath ran across the yard and thinned into silence. Rey's hands moved to her stomach, her small bump now showing. Her eyes pinned on Hux as he hung before her. Her cold eyes watched his body dangle, struggle before stillness.

After a measured count, the Oath-keeper recorded the time in the ledger. Finn's jaw unclenched by a fraction. Ben didn't look away from Rey.

Rey faced the square again. She gave small nod "Bread and wine for all" She said before turning to her Oath-keeper. "See him buried without banner. Mark the grave with a number, not a name."

"Yes my Queen," he said, and closed the book.

Rey set her palm for a moment over the curve beneath her cloak—private, brief—and then took Ben's offered arm. The crowd parted without sound.

They crossed the threshold of the keep to a corridor that had remembered how to breathe. No cheers. No whispers. Just space made for the two of them to pass.

"I need a minute," Rey said, voice even and thinner than she wanted. "To lie down."

Ben nodded and matched her pace. He didn't steer; he stayed at her side as if the hall were a door they were holding together.

In their chamber, the coals kept a steady glow. Rey unclasped her cloak with fingers that insisted on being steady, laid it over the chair, and let out the breath she'd been saving since the square. She crossed to the balcony and pushed the casement open.

The first snow had found the city—hesitant flakes testing rooftops and the curve of the parapet, dissolving on stone, catching in her hair. Rey lifted her hand and a single flake landed on the glove's back, bright as a second's forgiveness, then gone.

Ben came up behind her, warm and solid, the smell of rain and oil and cold metal giving way to soap and wool. He set his hands on her shoulders, his touch sure but light, and pressed a kiss into her hairline.

"You made the right choice," he said, quiet as the falling white. "For your father. For the city. For us."

She watched the snow ink the air. "It didn't feel... triumph." The word had no place in her mouth. "Only necessary."

"Justice rarely sings," he answered. "It feeds."

Her shoulders softened a fraction. She turned, and he moved with her in that practiced way of his until her back met his chest and the world learned a smaller shape. His palms slid down, careful, and cradled the curve beneath her sash; she covered his hands with both of hers and breathed there until they matched.

"I thought of him," she said, eyes on the pale roofs. "Of what mercy looks like when it has to keep everyone alive." A beat. "And I thought of you, on the wall."

"I thought of you, on the stairs," he admitted. "And of the moment before the net dropped. There are a few breaths I don't plan to relive." He bent and kissed the spot above the ribboned signet, then rested his cheek beside hers. "You held the line. Outside and in."

"I was angry," she said. "I still am."

"Good," he said, with a softness that didn't blunt the word. "Anger is a tool when it remembers what it's for."

They stood like that and let the quiet arrive. Below, the courtyard shuffled back toward ordinary—brooms on wet planks, a bucket knocked against stone, Poe's voice somewhere telling a guard to sit down and eat before he fell over. The snow took the edge off the roofs and made the city look briefly gentler than it is.

Ben's thumb made an idle circle where his hands held her. "How do you feel?"

"Cold," she said truthfully. "And lighter. And like I could sleep for a week and still want honey after."

He smiled against her temple. "All achievable." He turned her gently from the balcony into the warmer room, shut the casement, and pulled a blanket down over her shoulders. The crown sat where Mira had left it on the table; Rey touched its rim and then let it be.

"Lie down," he said—not an order, an offer dressed as a suggestion. He set an extra pillow at the head, eased the sash looser with practiced fingers, and helped her into the curve he had made of blankets and patience. When she reached for him, he came at once, stretching beside her on the coverlet, an arm beneath her head so the pillow became a shoulder.

Outside, the snow thickened. Inside, he poured water, brightened it with lemon and honey, and held the cup while she drank. When she set it down, he stayed close, palm wide across her belly, counting with her until the anger thinned into fatigue and the fatigue into something gentler.

"I don't want the day to teach our child that justice is only ropes," she murmured, drowsy and stubborn at once.

"It won't," he said.

She nodded, eyes half-closed. Ben kissed her hair again, then her brow. "Rest," he said. "I'll keep the door."

Her mouth tipped—tired smile, true. "You always do."

He settled in, weight and warmth and quiet certainty, his hands a patient cradle over the future between them. The snow went on falling, soft as an apology, and the keep, which had watched law in daylight, watched now as a queen let herself be small for an hour and a king decided that was the most important work left to do.

Chapter Text

Rey's scream tore the corridor wide open.

It ricocheted off stone and tapestries, sent servants flying, turned every candle into a witness. Rose ran—hair unpinned, panic bright—and burst into the chamber to find Rey braced on the bedpost, knuckles white, breath caught high as if the pain had made a fist of her lungs.

"Where is Hale—?"

"Here," Mistress Hale answered, cool as steeped mint, already shrugging off her cloak. "Buckets. Linen. Boil water because it comforts you, not because it does anything." She touched Rey's belly with a practiced palm and nodded as if the tide had kept its appointment. "Good. Your body is doing the work."

Ben shouldered through the doorway, armor gone, sleeves rolled, the black-and-red ribbon at his wrist dark with sweat. He went straight to Rey's side, palm to her back, the other finding her hand without asking.

"Don't you dare tell me to breathe," Rey ground out, eyes wild with a pain that had rewritten the room.

"I wouldn't dream of it," he said, voice steady because someone's had to be. "I'm here."

Another contraction came like weather with a grudge. Rey folded, snarled, and hauled Ben closer by the front of his shirt. He let her. Rose pressed a cool cloth to Rey's neck and tried not to cry.

"Ride it," Hale said, firm and kind. "Don't fight it. Low sounds, not high—save your throat for shouting at kings later."

Rey tried. The sound that came out still climbed, then broke into something steadier. She crushed Ben's fingers; he didn't flinch, only set his other hand to her lower back and pressed where Hale pointed. It helped. Not enough. Enough.

They moved like a team that had rehearsed in their bones: Rose slid the birthing stool into place; Ben braced it with his boot; Mira swept the floor clear with the side of her hand and clucked at anyone who wasn't useful. Finn appeared in the doorway, took one look, turned the color of candle wax, and stationed himself in the hall to direct traffic with military precision. Poe approached with a joke loaded and was silently dragged away by the Queen Mother, who kissed his cheek and said, "Later."

Rey sat, wide-kneed, hands on Ben's forearms while he crouched in front of her, forehead nearly to hers. Another wave rose, higher, meaner. "I can't—" she started.

"You already are," Ben said. "I'm counting with you." He didn't count aloud—he breathed, long and low, until she found the shape of it and matched him out of fury as much as agreement.

Hale knelt. "There you are," she murmured, pleased. "I can feel the head. Listen to me now, Rey. When I say hold, you blow the candle out. When I say push, you do it like you're moving a mountain you've decided disagrees with you."

"Everything disagrees with me," Rey snarled, then bit down as the next contraction took her and bore down hard enough to make the bedpost creak.

"That's my girl," the Queen Mother said from just inside the door, voice like iron wrapped in velvet. "Feed your city, feed your child, in that order and both now."

"Again," Hale said. "Small push—save the big one." She glanced up at Ben. "She'll try to tear the room down. Make it possible not to."

"I've been practicing," he said, and Rey laughed on a gasp that turned into a ferocious, focused sound—half growl, half prayer.

"Head," Hale announced, bright with triumph. "Crowning. Slow now, Rey. Little pushes. Yes—like that. Good girl—good—hold—blow—"

"I hate you," Rey told Ben through her teeth, eyes streaming.

"I believe you," he said warmly, kissing her brow. "You can kill me later. Now."

She bore down. The room narrowed to Hale's hands, Rose's breath in her ear, Ben's shoulders under her grip. Fire, burn, split—and then a sudden, relief. Rey head fell against Ben as she panted.

A thin, outraged cry cracked the air.

Hale laughed, wet-eyed. "Hello, storm." She lifted the slick, wriggling weight and in the same breath set the child on Rey's chest, skin to skin, a hot, astonished miracle with a mouth like a siren and fists like fury.

"A girl," Hale added, as if the word itself might knit the whole keep back together.

Rey's hands came up shaking and sure. The baby's cry hit her palm and changed shape—still loud, but less lost. Ben made a sound Rey had never heard him make—a broken, reverent laugh that was almost a sob—and bent to kiss the wet soft crown of his daughter's head, then Rey's mouth, quick and shaking.

"You are—" he tried, failed, started over, voice wrecked with wonder. "Both of you. Gods."

Rose cried outright and then laughed at herself and then cried harder, because competence has limits. The Queen Mother covered her mouth, looked at the ceiling as if bargaining with ghosts, and failed to be stoic.

Hale waited for the next small contraction, did what needed doing with the cord and knot and bowl—workmanlike, proud—and tied it off with red-and-white thread someone had left on the table half a year ago like a prophecy. "Your mark," she said, nodding at Ben.

His hands weren't steady, but the cut was clean.

The baby blinked, unfurled a little, rooted like a creature with very straightforward priorities. Rey guided her, hissed at the ache, then breathed as the first latch took like a promise being kept.

Outside, Finn shooed away half the keep and then let them creep back in shifts with bread and tears. Poe, allowed at last, took one look, burst, and fled to invent a lullaby that no one would ever admit was good. Mira clucked, smug with relief, and changed the sheets under Rey with the sorcery of a woman who has done this longer than kings have reigned.

Ben leaned his forehead to Rey's and let the tremor finish working out of his bones. "You were terrible and magnificent," he whispered, grinning like a thief. "I accept both."

Rey huffed a laugh that turned soft. She looked down at the furious little face tucked against her and something in her expression went quiet and fierce. "Hello, my little storm," she murmured. "Welcome home."

Hale wrapped a blanket around all three of them at once. "Rest," she decreed. "The city can have its look later. For now, doors are for keeping."

Ben slid onto the bed beside them, arm around Rey, palm wide over both wife and daughter, the ribbon at his wrist brushing velvet. The chamber exhaled—the coals, the curtains, the people who had turned themselves into furniture for love.

Three days of soft-footed corridors and lullabies the keep pretended not to hear, and then morning came clear as glass. Mira fastened the last pearl on Rey's simple gown—soft cream, red ribbon at the waist, a hair-thin black thread in the braid. Rose tucked a sprig of rosemary into the sash—remembering, always—and smoothed the tiny shawl around the smallest shoulders in the room. The Queen Mother kissed Rey's temple, then the baby's brow, and stood back with all that iron turned to sunlight.

Ben lifted their daughter carefully, awe still new in his hands. The knitted booties—cream with a single red stitch at each cuff—peeked from the shawl like a joke the gods had conspired to keep. He looked at Rey; she nodded; together they stepped into the light.

The balcony learned a new weight. A hush traveled the square like wind across wheat. Ben stood half a step behind and to Rey's left, so the people could see their queen and the small storm in her arms. Finn's quiet line of guards became punctuation and then disappeared. Leia and Han, at the back of the crowd, looked up the way parents look at a door that keeps opening.

Rey's voice carried clean and human.

"Friends," she said, "three days ago, this house learned a new sound." A smile—tired, luminous. "Thank you for the bread and the songs and the patience while we kept our doors closed."

She glanced down at the shawled bundle and back to the square. "Meet our daughter."

She lifted the child just enough for the light to catch the soft dark hair, the furious little mouth, the fist that already believed in holding.

"Isabella," Rey said, and let the name settle over stone.

A ripple moved the yard—hands over hearts, tears thumbed away without embarrassment. Poe, on the far stair with a mandolin he pretended not to have brought, made an undignified sound and then covered it with a chord.

Rey went on. "We will raise her in the vows you have heard me make: bread before banners; ink before rumor; doors that open from within. May she grow in a city that feeds its people before it ornaments them."

Ben stepped forward then—not to speak over her, but to add himself to the promise. "We'll keep the door," he said, steady as a hand on a latch. "For her, and for you."

A bell sounded—one bright peal, then another, then a third—joy's grammar, not war's. The cheer that rose wasn't wild; it was relieved and stubborn and home.

Rose appeared at Rey's shoulder with a basket; inside were small round loaves, still warm. Rey took one, broke it, and set half in Ben's free hand. Together they leaned and passed the first pieces to the children at the rail below—bread before banners, made visible. The loaves went down the line to stewards who would carry them out into the square, turning witness into supper.

Isabella stirred, blinked at the winter light, and made a noise of protest that sounded suspiciously like opinion. Ben laughed under his breath, kissed her forehead like a vow, and slid his finger into her fist. She gripped with alarming conviction. The square saw it and laughed with him, the sound climbing the stone and making a home of it.

Rey set her palm over Ben's on their daughter's small back for a heartbeat—three hands, one small ribcage, a city's future—and then lifted her gaze once more.

"Thank you," she said simply. "For the days behind us, and for the ones we'll make together."

They stood a moment longer and let the people look—the baker with flour on his sleeve, the seamstress with pricked thumbs, the watchman who'd walked the midnight when the bells wouldn't stop ringing. Leia wiped her eyes and did not hide it. Han pretended to be checking the wind and failed beautifully. Finn had to clear his throat. Poe, at last, let the tune he'd been threatening through, soft and good despite himself.

Then Ben's hand touched Rey's elbow—habit now, not warning—and they stepped back from the rail. Inside, the doors closed kindly. Outside, the cheer folded into talk and plans and lines for bread.

In the quiet of the chamber, Rey leaned her head to Ben's shoulder and watched Isabella yawn like a cat and collapse into sleep mid-protest.

"Welcome home," Rey whispered into the tiny ear.

"Welcome," Ben echoed, voice wrecked and happy, and the keep, which had learned to hold grief and justice, learned now how to hold this: the small, relentless miracle of a new name spoken in daylight, and a promise the whole house meant to keep.

Chapter Text

The garden had learned their family.

Where once it had kept secrets and bells, it kept picnics now—blanket on the grass, a basket that smelled of apples and cheese, a low jug of mint water sweating in the sun. The quince wore fruit like lanterns. Bees worked the rosemary with an industry that never asked for applause.

Isabella, three now, streaked past the sundial in a blur of curls and skinned knees. She wore a red ribbon in her hair and the scuffed little boots that had replaced knitted ones; both were dirty in ways that made Rose sigh and then smile when she thought no one saw. In one hand she held a twig-sword. In the other, triumphantly, a daisy.

“For Mama!” she announced, and then forgot her intention because a butterfly dared her to chase it.

Rey leaned back against the carved bench, one palm idly smoothing the silk of her dress over the curve beneath. The child turned inside at the sound of its sister’s laughter—once, a pleased little wave—and Rey’s face went soft with that private amazement that never seemed to wear off.

Ben watched both daughters at once—the quick streak of red and grass, the slower, secret tide under Rey’s hand—with the look of a man who has learned the shape of his blessings and keeps counting them in case the number changes. He reached to tuck a curl behind Rey’s ear and left his fingers at her cheek an extra heartbeat, as if the garden might try to steal the moment and he meant to nail it down.

“You Okay?” he asked, quiet as the afternoon.

“Better than,” she said.

Isabella called, “Papa, look!” and launched her twig-sword at the sky. It fell with satisfying drama. She applauded herself, then toddled over to present the slightly battered daisy. Ben accepted it like an oath, tucked it behind Rey’s ear, and bowed solemnly to their tyrant.

“You honor the house,” he told their daughter gravely.

Isabella considered this, then clambered onto the bench in a scramble of elbows and determination. She kissed Rey’s belly—sticky, reverent—and then Ben’s cheek, sticky and less reverent, and sprang off again, a comet with jam for fuel.

“When did she learn to jump like that?” Rey asked, startled and delighted.

“When Poe taught her to climb the banister,” Ben said darkly. “He claims it was a theoretical demonstration. Leia says she’ll be a general. Han says he was never that fast and is lying.”

“Rose says she’s perfect,” Rey added.

“Rose says she’s feral,” Ben corrected, grinning. “Then knits her a sweater.”

They ate with the unhurried greed of people who have earned quiet—cheese, apple slices, bread torn open with thumbs.

“Forever,” she said, touching her cup to his.

For a while they did nothing but watch their daughter try to teach a butterfly the concept of fetch. A breeze drifted through the willow and set the leaves whispering; high above, the keep’s weather vane remembered which way to point and did so with conviction. Somewhere in the city, a bell marked the hour and meant only time.

“Do you ever think about the night of your birthday?” Ben asked after a quiet stretch,

“Every time I sit here,” Rey said, honest as weather. “The bench remembers. So do I.” She looked at him, at the line time had cut into his mouth that only smiled now.

He kissed the place above her ear where the daisy stem tickled her skin.

Isabella, thwarted by entomology, hurled herself into the grass and lay there laughing at nothing at all. Rey’s laugh answered, low, and the baby chose that moment to thump decisively against her hand.

“Oh,” she breathed, delighted. She caught Ben’s wrist and laid his palm there. He stilled, and then his face did that thing she loved—shock melting into joy as if it were the first time, as if it would always be.

“Hello, second storm,” he said, reverent and ridiculous. “We’re saving you the good blanket and your sister’s worst ideas.”

Isabella popped up to deliver a handful of grass with the gravity of a bouquet. Rey received it like jewels; Ben tucked a blade behind his own ear to make her cackle. Then their daughter pointed at the far hedge. “Race?”

“In a minute,” Ben said.

“Now,” she decreed, and he looked at Rey with doomed affection.

“Go,” Rey laughed, flicking his wrist.

He kissed her—quick, certain—and went, long strides cut to toddler length, letting Isabella nearly beat him and then pretending to trip at the last instant so she could crow at the top of her lungs. Rey watched them and felt something ease in her ribs that had been tight since she learned the shape of grief.

On their way back, Isabella slowed and veered straight to Rey, clambered into her lap with zero negotiation, and settled there like a queen claiming a throne. Rey adjusted the little body, the big curve, the shawl, and somehow made all three comfortable; the trick, she had learned, was knowing which weight to yield to and which to hold.

“Story?” Isabella demanded.

“A short one,” Rey bargained.

Ben sat, a warm flank along her side, and took half the child’s weight without asking.

Rey began:

"Once upon a time there lived a hopeless romantic princess and a prince who knew charm better than any words smith"

When the story ended, Isabella was asleep so suddenly it felt like a trick. Rey and Ben sat still with that small anchor breathing across both their laps and the new heartbeat thudding gentle against Rey’s palm.

“This is the best thing we’ve made,” Ben said softly.

“Which?” Rey asked, half a tease.

“Yes,” he said, and she laughed into his shoulder.