By the time the rumors reached the family wing, they had evolved into three entirely different operas.
According to one breathless pamphlet someone had slipped under Fia's door that morning:
Seraphine had publicly proposed to the Dragon Villainess in the middle of the ballroom and they had devoured each other in front of a fainting court.
The Royal Healer had dragged Fia onto a balcony and conducted a scandalous "full-body exam" against the balustrade.
The War Captain and the Witch had dueled in the garden over which of them had the greater claim, nearly burning down the rose bushes.
Fia sat cross-legged on the edge of her bed, pamphlet in hand, expression caught somewhere between disbelief and hysterical laughter.
"This is…impressive," she said finally. "Completely wrong, but the commitment to narrative is admirable."
Elira, sprawled upside-down in an armchair with her legs over the back, cackled.
"At least they got the vibes right," she said. "There was kissing, there was dragging, and Lyriel and I did argue in the garden. We just didn't use swords. Or fire. Sadly."
Lyriel, perched on the windowsill with a notebook on her knees, sniffed.
"If we had dueled," she said, pushing her glasses up, "I would have won."
"Absolutely not," Elira said.
"Statistically—"
"Emotionally."
Mira sat at Fia's vanity, hairbrush in hand, gently working through Fia's dark waves.
"Less arguing," she said mildly. "More breathing. In through your nose, out through your mouth."
"Already breathing," Fia muttered.
"Do it anyway," Mira said.
Seraphine lounged against the bedpost, arms folded, watching them all with the faintly dazed expression of someone who had fought four campaigns and suddenly found herself in a different, significantly more ridiculous war.
On the table nearby lay four small boxes—unassuming, banded in the Arclight crest.
Fia's eyes kept drifting toward them.
She could feel her pulse jump every time.
"You still have time to change your mind," Seraphine said quietly when the others had lapsed into bickering over whose turn it was to police gossip.
Fia met her gaze in the mirror.
"I don't want to change my mind," she said. "I just don't want my mother to combust."
Helena Arclight, Duchess and terrifying social force, had many strengths.
Calmness when confronted with her eldest daughter's romantic calculus was not, historically, one of them.
Mira set the brush down and rested her hands lightly on Fia's shoulders.
"You know she already assumes the worst," Mira said. "You might as well give her the truth. It's less dramatic than whatever she has invented."
"That's debatable," Elira muttered.
Lyriel snapped her notebook shut with a soft thump.
"We promised each other," she said, voice gentler than usual, "that if we did this, we'd do it properly. No half-truths. No pretending it's 'just politics.'"
Fia exhaled.
Right.
She'd been the one to bring it up, in the quiet hours between altars and battles and exhausted laughter.
If she lived—if the dragon and the illness and Mira's stubbornness managed to drag her through the next few years—she didn't want to spend that time pretending her heart came in single-issue packaging.
She wanted them.
All of them.
Not as stolen nights in warded rooms and vague rumors, but as something her family could look at and name.
Scandalous?
Yes.
Politically tangled?
Absolutely.
But real.
"I know," she said. "I'm not backing out."
She reached for the first box.
Her hands trembled.
Mira's fingers curled over hers, steadying them.
"Breathe," Mira murmured again.
Fia shot her a look.
"Do you have a second setting?" she muttered.
"Yes," Mira said. "It's 'yell at you.' Don't make me use it before breakfast."
That won her a shaky laugh.
Fia pocketed the box.
Then the second.
The third.
The fourth.
They were not rings, not exactly—not yet. Arclight law was flexible about magic bonds but very specific about titles; poly marriages weren't unheard of, but royal ones were…complicated.
This was a promise first.
The law could catch up later.
"All right," Fia said. "Let's go get yelled at."
They met in the family solar, not the formal receiving hall.
Fia was grateful for that.
The solar felt smaller, warmer. Wide windows spilled sunlight over low couches and shelves stacked with books that had been read too many times to be just decorative.
A tea tray steamed on the central table, biscuits arranged in ruthless, perfect rows.
Helena stood by the window, back straight, hands clasped so tightly that her knuckles had gone white.
Cassian sat on a low settee, one ankle crossed over his knee, appearing at ease in that way Fia recognized as absolute performance.
Aldren leaned against the mantle, arms folded, expression neutral and watchful.
Elys sat perched on a footstool, bouncing one leg, eyes switching between the door and her parents like she was watching the world's slowest duel.
They all looked up when Fia came in—with four shadows at her back.
"Good morning," Fia said, and had never heard herself sound so formal.
Her mother's gaze swept past her and caught on the cluster behind.
Seraphine in tailored black and crimson, crown absent but presence undeniable; her dark-gold hair braided back, showing the scar that ran across her right hand.
Mira in healer blues, robes neat, blue-black hair pulled into a low tail, storm-gray eyes steady and sharp.
Elira in deep green leathers with gold stitching, jacket open over a soft white shirt, coppery skin and flame-red hair bound in a high tail, a faint silver scar nicking her jaw.
Lyriel in layered charcoal and ink-dark blue, high-collared coat brushing her knees, ink stains on her fingers, dark brown hair twisted into a messy bun held by three pins and sheer willpower, round glasses catching the light.
Four women, four different kinds of trouble.
All of them standing just close enough to Fia to telegraph ours.
Helena inhaled.
Cassian's mouth twitched.
Aldren's brows climbed.
Elys made a tiny, barely contained squeak.
"Fia," Helena said, in the tone that had once sent entire ballrooms scurrying. "Is there something you would like to explain?"
"Yes," Fia said.
Her legs felt like they had on the battlefield—but for a different reason.
She made herself walk forward until she stood in the center of the room, equidistant from her parents and the four women.
Seraphine moved to her right.
Mira to her left.
Elira and Lyriel flanked slightly behind, like an honor guard composed of chaos.
Fia swallowed.
She lifted her chin.
"I'm going to marry them," she said.
Silence detonated.
"Ah," Cassian said mildly, after a beat. "Starting small today, are we?"
Helena blinked.
Then blinked again.
"'Them,'" she repeated, very carefully. "As in—"
She gestured vaguely at the cluster of lethal beauty behind Fia.
"Yes," Fia said.
"All of them," Elys blurted, eyes wide. "You're going to have four wives?"
Elys' voice cracked on "wives."
Fia's ears burned.
"Yes," she said again. "Not tomorrow. Not…immediately. There are wars and politics and health and law to navigate. But eventually…if they still want me…I want to marry all four."
Mira's hand brushed Fia's elbow at that "if." A small, grounding touch.
Seraphine stepped forward just enough to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Fia.
"We do," she said quietly.
Helena closed her eyes for a moment.
When she opened them again, they were suspiciously bright.
"Sit," she said.
It wasn't quite a command.
It was also not a request.
Fia perched on the nearest sofa.
Seraphine took the seat beside her, close enough that their shoulders touched.
Mira settled on Fia's other side, arranging her robes with precise, calming movements.
Elira, never one for chairs, dropped to the floor at Fia's feet, forearms resting on her knees.
Lyriel chose the arm of the sofa, sitting perched like a raven on a branch, ink-stained hands folded in her lap.
Helena watched all of this like she was adding columns in her head.
Cassian's eyes moved from one woman to the next, something like amusement and calculation both in his gaze.
"All right," Helena said finally. "Let us start with the obvious."
She looked at Seraphine first.
"Your Majesty," she said. "I had anticipated that my daughter might— eventually—entangle herself with you. That much I was prepared for. It is inconvenient and terrifying for every political reason imaginable, but at least the narrative is straightforward. Queen and Calamity. Fine. Dramatic. Legendary."
Seraphine's mouth twitched.
"I appreciate your…conditional approval, Duchess," she said dryly.
Helena's gaze slid to Mira.
"The Royal Healer," she continued. "Who has already informed me, on three separate occasions, in increasingly graphic detail, what will happen to my daughter's organs if she continues to act like a martyr."
Mira colored, but did not look away.
"I stand by those descriptions," she said. "Fear is an excellent motivator for compliance."
Helena inclined her head, acknowledging both the honesty and the insolence.
Her attention moved to Elira.
"The Sword Captain," she said. "Who tells stories at my dinner table that make my son pull his hair out and my youngest request sword lessons."
Elira grinned, entirely unrepentant.
"Ma'am," she said. "Your youngest is very talented."
"Stop encouraging her," Aldren muttered.
Lyriel was last.
"And the Witch," Helena said. "Who once lectured three bishops and an Arclight adviser into silence about the spiritual geometry of ward circles."
Lyriel adjusted her glasses.
"They were wrong," she said simply.
Helena exhaled.
Her eyes came back to Fia.
"You intend," Helena said slowly, "to marry a queen, a healer, a sword captain, and a war mage."
"Yes," Fia said.
She wanted to sink through the floor.
She also wanted to shout it from the highest spire.
Both feelings battled in her chest.
Cassian steepled his fingers.
"Legally," he said, tone thoughtful, "this is…complicated. But not impossible. Arclight law recognizes multi-party contracts under certain circumstances—old noble houses with interwoven bloodlines, merchant consortiums where spouses are treated as co-investors, priesthood circles… We would need to draft something that does not offend any of the traditionalists so badly they spontaneously combust."
Elira perked up.
"I could help with combustion," she offered.
"Not the kind we want," Lyriel murmured.
Helena shot them both a look that could kill weeds at twenty paces.
"Why?" she asked.
Not scornful.
Just…heavy.
Fia had been braced for that.
The question was still a spear.
"Because I love them," she said.
Her voice came out steadier than she felt.
She looked at Seraphine first.
Seraphine, in the morning light, looked less like a queen and more like a woman carrying centuries of expectation on shoulders that had already spent months under armor.
Her skin was warm gold from sun and training yards, her dark-gold hair braided back severe.
But there was softness there too, in the faint smile lines at the corners of her mouth, in the way she watched the room like she was cataloging every person who might hurt Fia.
"She is my shelter," Fia said quietly. "When everything is loud and sharp, she…holds. She reminds me I'm more than a weapon. She sees the parts of me that are ridiculous and frightened and…thinks they are worth loving too."
Seraphine's throat worked.
Her fingers sought Fia's under the fold of her skirt.
Fia squeezed back once.
She turned to Mira.
Mira was smaller than the others, lean and compact, dark blue-black hair pulled into a simple tail that brushed her shoulder blades. Her skin was a warm brown that made the storm-gray of her eyes more striking, and every inch of her spoke of restrained energy—precise, controlled, deadly in a different way.
Her hands, resting on her knees, were small but calloused, healer's hands that knew the inside of a body better than most people knew their own homes.
"And she," Fia said, "is the one who keeps dragging me back into my skin. Literally and…otherwise. She is the reason I'm still here. When I'm ready to turn myself into kindling, she…refuses. She makes me eat, makes me rest, makes me breathe. She gets angry when I hurt, because to her my body isn't some abstract sacrifice. It's me."
Mira's eyes glistened.
"That seems…accurate," Cassian murmured.
Fia drew in a breath.
Elira, on the floor, looked up at her with green eyes that always seemed a little too bright, like there was embers smoldering just under the surface.
Her skin had that coppery, sun-warmed cast of someone who lived outdoors, her arms and shoulders clearly conditioned from years of training. Flame-red hair was shaved close on one side, the rest pulled into a high tail that swayed when she moved. A faint silver scar nicked the line of her jaw, softened by the almost permanent grin she wore like armor.
"And Elira," Fia said, voice warming despite herself, "reminds me how to be…alive. She makes me laugh when I want to crawl into a cave. She pulls me into stupid games and ridiculous bets and teaches me new sword forms at three in the morning because I told her my dreams wouldn't let me sleep. She will pick a fight with anyone who looks at me wrong, but she's also the first to throw herself between me and anything sharp. She makes the future feel…less like an enemy and more like something I might actually want to see."
Elira swallowed.
Her usual cocky grin wobbled, then steadied.
"You make it sound like I'm useful," she said lightly.
"You are," Fia said.
Lyriel, on the arm of the sofa, sat very still, as if moving might break whatever spell had settled over the room.
Her skin was pale from long hours under library lamps rather than sun, the faintest scatter of freckles dusting her nose. Her hair, dark brown and fine, had escaped its bun in several places, wisps curling around her ears. Her eyes, behind the round lenses, were a clear, shifting hazel that went almost gold when she was excited about a theory.
Ink stained the edges of her fingers. There was a smudge on her cheek she hadn't noticed.
"And Lyriel," Fia said softly, "reminds me that I am more than a mistake. She looks at the dragon and the illness and the broken system code and instead of seeing a curse, she sees…questions. Possibilities. She talks to me like I'm an equation worth solving, not a ticking clock. She keeps me honest. When I try to turn my pain into some grand, tragic justification, she tells me I'm being an idiot in three different magical dialects. She…refuses to let me simplify myself down to 'dying girl with fire.'"
Lyriel's lips parted.
"You are…very bad at hiding from people who love you," she murmured.
Fia's chest hurt.
She placed a hand over it unconsciously.
Her mother's gaze followed the movement.
"And what," Helena asked quietly, "do you give them?"
Fia blinked.
"I—" she started, thrown.
She'd expected skepticism about her motives, about politics, about precedent.
She hadn't expected that.
Helena's expression softened at the edges.
"You speak as if you are the only one who is…rescued," Helena said. "As if all the love only flows one way. You may be my child, but you are not the sole axis of the universe, Fia. What do you bring to them, in your own eyes?"
Fia opened her mouth.
Closed it.
Seraphine's thumb stroked across her knuckles.
"Tell her," Seraphine murmured.
Fia swallowed.
"I…" she started, then forced herself to stop hedging. "I think I…give them something to fight for that isn't just duty. A…reason. The war, the altars, the court—those things eat people. They take and take until there's nothing left but obligation. With me, they…remember they're allowed to be ridiculous. To be selfish sometimes. To be…soft."
She glanced at Mira.
"I let Mira be wrong on purpose sometimes so she can complain about it," she said. "I make sure she sleeps. I force her to eat something that isn't tea and fury."
Mira snorted, wiping at her eyes.
"With Seraphine," Fia continued, "I…remind her she's more than a crown. I tease her about her terrible handwriting. I steal her from meetings so she has to sit in the garden with me and listen to birds instead of ministers."
Seraphine smiled, small and real.
"Elira…needed someone who wasn't impressed by her first," Fia said. "I tell her when she's overcompensating. I hold the parts of her that are…tired. The parts she hides under jokes."
Elira's breath hitched.
Lyriel's fingers tightened on Fia's shoulder.
"And Lyriel…" Fia's voice softened. "She spends so much time in her head that she forgets she has a body. I…drag her out of the library. I put a blanket over her when she falls asleep at her desk. I let her explain things four times because she gets excited and forgets she already did."
Lyriel made a small wounded sound.
"I am being perceived," she muttered.
Fia smiled, shaky.
"I'm not…just dying," she said. "I'm living. With them. And if I'm going to keep doing that, I want it to be something we can name. Not just rumor and innuendo and…pamphlets."
She held her parents' eyes.
"I want you to know that if— when—I die," she said, voice roughening, "I didn't go out as a sacrificial pawn. I went out as…someone's wife. Four someones. Loved. Messy. Ridiculous. Real."
The word die landed like a stone in a quiet pool.
Helena flinched.
Cassian's fingers clenched.
Elys' eyes filled instantly.
"Hey," Aldren said softly, pushing off the mantle. "Too early in the morning for existential speeches, Fifi."
"I'm not making a speech," Fia said. "I'm…telling you the truth."
Silence.
It stretched.
Then Helena moved.
She crossed the space between them in three steps and sank gracefully—but not quite steadily—onto the low table in front of Fia, ignoring the tea tray completely.
Up close, Fia could see the fine lines at the corners of her mother's eyes, the tiny tremor in her hands.
Helena reached out and took Fia's face between her palms.
"You stubborn, terrifying child," she whispered. "You really do intend to steal four of the kingdom's most dangerous women and tie them to you."
"Yes," Fia said, not breathing.
Helena's thumbs brushed Fia's cheeks.
"Then I suppose," Helena said slowly, "the only question remaining is whether they deserve you."
Every woman behind Fia straightened instinctively.
Seraphine's back went iron-rod straight.
Mira's jaw clenched.
Elira planted her hands on her thighs, muscles tensing as if Helena had issued a direct challenge.
Lyriel adjusted her glasses, eyes sharpening.
Helena's gaze slid past Fia's shoulder.
"Well?" she asked.
Seraphine was the first to rise.
She moved around the sofa and bowed—not the shallow nod of a queen acknowledging a lesser noble, but a deliberate, respectful incline of her head and shoulders.
"Duchess Arclight," she said. "I cannot promise a quiet life. Or a safe one. But I can promise that your daughter will never again face any battle alone. Any altar, any king, any god that reaches for her will find my blade in the way."
Mira stood next.
She did not bow as low; healers bowed to no one when they were in uniform. But she inclined her head with formal precision.
"I will guard her body," Mira said simply. "Every breath, every heartbeat, every stubborn, infuriating step she insists on taking. I will fight her illness with every tool I have and every one I will invent. And when the time comes that I cannot win every battle…I will make sure she does not suffer alone, or in fear."
Helena's mouth trembled.
Elira rose, hands flexing at her sides.
"I'm not good at pretty speeches," she said bluntly. "But I can swear this: anyone who hurts her has to go through me, and I don't fight fair. I'll make her laugh when she thinks she can't. I'll drag her away from sharp edges when she's too tired to notice them. I'll be the idiot who charges first so she has time to think. I'll love her loud. Always."
Lyriel slid off the arm of the sofa and stood, smoothing her coat.
"I will watch over the things none of you can see," she said quietly. "The curses in the corners, the patterns in the wards, the little gaps greedy powers try to slip through. I will challenge her when she tries to make herself smaller than she is. I will write a world where her existence is not an anomaly but a proof that even broken systems can produce miracles."
Cassian exhaled a long, slow breath.
"Well," he said. "That's…quite a set of vows for an unofficial breakfast meeting."
Elys wiped at her eyes aggressively.
"So I get four big sisters?" she asked, voice wobbling. "Like…proper ones? Not just 'oh they're visiting commanders' but 'they buy me cake and we complain about Fia together' sisters?"
Mira's expression softened.
"I already complain about Fia," she said. "Cake can be arranged."
Elira grinned through damp eyes.
"I'll teach you how to flip a sword in front of annoying nobles," she said.
Lyriel coughed.
"I will supervise," she said. "With safety wards."
Seraphine smiled, slow.
"And I," she said, "will ensure your school never dares mistreat you, because nobody wants four furious aunts and one dragon at parent-teacher meetings."
Elys made a small, strangled noise that might have been joy.
Aldren shook his head, but there was a smile tugging at his mouth.
"You realize," he said to Fia, "you've just made any potential suitor for me or Elys deeply miserable. How are they supposed to compete with 'my sister married a queen, a healer, a captain, and a witch'?"
"Choose someone boring and kind," Fia said. "Balance the chaos."
"Rude," Elira muttered.
Cassian leaned back, looking at his wife.
"Helena?" he asked softly.
Helena held Fia's gaze for a long, long moment.
Then she exhaled and pulled Fia into a hug.
It was gentler than the one after the altar.
But only just.
"You are going to be the death of me," Helena whispered into her hair. "But at least you are collecting enough terrifying women that I can retire someday and let you all guard each other."
Her shoulders shook once.
Fia's eyes stung.
"Is that…a yes?" Fia asked, voice muffled.
Helena pulled back enough to cup her face again.
"It is an 'I will help you navigate the law, the gossip, and the endless logistics of a four-fold wedding,'" Helena said. "Which, from me, might as well be a yes."
Cassian raised his teacup in a mock-solemn toast.
"To my daughter," he said. "Proof that if you give a villainess a second life, she will collect wives like dragon hoards gold."
Elira snorted.
Mira rolled her eyes.
Lyriel was already scribbling notes about "multi-party bond sigils" on the back of an old letter.
Seraphine, for the first time since they'd walked in, looked…relieved.
Not completely.
The war was still out there.
The illness still coiled under Fia's skin.
The king and his altar-makers would not stop just because Fia had declared her romantic intentions in a sunlit room.
But this—this piece—had clicked into place.
Fia reached into her pocket with suddenly less-shaking fingers.
"I know it's…early," she said, glancing at the four women. "And we need to talk to councils and scribes and probably three different kinds of terrifying priest. But I wanted you to…"
She drew out the first small box and turned to Seraphine.
The queen's eyes widened.
"Fia," she breathed.
Fia flipped the lid open.
Inside lay a pendant: a thin circlet of gold shaped like a dragon twisting around a crown, tiny ruby chips for eyes. Not a ring, not yet.
"A promise," Fia said quietly. "That when the war is over—when we've lived long enough past the script for people to be bored by us—I'll ask properly. With all the laws and rituals and ridiculous costumes. But I wanted you to have something now. So everyone sees it and knows."
Seraphine swallowed.
Her hand trembled as she lifted the pendant.
"Everyone already knows," she murmured. "But I will wear it anyway. Gladly."
Fia turned to Mira next.
Mira's box held a slender silver bracelet, runes for protection and healing etched so fine they were almost invisible—Lyriel's work, Mira would recognize it instantly.
"So you have something that reminds you," Fia said, "that someone is always thinking about your health too."
Mira's mouth wobbled.
"That is manipulative," she whispered.
"Yes," Fia said. "You taught me well."
Mira slid the bracelet onto her wrist like it was made of spun sugar.
Elira's box held a band of braided leather and steel, simple and sturdy, a tiny dragon scale—one of Ardentis' cast-off fragments—set in the clasp.
"It'll spark if I'm in trouble," Fia said. "So you can come crashing through whatever wall you need to."
Elira's eyes went very bright.
"You realize," she said hoarsely, "this is a weaponized romantic gesture."
"I do," Fia said.
"Good," Elira whispered, fastening it around her wrist.
Lyriel's box held a slim chain with a small, flat disk of obsidian etched with a sigil—Fia's name, stylized, woven into a pattern that meant "constant."
"I know you like…symbols that carry meaning," Fia said. "This one means that even if you forget to eat or sleep or come out of the library, there's someone who will come knock on the door."
Lyriel blinked rapidly behind her lenses.
"That is not a standard glyph," she said weakly.
"I made it up," Fia said.
Lyriel let out a half-laugh, half-sob.
"Of course you did," she murmured.
Helena watched all of this with a hand over her mouth.
Cassian had abandoned his composure and was dabbing at his eyes with a napkin.
Elys openly cried.
Aldren cleared his throat three times and failed to look unaffected.
"Very well," Helena said finally, voice a touch thick. "You have my blessing. Conditional on all of you not dying before the paperwork is signed."
"We'll do our best," Fia said.
Mira elbowed her.
"We will do more than our best," Mira corrected.
Seraphine turned to Fia, pendant warm in her palm.
"In that case," she said, eyes bright, "we should probably go inform the council before some courtier runs in here screaming about inappropriate jewelry."
Elira grinned.
"And I should start planning the party," she said. "I'm thinking four cakes. One for each of us. And possibly a fifth shaped like a dragon, for theme."
Lyriel sighed.
"I will draft the initial sigil schema for the bond," she said. "And a footnote titled 'On the Stability of Quadruple Magical Marriages in High-Stress Environments.'"
Cassian perked up.
"I'd like a copy," he said. "For…academic reasons."
Helena shook her head.
"You are all ridiculous," she said. "And I love you. Tea?"
The tension in the room broke like a wave.
Everyone moved at once—toward cups, towards biscuits, toward each other.
Fia leaned back into the sofa, watching as her father tried to pour tea while Elira enthusiastically described "only moderately dangerous" wedding games; as Elys bombarded Lyriel with questions about whether she'd be allowed to help choose ward colors; as Helena and Mira fell into a low, intense discussion about diet and rest schedules; as Seraphine stood at the window, pendant glinting at her throat, talking quietly with Aldren about military logistics and sister-related stress.
Her chest ached.
But in a way she was starting to recognize.
Not pain.
Fullness.
"Hey," Elira said, dropping back to the floor at her feet, leaning against her legs like she'd always been there. "You did it."
"Did I?" Fia murmured.
Elira tipped her head back, looking up at her.
"You put your hoard in one room," she said. "You said 'they're mine' and 'I'm theirs' and nobody exploded. That's a win."
Fia snorted softly.
Ardentis stirred, amused.
You have chosen well, the dragon rumbled. For a tiny, stubborn, terminally-ill creature, you gather a fine hoard.
Fia smiled to herself.
"Yeah," she thought back. "I really have."
Whatever came next—war, altars, illness, all the things waiting outside this sunlit room—she would face it as Fia:
Dragon-touched, game-broken, villainess, daughter.
And, someday, when the world finally ran out of ways to delay—
wife.
Four times over.