# Chapter 30
Married life settled around them faster than either had expected, the ordinary rhythms of shared mornings and shared meals folding in easily beside the extraordinary weight of palace life.
Angelo received a formal title within weeks — Prince Consort, a designation Halvard's faction had fought bitterly before finally, grudgingly, conceding. He wore it the way he wore everything else about this new life: carefully, without pride, treating it as one more responsibility rather than an honor.
"You still wake before sunrise," Elena said one morning, finding him already dressed, already alert, long before the palace itself had stirred.
"Old habits."
"You're a prince now. You're allowed to sleep in."
"I don't think I know how."
She laughed, curling against him anyway, unbothered by the hour. "Then I suppose I'll simply have to wake early too."
Outside their window, Valoria continued its slow autumn turn, the kingdom settling, gradually, into an era neither entirely expected nor entirely resisted — a soldier's steadiness now woven permanently into the fabric of its royal house.