Chapter Seventeen: The Southern Tour
The southern provinces were starving.
That was the truth beneath the crown's carefully worded announcements, the truth that Clara had buried under layers of royal charity and political theater. The harvest had failed for the second consecutive year. The rivers had run low, the grain stores had emptied, and the people—the people were dying.
Ariyana learned this not from the palace briefings, which had been polished to a high, meaningless sheen, but from the faces of the villagers as the royal carriage rolled through their settlements. Hollow cheeks. Empty eyes. Children with bellies swollen from hunger, their ribs visible beneath threadbare shirts.
She pressed her palm against the carriage window, her breath fogging the glass.
"This is worse than they told us," she said.
Edwin, seated across from her, did not look up from his reports. "The crown does not advertise its failures."
"The crown should not lie to its future Queen."
Now he looked up—slowly, deliberately, his glacial eyes sweeping over her face. "You are not Queen yet."
"I am your betrothed. That should count for something."
"It counts for nothing except a ceremony and a signature." He returned to his reports. "Do not romanticize power, Ariyana. It is not a gift. It is a burden. And the people you see out that window—they will hate you for it, no matter how many loaves of bread you distribute."
Ariyana turned from the window, her jaw tight. "Is that what you believe? That the people hate us?"
"I believe the people are hungry. Hungry people do not love their rulers. They tolerate them, at best." He set down his reports, leaning back against the velvet seat. "You have spent nine years in a palace, sheltered from the reality of this kingdom. The south will be a shock."
"I am not sheltered."
"You are sheltered." His voice was flat, matter-of-fact. "You have never seen a child die of starvation. You have never watched a mother sell herself for a bag of grain. You have never held a dying man's hand and told him the crown has no food to send."
Ariyana's hands curled into fists. "And you have?"
Edwin's expression flickered—just for a moment, just enough for her to see the shadow beneath his cold mask.
"I have," he said. "When I was sixteen, my father sent me to the eastern provinces during a famine. I watched a woman throw herself from a cliff because she could not bear to watch her children starve." He paused. "I was standing ten feet away. I could not reach her in time."
The silence in the carriage was absolute.
Ariyana looked at him—at the hard line of his jaw, the tension in his shoulders, the way his hands had curled into fists on his knees.
"That is why you are cold," she said quietly. "Not because you do not care. Because you care too much."
Edwin's eyes snapped to hers. "Do not psychoanalyze me."
"Someone should."
"I said—"
"I heard what you said." She leaned forward, her olive-green eyes fixed on his. "You are not the only one who has seen suffering, Edwin. I watched my mother die in a whitewashed villa, surrounded by your stepmother's servants, while you sat in your chambers and did nothing."
His jaw tightened. "I did not know—"
"You did not want to know." Her voice was soft, but it cut like a blade. "That is the difference between us, Your Highness. You build walls to protect yourself from pain. I build bridges. And I will cross this kingdom—every starving village, every dying child, every desperate mother—and I will do what the crown should have done years ago."
She sat back, her heart pounding, her hands trembling.
"I will not be a silent Queen, Edwin. If you marry me, you marry a voice. And I will use it."
Edwin stared at her for a long moment. Then, slowly, something shifted in his expression—not warmth, not surrender, but something like respect.
"You are going to be a problem," he said.
"I am going to be your wife," she corrected. "The two are not mutually exclusive."
---
The First Village
The village of Oakhaven was smaller than Ariyana had expected—a cluster of stone cottages huddled around a central well, their thatched roofs sagging, their windows dark. The people who gathered to greet the royal carriage were fewer than they should have been. Too many empty faces. Too many gaps in the crowd where the dead should have stood.
Ariyana descended from the carriage before Edwin could offer his hand. Her boots sank into mud that had not seen rain in weeks. The smell—unwashed bodies, rotting grain, the sweet-sick stench of something dead and forgotten—hit her like a physical blow.
She did not flinch.
She walked toward the village elder, an old woman with skin like cracked leather and eyes that had seen too much, and she knelt.
"Mother," she said, using the honorific of the southern dialect, "we have brought food. And medicine. And whatever else the crown can provide."
The old woman stared at her—at the silk dress, the silver ribbons in her hair, the soft hands that had never worked a day in the fields.
"You are the Prince's woman," the old woman said. Not a question.
"I am his betrothed. And I am here to help."
The old woman's eyes traveled to Edwin, who had emerged from the carriage and stood watching with his arms crossed, his expression unreadable.
"He is cold," the old woman observed.
"He is difficult," Ariyana agreed. "But he is also here. That counts for something."
The old woman's lips twitched—not quite a smile, but close. "You are not what I expected, girl."
"No one ever expects me."
---
The Distribution
The food distribution took hours.
Ariyana worked alongside the villagers, her silk dress hitched up and tied at her waist, her hands buried in sacks of grain and dried meat. She did not complain about the mud, the smell, the way her back ached from lifting and carrying. She simply worked.
Edwin watched her from the edge of the square, his arms still crossed, his expression still unreadable.
He had expected her to break. To cry. To retreat to the carriage and demand to be taken back to the palace.
She did none of those things.
She spoke to the villagers in their own dialect—the rough, guttural speech of the southern provinces—and she listened to their stories with a patience he had never seen her display in court. She held a dying woman's hand and promised her that her children would not starve. She bounced a crying infant on her hip while his mother filled her sack with grain. She kissed the forehead of a boy no older than eight, whose ribs were visible through his shirt, and she whispered something in his ear that made him smile.
Edwin's chest tightened.
She is not what I expected either, he thought.
---
The Villagers' Words
"Your wife is a treasure," the village elder said, appearing at Edwin's elbow. "You are a lucky man."
"She is not my wife. Not yet."
The old woman snorted. "Then marry her quickly, before someone else does. A woman like that does not stay unclaimed for long."
Edwin's jaw tightened. "She is not a possession to be claimed."
"No." The old woman's eyes were sharp, knowing. "She is a flame. And you, Prince, are standing very close to the fire."
She hobbled away, leaving Edwin alone with his thoughts.
His wife, he thought. The word felt foreign, heavy, wrong. And yet—
And yet, when he looked at Ariyana—laughing with the village children, her face flushed with exertion, her hair escaping from its braid in wild dark tendrils—the word did not seem as wrong as it should have.
---
The Second Village
The second village was smaller, poorer, and even more desperate.
Here, the famine had taken not just the harvest but the livestock. The sheep had died first, then the cows, then the chickens. The dogs had been eaten weeks ago. The cats had followed.
Ariyana walked through the village square, her stomach churning, her eyes burning with tears she refused to shed.
Edwin walked beside her, his shoulder brushing hers, his presence steady and silent.
"Are you all right?" he asked quietly.
"I am fine."
"You are lying."
"I am always lying." She did not look at him. "It is how I survive."
He was silent for a moment. Then his hand found the small of her back—not possessive, not demanding, just there. Warm. Steady.
"Today," he said, "you do not have to survive. Today, you can just be."
She turned to look at him—at the hard lines of his face, the shadows beneath his eyes, the set of his jaw.
"And what are you today, Edwin?"
He held her gaze for a long moment.
"Today," he said, "I am trying."
---
The Children
They swarmed her.
A dozen children, ranging from toddlers to gangly adolescents, surrounded Ariyana with outstretched hands and bright, desperate eyes. They did not ask for food—not directly. They asked for stories. Songs. The chance to touch her silk dress, her silver ribbons, her soft, clean hands.
Ariyana knelt in the mud, ignoring the chill seeping through her dress, and gathered the smallest child into her lap.
"What is your name?" she asked.
"Lira," the girl whispered. She could not have been more than five. Her hair was matted, her face smeared with dirt, her eyes too large for her thin face.
"That is a beautiful name, Lira. Like the songbird."
The girl's eyes widened. "You know songbirds?"
"I know many things." Ariyana smiled, tucking a strand of hair behind the girl's ear. "Would you like to hear a story?"
"Yes. Please."
Ariyana told her a story—a tale from the eastern mountains, about a princess who lost her kingdom and found her way home. The children gathered closer, their hunger forgotten, their eyes fixed on her face.
Edwin stood at the edge of the circle, watching.
He had never seen her like this. Soft. Open. Unarmored.
He had spent nine years thinking of her as a obligation, a burden, a promise he had never made. But watching her with the children—watching her give them something more valuable than food, more precious than gold—he realized that he had been wrong about her.
She was not a burden.
She was not a promise.
She was a person. A woman. A force of nature wrapped in silk and shadow.
And he was terrified of her.
---
The Evening
By the time they reached the third village, the sun was setting and the horses were exhausted. The royal carriage had gotten stuck in the mud twice, and the guards were grumbling about the cold, the dark, the impossibility of finding safe passage through the unfamiliar roads.
"We will stay here for the night," Edwin announced, surveying the village with a critical eye. "The inn is adequate. The food is questionable. The beds are—"
"Shared," the innkeeper said, wringing her hands. "I am so sorry, Your Highness. We only have one room. The harvest failure, you see—travelers are few, and we let the other rooms to—"
"It is fine." Edwin's voice was flat. "We will manage."
Ariyana stared at him. "Manage?"
"One night, Lady Ariyana. Surely you can survive one night in close quarters without attempting to murder me."
"I make no promises."
---
The Room
It was small.
One bed. One chair. One window, cracked and drafty, letting in the cold night air. A single candle flickered on the rickety table, casting dancing shadows across the walls.
Ariyana stood in the center of the room, her arms crossed, her jaw tight.
"This is unacceptable."
"This is the south." Edwin shrugged off his coat, draping it over the back of the chair. "You wanted to see the real kingdom. This is it."
"I did not ask to share a bed with you."
"You will not share a bed with me." He sat in the chair, stretching his long legs toward the hearth. "I will sleep here. You will take the bed. We will both survive."
She wanted to argue. She wanted to point out that the chair was too small, that he was too tall, that his neck would hurt in the morning and he would be insufferable about it.
But she was too tired to argue.
She pulled back the thin blanket, climbed onto the narrow mattress, and turned her back to him.
"Do not snore," she said.
"I do not snore."
"Everyone snores."
"I do not."
She closed her eyes.
---
The Chill
The fire died sometime after midnight.
Ariyana woke shivering, her teeth chattering, her body curled into a tight ball beneath the thin blanket. The room was freezing—the cracked window letting in a steady stream of cold air, the stone walls radiating the chill of the winter night.
She sat up, wrapping her arms around herself.
Edwin was still in the chair, his head tipped back, his eyes closed. His chest rose and fell with slow, even breaths. He looked younger in sleep. Softer. Almost human.
Ariyana watched him for a long moment.
Then she climbed out of bed, crossed the room, and shook his shoulder.
"Edwin."
He did not move.
"Edwin." She shook him harder. "Wake up."
His eyes opened—slowly, drowsily, their glacial chill thawed by sleep. "What?"
"I am cold."
"Then put on more clothes."
"There are no more clothes."
He closed his eyes. "Not my problem."
Ariyana glared at him. Then, before she could lose her nerve, she grabbed his arm and pulled.
"What are you—"
"I am cold," she repeated, dragging him toward the bed. "And you are warm. Let me use you as my body heater."
Edwin stared at her. His expression was somewhere between disbelief and reluctant amusement.
"You want me to—"
"I want you to shut up and get in the bed."
"You are aware that we are not married."
"I am aware that I am freezing to death and you are the only source of warmth in this godforsaken room." She shoved him onto the mattress. "Now take off your boots and do not make this weird."
He took off his boots.
He lay on the edge of the narrow bed, as far from her as the limited space allowed, his spine straight, his arms at his sides.
"This is inappropriate," he said.
"This is survival." She turned her back to him, curling into a tight ball. "Do not touch me."
"I would not dream of it."
---
The Compromise
Ten minutes passed.
Ariyana was still shivering. The blanket was thin, the room was cold, and Edwin—despite his warmth—was too far away to matter.
She turned over, glaring at his back.
"Edwin."
"Yes?"
"Your warmth is not reaching me."
"Perhaps because you told me not to touch you."
"I did not realize you would take me literally."
He turned over, facing her. In the darkness, she could just make out the line of his jaw, the gleam of his eyes.
"What do you want, Ariyana?"
"I want to stop shivering."
"Then—" He hesitated. Then, slowly, he opened his arms.
She stared at him.
"Do not think too much about this," he said. "I am just using you for my own warmth."
"The same."
"Good."
She moved into his arms.
---