He Broke Our Betrothal at the Midwinter Ball, So I Wed the Grand Duke Before Dawn novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: Midwinter Night
At the Midwinter Ball the Crown Prince sets Thessaly aside for the Saintess; she releases him herself and offers the Grand Duke of Frostmarch a contract marriage in front of the court.
The Crown Prince asked for the betrothal ring in the middle of the Midwinter Ball, with the orchestra still playing.
Lady Thessaly Orlanne was holding a glass of plum wine when he said it.
"Thessaly, a moment, if you please."
Prince Lysander Velmoor stood at the foot of the throne dais in white and gold, with the young Saintess on his arm.
Four hundred nobles stopped dancing.
The music faltered, then stopped too.
Thessaly set her glass on a passing tray and walked across the marble.
She had been engaged to this man for ten years.
She had read his letters, kept his accounts when his steward stole, and sat through every banquet at his right hand.
She knew exactly what his face looked like when he was about to be cruel and wanted it called kindness.
It looked like this.
"I will be plain," Lysander said, loudly enough for the galleries. "The Church has named Lady Iolanthe Ferren the Saintess of Verrane, and I have found in her the heart I need beside me."
Iolanthe lowered her pale eyes and did not look sorry.
"Our betrothal has been a political comfort," the Prince went on. "But it has never been a love. I ask you now, before everyone, to return the ring and to wish the Saintess well."
Thessaly looked at the ring on her finger.
It was a plain gold band with a small sapphire, and it had been put there when she was twelve years old.
Behind her someone whispered, "She'll cry. Watch."
Her father stood at the edge of the ballroom with his hand over his mouth.
Her younger sister Nerissa, seventeen and fierce, had started forward and been caught by the sleeve.
Thessaly breathed in.
She had one choice to make, and she would make it before her hands began to shake.
"Your Highness," she said.
The room leaned in.
"The Law of Release says a lady betrothed to the Crown may release the Crown herself, in front of witnesses, and keep her name and her dowry."
"I am aware of the law," Lysander said, a little too quickly.
"Then you will hear me use it."
She pulled the ring from her finger.
She held it up between two fingers so the nearest galleries could see the sapphire catch the chandeliers.
"I, Thessaly Orlanne, release Lysander Velmoor from every promise made in my name."
"I wish the Saintess joy of him. She will need it."
Somebody in the gallery gasped aloud.
Lysander's face went red from the collar up.
"Thessaly, that is not what I..."
"You asked for the ring."
She dropped it into his open palm.
He stared at it.
Iolanthe's fingers tightened on his sleeve.
Thessaly turned her back on the throne.
It was a thing no lady of the court had done in two hundred years, and she did it in full view, with her spine straight.
The crowd parted for her.
Beyond them, by the north windows, a tall man in a grey wolf-fur mantle stood with his arms folded and a wineglass he had not touched.
Eskil Varnhelm, Grand Duke of Frostmarch, had come south for the Council and stayed for the ball because the Emperor had ordered it.
He was twenty-nine, black-haired and cold-eyed, and the court called him the Wolf behind his back.
He was also, everyone knew, the only man in the Empire with a worse winter ahead of him than hers.
By Northern law a Grand Duke who had not stood in his Hall with a duchess by the first day of thaw lost his duchy to an Imperial governor.
He had no duchess.
Thessaly had read the Council minutes, because no one else in the capital had bothered.
She walked straight to him.
His eyes followed her the whole way, and he did not move.
She stopped a pace from his mantle and curtsied exactly as deeply as courtesy required.
"Your Grace."
"Lady Orlanne."
His voice was lower than she remembered.
"You need a wife by the thaw," Thessaly said, clearly, so that the galleries behind her could hear every word. "I need a house."
Nobody in the ballroom breathed.
Eskil looked at her for a long moment.
His gaze went to her bare left hand, then to the Prince at the dais, then back.
She saw him understand it, all of it, in the space of a heartbeat.
He did not smile.
"That is a public offer," he said.
"It is."
"You have just lost your betrothal in front of four hundred people, and you are offering me a marriage to spite him."
"I am offering you a marriage because it solves your problem," she said. "I will be glad if it also solves mine."
A corner of his mouth moved, once.
He unfolded his arms.
"Name your terms," said the Grand Duke of Frostmarch.
"I'll write them by dawn," Thessaly said. "Bring a clerk."
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