Chapter Text
The training yard at dusk was Katsuki's favorite place in the whole of Vulkrath, and tonight he was going to wreck it.
Steel rang on steel. Sparks jumped from the edges. His boots kicked up black grit from the packed obsidian sand, and across from him, Kirishima was laughing—that low, bright, I'm going to ruin you laugh she made when she was matching him strike for strike.
"You're dropping your left, Your Highness."
"Shut up." He came in high. She ducked low, spun, came up inside his guard and slammed the flat of her training blade into his ribs hard enough to knock the wind out of him. He twisted, caught her wrist, broke her grip, brought his own blade around—and she was already moving, already gone, already laughing again six paces away.
"Dropping it again."
He gritted his teeth. "Ei."
"I'm just saying." She laughed as if she’s not mocking a prince.
He launched at her. She met him. Their blades caught, locked, shrieked apart. She struck; he parried; she feinted; he lunged and nearly caught her and she twisted under his arm like water and kicked the back of his knee out from under him. He went down on one knee in the sand, rolled, came up swinging, and she was right there, forearm to forearm, her dull edge against his throat and his pressed flat to her belly.
They froze.
She was breathing hard. A strand of red hair had come loose from her braid and was sticking to her cheek. The sun was down, and the forge-fires along the yard's edge were throwing red light up the scars on her jaw.
Gods, he loved her.
Gods, he was going to lose her tomorrow.
She shoved off him with a grin. Spun her sword. Settled back into guard. "Your birthday’s tomorrow, Your Highness."
"Don't."
"Any gift you want from me?"
He came at her so hard she almost missed the parry. The clash of their blades rang across the yard, and somewhere up in the watchtower a guard cursed and told them to keep it down, and Katsuki didn't hear it, because his blood was up and his heart was stupid and he said, through his teeth, "Fucking cruel, Ei. You know what I want."
She didn't answer.
She was breathing harder now. She wasn't laughing anymore.
He pressed her. He drove her back across the yard—strike, strike, strike—and she was a good enough swordsman that she didn't let him land, but she was giving ground, and her mouth had gone small and tight, and her eyes had gone dark.
She broke off, stepped away, and wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her wrist.
"I know," she said quietly. "But it's not something I can give."
"Ei— "
"You know it's not."
He moved.
He didn't decide to. His body went before his head caught up. He dropped his sword—the clang of it hitting obsidian sand, loud in the sudden quiet—and he was on her in three strides, caught her around the waist, bore her backward, and took her down onto the sand underneath him.
She went with him. She didn't fight it. Her sword fell out of her hand somewhere to her left.
He caged her with his forearms. He put one on each side of her head. He was breathing hard and she was breathing hard and her braid had come apart and the red of her hair was spread out underneath her in the black sand like a wound, and he leaned down, and he lowered his face toward hers, and—
Her fingers came up and pressed, very gently, against his mouth.
"You can't, Your Highness."
He closed his eyes.
Her thumb traced, once, the line of his lower lip. Feather-soft. A thing he would never be able to forget.
"The Queen will have my head," she whispered.
He pushed up off her. He came up to his knees and then to his feet in one motion, and he stepped back from her, and he pulled her up after him by her wrist—because even furious, even ruined, he couldn't leave her on the ground—and then he let her go like she'd burned him.
"You will never fight for me… will you?"
It came out wrong. It came out cruel. He meant you will never choose me, and it came out as an accusation, and he hated himself the second it left his mouth.
She didn't flinch.
She just looked at him, with that pained, unshakeable soldier's smile, the one she wore when she was trying to be brave enough for both of them. And she said—
"Happy birthday, my prince."
He stormed off.
He left his sword in the sand. He left her standing in the firelight. He left the part of himself that had been seventeen and stupid and in love and thought it could have whatever it wanted, and he walked out of the training yard of Vulkrath Fortress and he did not look back, because if he looked back he would go back, and if he went back he would kiss her, and if he kissed her she would lose her head, and so he did not look back.
He walked the long way to his chambers with his hands shaking.
Tomorrow he was twenty four.
Tomorrow he was getting engaged.
----
He was awakened before dawn by the soft clatter of his chamber-aides setting out the ceremonial washing basins, and he briefly considered setting them all on fire.
"His Highness is wanted in the steam-bath in a quarter-hour," the senior aide said, in the carefully flat voice of a man who had served Katsuki since he was nine and knew exactly how close to the edge the prince was on any given morning. "The Queen requests that His Highness be clean, Your Highness."
"Tell the Queen to go sit on a forge-spike."
"Very good, Your Highness. I will tell her you said you will be delighted."
"For fuck sake!"
"Bath's through here, Your Highness."
Katsuki dragged himself up and threw the blanket across the room, which his aide caught without looking.
Vulkrath in the hour before sunrise was a city of red light and black stone. From the window of the Crown Prince's tower, you could see the whole of it—the fortress itself, carved into the flank of Mount Skarn; the seven lower terraces spiraling down the mountain's shoulder, each one bristling with forge-chimneys; the great aqueducts of molten iron that ran from the mountain's heart down to the river in the valley, where the armories stood; the outer walls of black volcanic glass, polished to a mirror, that caught the first light of every morning and threw it back at the sky like a challenge.
Vulkrath. The Kingdom of the Forge. The Mountain-Crown. Home of the fire-and-light wielders, the sword-singers, the glass-smiths, the dragon-born.
They said the first Queen of Vulkrath had been born in the mouth of the volcano itself and crowned in its fire, and every queen since had been forged the same way.
The Bakugo line burned. Every Bakugo for eleven generations had carried fire in their hands. Katsuki had been setting things alight in his cradle.
They were a warrior kingdom, and they were not subtle about it. They fought because the mountain taught them to. They did not farm—the black soil of the mountain's skirts grew almost nothing—and so they traded. Steel and fire and swords-for-hire, in exchange for grain, for fruit, for cloth, for the soft green things Vulkrath had never been able to grow.
Their primary trade partner, for the last two hundred years of uneasy peace and three wars, had been the Kingdom of Erdvahl.
Erdvahl. Land of the green magic. Land of the healers. Land of the soft-eyed farmers who made half the flour on the continent and half the wine and nearly all the medicinal herbs, and who had, for the last two hundred years, paid Vulkrath in grain for the privilege of being protected by Vulkrath's swords.
And now, because Katsuki's mother had decided the trade agreement was not enough, and because the old king of Erdvahl had three daughters and one of them was apparently the right age, they were sealing the alliance in flesh.
His flesh.
He stood in the steam-bath and let the hot mineral water scald him red, and he glared at the mosaic of the Forge-Maiden on the ceiling, and he thought about Kirishima's thumb on his lower lip, and he did not cry, because Bakugo princes did not cry, but it was a near thing.
----
His mother was waiting for him in the dressing-chamber.
She was in full regalia—the seven-pointed crown, the red mantle, the obsidian gorget—which meant she was in the mood to be a queen at him and not a mother. He recognized the difference the way a sailor recognized a squall.
"You look like someone drowned you."
"Good morning to you too, old hag."
"Watch your mouth." She stepped closer, tugged the collar of his ceremonial tunic straight, smacked his hand when he tried to shrug her off. "Today, of all days, Katsuki. Today you will be gracious. Today you will be charming. Today you will stand in the receiving hall, and you will smile at this girl like she is the sun risen in your courtyard, do you hear me?"
"I don't know her."
"You will."
"I don't want to know her."
"I know." Mitsuki's voice went low. She put both hands on his shoulders. Her fingers dug in, just a little, the way they had when he was eight and in trouble. "I know, brat. I know what you want. I am not blind and I am not a fool, and I know what you have been throwing yourself at in the training yard for years now, do you think I am stupid?"
He went still.
"I am sorry," his mother said, quietly, into the quiet of the chamber. "I am sorry, Katsuki. A prince does not get to choose. A queen does not get to choose. I did not choose your father, and I learned to love him, and he learned to love me, and we have ruled this kingdom for thirty years, and we have been happy, and that is what I am asking you to try for. That is all I am asking."
He looked at her.
Mitsuki Bakugo, Queen of Vulkrath, Keeper of the Forge, Flame of the Seven Terraces, had tears in her eyes.
She blinked them back before they could fall, because she was who she was, but he had seen them, and she knew he had seen them.
"Be kind to the girl," she said. "She did not choose this either. She is coming to a kingdom of black stones and smoke and strangers, and the first face she will see is yours. Be kind to her, Katsuki. Also son... happy birthday, Katsuki."
He swallowed.
"Thank you, Mother."
She patted his cheek. Hard enough to sting. The moment of softness was gone; the Queen was back. "Good. Now fix your face. The skies are opening in an hour and I will not have my son greet the Erdvahl delegation looking like a kicked hound."
"The skies?"
Mitsuki smiled, with all her teeth.
"Oh," she said, "you'll see."
----
At high noon, the skies over Vulkrath opened, and Erdvahl came down through them.
The whole of the outer courtyard had been cleared for the arrival. The black obsidian expanse between the inner gate and the forge terraces was wide enough to drill two thousand soldiers, floored in volcanic glass so polished it threw the sky back at itself like a mirror.
Katsuki stood at the center of it on the raised dais beside his mother and father, dressed in the red and black of the Crown Prince, with the consort's empty place at his left hand. His jaw was locked so tight his back teeth ached.
The court was arrayed in tiers behind them. The guard lined the walls. Trumpet horns of beaten bronze had been hoisted to the battlements, and the forge bells of all seven terraces were rigged to ring at once. It was, Katsuki noted sourly, more pageantry than his coronation would get.
Kirishima was not in the honor guard.
He had looked for her the second he stepped onto the dais. She was not there. His mother had reassigned her, quietly, to the back of the formation. He could see the red of her hair far away against the outer wall, a speck against the black. He understood, with a dull furious clarity, that Mitsuki had done it on purpose. A mercy. A cruelty. Both.
A horn blew from the watchtower.
"From the sky," the herald bellowed, "the blessing of Erdvahl!"
Katsuki looked up.
And despite himself, despite everything, he forgot, for a moment, to be angry.
They came through the clouds in a column of gold.
Winged horses, not pegasi of the northern myths but the caeldrakes of Erdvahl, horse-shaped and feathered in green and cream, with wings the span of rooftops, descended in a diamond formation. Their hooves trailed sparks of pale green light as they moved through the thin mountain air. Behind each pair flew a chariot—
The chariots were pumpkins.
Enormous, gleaming, gold-ribbed pumpkins, each one the size of a small house, hollowed and carved and drawn behind the caeldrakes on traces of braided vine. The green magic of Erdvahl shimmered off their surfaces. Their stems curled up into golden finials. Their sides had been carved with leaves and vines that moved, living, rustling in the wind of the descent.
A cry of wonder went up from the court.
Even Katsuki, who had decided to be unimpressed, felt his mouth come open a fraction.
The caeldrakes banked in perfect formation and came down onto the obsidian courtyard in a wide circle around the dais. Their hooves touched the polished glass without a sound. The chariot pumpkins settled behind them. Then, as the court watched, as Katsuki watched, as his mother beside him made a small, pleased sound low in her throat, the pumpkins changed.
The green magic pulsed once, bright.
Then, the chariots folded. Became smaller. Became squashes, honest ordinary squashes the size of a man's head, sitting on the ground where great vessels had been a moment before. The vines that had drawn them became lengths of ribbon. The golden finials became stems.
And around each newly-shrunken pumpkin, baskets and baskets and baskets of produce unfolded out of the magic—apples red as hearts, pears gold as coins, great sheaves of wheat, vials of honey, jars of green oil, bolts of soft linen in every shade of leaf and bark.
The tribute of Erdvahl. The harvest-blessing. A year's worth of the green kingdom's bounty, laid out on the black glass of Vulkrath's courtyard as a gift to the Mountain-Crown.
Mitsuki exhaled, very softly, beside him.
"Oh," she said, "they didn't."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Katsuki asked wondering the unmistakable awe in the Queen’s eyes.
"Language!” Queen Mitsuki hissed, “That's the old rite. The full harvest-greeting. They haven't given that to Vulkrath since before the last war." She glanced sideways at him, and her eyes were sharp and bright. "King Hisashi is telling us he means this. Pay attention, brat."
He was paying attention.
He was paying attention to the lead chariot.
Because the lead pumpkin had not shrunk. It sat at the head of the formation, largest and most beautifully carved of all, and its door was opening.
The herald drew breath.
"Her Royal Highness, the Princess Izuku Midoriya of Erdvahl, youngest daughter of King Hisashi and Queen Inko of the Green Crown, Bearer of the Emerald, Friend of the Wood, betrothed of His Highness Prince Katsuki Bakugo of Vulkrath!"
She stepped down from the chariot.
Katsuki, who had prepared himself all morning to be bored, felt the prepared sneer fall off his face before he could catch it.
She was...
She was small. That was the first thing. Small the way a wildcat was small: compact, balanced, not fragile. She stepped down onto the obsidian courtyard in green glass slippers that made no sound, and she lifted her chin, and she walked.
Her gown was pale green linen like the color of the underside of a new leaf. Long and soft and simple. It fell from her shoulders to her ankles in one unbroken line, cinched at the waist with a cord of braided gold. The sleeves were long and loose. The collar was plain. It was, by Vulkrath standards, almost modest—and it made her, against all the glittering lords and ladies in their red and black and bronze, shine like a single green flame.
Her hair... fell past her waist. Viridian, his mother would have said—green so deep it was almost black where the light didn't catch it, and where the light did catch it, every strand shimmered like wet leaves after rain. It was loose, down her back, the way no Vulkrath noblewoman would ever wear hers in public, and it moved around her as she walked like its own living thing.
A circlet of pale gold sat on her brow. It was shaped like a wreath of laurel. Delicate. Old. Older than the kingdom, maybe.
And her face... freckles. That was the first thing he saw. A scatter of them across the bridge of her nose and the tops of her cheeks, like someone had flicked gold dust at her. Her eyes were green. ‘Of course they were green, everything about her was green.’ Katsuki thought to himself.
But they were a particular green, bright and clear and—and kind.
With the lack of appropriate terms, she was beautiful.
Not the way his mother was beautiful, which was beautiful as a threat. Not the way the Vulkrath court ladies were beautiful, which was beautiful with make up and effort. She was beautiful the way a dawn was beautiful.
She was beautiful, and she was walking toward him.
Katsuki's jaw tightened.
No.
No, he did not like it. He did not. She was a princess. A pretty princess. A soft, pretty princess in a soft green dress who rode in on a pumpkin and had hair down to her hips and looked like something out of a harvest festival tapestry.
He did not like princesses. He did not like cutesy. He liked strong. He liked a woman who could knock him onto the sand and laugh while she did it. He liked scars. He liked calluses. He liked red hair and a training yard grin and a thumb, feather soft, on his lower lip.
Not this.
Not her.
He told himself this very firmly as the Princess of Erdvahl crossed the last of the black glass and came to a stop at the foot of the dais.
She sank into the bow of a foreign royal greeting, deep and graceful, one hand at her heart. When she straightened, she looked up at Queen Mitsuki first, which was correct, then at King Masaru, which was correct, and then at Katsuki.
She smiled at him.
It was a small smile. Slightly nervous. Slightly brave. The kind of smile you worked up when you had flown across a continent to marry a stranger, and the stranger was standing there scowling at you.
He swallowed.
His throat clicked.
Beside him, his mother's gloved hand closed like a vise around his elbow. Move, the grip said. Move, brat, or I will end you in front of the entire court.
He moved.
He stepped down off the dais. One step, two, three, down onto the black glass of the courtyard, until he was standing in front of the Princess of Erdvahl, and she was tipping her head back to look up at him, and he could see, this close, that her eyes were not just green—there were little flecks of gold in them, near the pupil, warm as honey.
He took her hand.
It was smaller than his. Warm. "Princess Midoriya," he said. His voice came out rougher than he meant. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Welcome to Vulkrath."
Her smile widened just a little at the corners. She inclined her head. Her hair moved around her shoulders like water. "Thank you, Prince Katsuki. I'm honored to be here. Also, please call me Izuku." Katsuki nodded in acknowledgement.
Mitsuki, behind him, made a tiny ha, extremely delighted. The court then erupted in cheers, and the forge-bells of all seven terraces began to ring at once.
Katsuki stood there in the middle of the black courtyard holding his betrothed's hand, and he thought: She is beautiful, and she is not what I want, and I will be kind to her because I promised my mother I would be kind to her, and in two weeks I will marry her, and Kirishima will be somewhere else, and that will be the end of it.
He thought it very clearly.
He believed it.
Far away, against the outer wall, a speck of red hair turned and walked out of the courtyard, and he did not see her go.
----
The Great Hall of Vulkrath was built to humble.
Its ceiling vaulted four stories up into the mountain's own bones, carved in living obsidian and lit by seven hanging braziers the size of carriages. The long table at its heart could seat sixty. Today it sat eight: Katsuki, his mother, his father, the Princess of Erdvahl, her personal captain (the tall, sleepy-eyed man named Shinso, who had positioned himself behind her chair and declined all offers of a seat), and three Erdvahl envoys who were doing their level best not to look intimidated by the walls.
Izuku Midoriya, to Katsuki's considerable annoyance, looked not at all intimidated.
She was seated at his right hand in the consort's chair, back straight, hands folded in her lap, her green linen gown catching the brazier-light in soft pale shimmers. She had spent the first quarter-hour of the luncheon in gracious exchange with his mother, answering questions about her journey in a clear, warm voice, her manners as faultless as a court tutor's dream.
Yes, the flight had been pleasant, thank you, Your Majesty. Yes, the caeldrakes had handled the mountain winds beautifully. No, she had not grown tired; she found the thin air bracing. Yes, she had studied Vulkrath history extensively. Yes, she had read Queen Dagrun's treatise on forge-magic; she'd found chapter seven particularly illuminating, though she'd wanted to ask, if Her Majesty had the time, whether the modern consensus still held that Dagrun had underestimated the role of ambient heat in shaping...
Queen Mitsuki was delighted.
Katsuki could tell because his mother had laughed, twice. Mitsuki did not laugh at luncheons. Mitsuki did not laugh at foreign princesses. Mitsuki was currently leaning slightly forward in her chair with the corner of her mouth tugged up and her eyes bright, and she was asking follow-up questions, and the Princess of Erdvahl was answering them, and Katsuki was trying to eat his roasted boar without looking at her.
He was failing though.
She had a way of talking with her hands. Small movements, controlled, but alive. When she made a point she was particularly pleased with, her fingers lifted, just a little, like she was turning an idea over in the air for inspection. When she listened, she went very still, head tilted, eyes on the speaker's mouth. She did not interrupt. She simply... paid attention, with the whole of herself, as if every word his mother said was something worth hearing.
It was, Katsuki thought sourly, a very effective technique.
She's courtly, he told himself. She's been trained. She's doing what she's been told to do. Any foreign princess would do the same.
Then she laughed at something his father said, and the laugh was unguarded and a little loud for the hall, and she clapped a hand over her mouth and went pink to the tips of her ears, and Katsuki lost the thread of his own argument with himself entirely. Oh fuck she’s cute. Oh fuck myself.
King Masaru, across the table, looked as delighted as his wife.
The roasted boar was cleared. The fruit course came and went. The honey-wine was poured. And then, when the steward bent to ask Her Majesty whether they were ready for the sweet course, Izuku set her napkin on the table and said, "Oh. Before the cakes come. If I may?"
Mitsuki waved a hand. "By all means, Princess Izuku."
Izuku turned in her chair toward her attendants and clapped, twice, lightly.
Three of her ladies rose at once. They came forward carrying trays: a small sack of flour; a wooden bowl of green apples, shining; a pitcher of milk, still beaded with cold; a small stone jar of honey; a cake of dark cocoa wrapped in brown paper.
They set the trays on the table in front of her and stepped back.
The hall went quiet. Not a planned quiet. The honest kind, where everyone had looked up to see what was happening and forgotten to resume their private conversations.
Izuku lifted her hands, palms up.
She smiled, a small private smile, as if she were greeting old friends.
She lowered her palms over the trays.
A pale green light rose out of her skin.
It was not bright. It was not showy. It simply gathered around her wrists like mist and drifted down across the ingredients in a slow warm bloom, and the room filled, all at once, with the smell of orchard in autumn. Of wheat in the sun. Of honey warmed by a kitchen hearth. The flour stirred. The apples rolled. The milk in its pitcher rippled once, as if in greeting. The cocoa unwrapped itself from its paper and crumbled into a fine dark dust.
The light pulsed. Then everything rose.
The flour and the milk and the honey wove themselves together in the air in a slow braid. The apples peeled themselves, delicately, and the peels curled away and vanished, and the white flesh sliced itself into thin pale crescents, and the cocoa dust sifted down through it all like the finest black snow. The whole rising mass glowed faintly green, and faintly gold, and it moved as if it were breathing.
After a quick fascin— yeah its fascinating, Katsuki receded with a sigh. It settled onto a silver platter that one of her ladies had slipped, silent as a thought, onto the table in front of her.
Then light faded. On the platter sat a cake.
Two layers tall. The top glazed with a thin amber sheen that caught the brazier-light like glass. The sides smooth, pale green flecked with dark ribbons of cocoa, and around its base a ring of the thinnest, finest sliced apple, arranged like petals. It smelled, Katsuki noticed against his will, incredible. Warm apple. Honey. The dark rich undertone of cocoa. Something in his stomach flipped over.
No one spoke. Everyone was utterly speechless. Katsuki can’t blame them.
Izuku lifted the cake a small distance forward on the platter with both hands and turned, not to the Queen, not to the King, but to him.
She smiled at him. "Happy birthday, Prince Katsuki."
For one unguarded second, Katsuki stared at her.
Mitsuki made a sound of a small delighted awwwww that was entirely unroyal. Masaru actually put down his cup with bright eyes, bewitched. The Erdvahl envoys were smiling like proud uncles. Shinso, behind Izuku's chair, lifted one eyebrow a fraction, which Katsuki was beginning to recognize as the man's highest expression of approval.
No, Katsuki told himself, very firmly. No. Don't give in. This is a party trick. A fine party trick, a very pretty party trick, but a party trick. She's gaining favor. She's charming the court. She's a princess and this is what princesses do. Don't.
He looked at her.
She was biting the inside of her lip. The corners of her smile had gone a little uncertain, because he hadn't said anything, and every second he didn't say anything the smile got a little braver and a little more anxious at the same time, and her hands were still holding the platter out toward him like an offering.
Something in his chest went soft without his permission.
He cleared his throat. "Thanks," he said. It came out gruffer than he meant. He tried again. "Thank you, Princess."
The corner of his mouth pulled up. Just a little. Just once. He did not mean for it to happen.
Her whole face lit. “It is my honor, Prince Katsuki.”
She set the cake down in front of him. She was pink again, right to her ears, and she said, very quickly, "I didn't know what you liked, so I asked your steward, and he said you liked apples but you'd never admit it, and that you liked things that weren't too sweet, and I hope it's all right, and if you don't like it you don't have to..."
She trailed off. She was looking at him.
Katsuki had made a mistake of meeting her eyes, fuck why are they so enchanting?
She was waiting. Waiting to know if she had done well. Waiting for permission to be pleased with herself. Waiting for him, specifically, to tell her that he did not hate her cake.
"It's fine," he said.
Her brows lifted, just a fraction. Hopeful.
"...It looks fine," he amended. Gruffly. Against his will. "The cake. It looks good. Princess."
She exhaled with a whisper, “Thank the spirits.”
Her whole face went soft with relief. She smiled, a small private smile that was just for him.
He looked away. Quickly. At his plate. At the braziers. At anywhere.
Across the table, his mother made a small, pleased, entirely undignified sound, the sound of a woman who had just won a wager she had placed with herself two hours ago, and when Katsuki dared to glance up at her, Mitsuki Bakugo, Queen of Vulkrath, was openly cackling into her honey-wine. His father, beside her, had set down his cup and was smiling at his plate. Not laughing. Just smiling. Quietly.
Katsuki felt his ears go hot.
"Sit down," he growled at the princess, for lack of anything better to say. "You're making the steward nervous."
"Oh. Sorry."
She sat down.
She was still smiling. She tried to hide it behind her cup of honey-wine. She failed. The rim of the cup did not obscure the corners of her mouth, which were pulled up, knowing the Crown Prince admitted that the cake looked good.
Katsuki picked up the small silver knife. He cut himself a wedge of Erdvahl's green apple honey cake with its cocoa undertone. He put it on his plate. He ate a bite.
Damn, It was very good.
He did not tell the princess that.
He did, however, cut a second wedge, which he felt was a concession he could live with, and the luncheon went on.
---
After the last of the honey-wine had been cleared, Mitsuki decreed a recess. The Princess of Erdvahl had traveled across a continent that morning in a pumpkin; she was due the courtesy of a rest before the evening's engagement rites. The court dispersed. The envoys were shown to their quarters on the western terrace.
And the task of escorting Princess Izuku Midoriya to her chambers in the east wing fell, by Vulkrath custom, to the betrothed.
"Come on," Katsuki said, shoving back his chair. "I'll show you where you're sleeping."
"Your Highness," Mitsuki said sweetly, "manners."
"Princess. Please. Come on."
Izuku rose. She inclined her head to the Queen. "Thank you, Your Majesty. For everything."
"It was our pleasure, dear. Get some rest. Tonight will be long."
Izuku fell in at Katsuki's right side, Shinso trailing behind them at the respectful distance of a guard who intended to be within sword's reach but out of earshot, and Katsuki led them out of the Great Hall and into the long obsidian corridor that ran the length of the royal wing.
He did not, at first, say anything.
Neither did she. She walked quietly at his side and she looked at the walls. She looked at the braziers. She looked up at the carvings above each doorway, which depicted, in relief, the seven Queens of Vulkrath who had been forged in the mountain's heart. She tipped her head back to take in the vaulted ceiling. She ran her fingertips, very lightly, along the polished obsidian of the wall as they walked, and whispered ‘ohhh pretty’, and she took her fingers away again.
"It's warm," she said.
"It's the mountain,” he replied with nonchalance.
"I can feel it in the stone."
"Yeah. It runs through the whole fortress. Forge-veins under the floor. Keeps the halls livable in winter."
"That's clever." Katsuki could hear the smile from it and he took a glance and indeed there was one on her face.
"It's old." He replied.
"Old things are usually clever. Someone had to build them before the shortcuts existed." She glanced up at him, quick and sidelong. "Is it the same in the lower terraces?"
"The first three, yeah. Below that the forges are hot enough they don't need the veins. It's the opposite problem down there. You have to chill the barracks or the soldiers cook in their bunks."
"Chill them how?" her pitch raised a little, clearly interested.
"Ice-channels from the peak. Water comes down in iron pipes under the floor, runs through, goes back up again as steam."
"So the same water that warms your upper halls also cools your lower ones. You have a closed system."
"...Yeah."
"That's beautiful," she said, and she said it like she meant it, and Katsuki glanced down at her again and found her looking up at him with actual delighted interest, and he had to look away immediately because it was doing something to his chest he did not want to examine.
Stop it, he told himself. She's being polite. She's going to live here. Of course she's interested in the plumbing.
She asked a real question. She followed the answer. She made a connection you didn't make until you were sixteen.
Shut UP.
He cleared his throat. "East wing's through here. Your rooms are at the end. They've been aired out all week."
"Thank you." The princess said softly.
"Don't thank me. I didn't do it."
"Thank you for walking me, I meant."
"...Oh."
They walked.
She was, Katsuki noted with a grim satisfaction, exactly as princessy as he'd suspected. She walked with prim, neat steps. She held her hands lightly clasped in front of her. She paused to admire a tapestry. She inclined her head to a passing servant. She was well-bred. She was charming.
She was, Katsuki told himself, absolutely, definitively, Not. His. Type.
He liked sparring partners. He liked women who could take him to the ground. He liked sweat and scars and the rasp of a training-yard laugh. He did not like green linen and viridian hair and the courtesy of a princess who thanked every fortress staff of their hard work.
He repeated this to himself the whole length of the east wing.
He repeated it as they reached her door.
He repeated it as he pushed the great bronze handle down for her and stepped back to let her in.
She stepped inside. She made a small sound of pleasure at the rooms. Her chambers had been prepared for a month: the furniture rearranged to suit a woodland bride, green silks in the bed hangings, fresh sprays of Erdvahlian herbs burning in the braziers. Her ladies were already inside, laying out her things.
She turned back to him at the threshold. "Thank you, Prince Katsuki. For showing me to my rooms."
"It was nothing."
"It wasn't nothing. Nothing was the walk. The rooms are lovely. I meant thank you for the walk."
"...Fine."
She smiled at him.
And then, because she was a daughter of Erdvahl and had been raised on the soft customs of the green kingdom where kin and kind were greeted with an embrace and a kiss of parting, she lifted herself lightly onto the balls of her feet, and she put one small warm hand on his upper arm to steady herself, and she pressed her lips to his left cheek.
Then, with exactly the same small formality, his right.
"Until this evening, my prince," she said, cheeks pink, eyes doeful.
And she stepped back, and she inclined her head, and she closed the great carved door of her chambers softly between them.
Katsuki stood in the corridor.
He stood in the corridor for a long time.
His cheeks were warm. His whole face was warm. He could still feel the twin points of where her mouth had been.
It was a custom. It was an Erdvahlian custom. It was the same custom by which she had undoubtedly kissed her own brothers, her father, the steward who packed her trunks. It meant nothing. It was a gesture. It was—
"Your Highness."
He did not move.
"Your Highness."
"What, Denki."
His aide, who had materialized at the end of the corridor with a pained cough, and made another pained cough.
"The Queen requests your presence, Your Highness. She said, and I am quoting, that if you are still staring at that door in a quarter-hour she is going to come down here and drag you back to your own wing by the ear."
"...Tell her I'm coming."
"Very good, Your Highness."
Katsuki pulled himself off the door he had not realized he was leaning on, straightened his clothes, and stalked down the east wing corridor toward the south without looking back.
He told himself, the whole way, that he did not like princessy.
He told himself he did not like cutesy.
He told himself he liked scars and training-sand and a woman who could put him on his back.
He told himself this.
He told himself this.
He did not entirely believe it, and that was the worst part of the whole afternoon.
----
He had a squabble with his mother. Again.
So he went to find Kirishima.
He knew where she would be, and he did not think about why he was going, and he walked the long way down through the fortress to the lower training yards, and when he came in under the archway of the fourth terrace she was there.
She was running a squad of junior guards through the saber forms. Six of them, sweating in the late afternoon heat, their movements ragged. She was walking the line slowly, correcting wrists, correcting stances, her voice low and steady. She had not braided her hair back up after the morning. It was tied in a loose knot at her nape, the red of it slipping loose in strands down her neck.
She saw him before he was halfway across the yard.
She looked at him for one long second. Her face did something complicated and then went still.
"That's enough for today, you lot," she called, without looking away from him. "Go. Eat. Be back here at first light."
"But Captain, we still have the third form..."
"Go."
They went.
Katsuki crossed the yard. He picked up a dull training saber from the rack as he passed. When he reached her, she was already in guard.
"Your Highness."
"Ei."
"Shouldn't you be getting ready for your engagement feast."
"Shut up and spar."
They sparred.
It was not the whirlwind of the night before. It was slower. Heavier. She fought him like she was tired, and he fought her like he was tired, and the obsidian sand of the lower terrace was hot under their boots, and the forge-smoke from the second terrace drifted across the yard in slow red plumes.
"Your betrothed is beautiful," Kirishima said.
Their blades rang. "Shut up."
"I was in the back of the court. I saw her come down out of that pumpkin. She's a picture, Katsuki."
"Ei."
"I bet her cakes tasted magical."
"Shut up."
She laughed. It was a short, forced sound, and she followed it with a strike he should have parried and didn't, and the flat of her blade caught his shoulder hard enough to sting.
"You'll love her," Kirishima said. Quieter now. She stepped back, reset her guard. "Like your mother did with your father. It's how it works, Katsuki. Give it a year. Give it six months. Give her a chance."
"I love you." It came out flat. Not angry. Just the fact of it, dropped between them in the sand like a stone.
She paused.
Her face did the complicated thing again, and then she came for him.
They sparred. Five, six, seven exchanges, fast and tight, her blade finding him and his finding her and neither of them pulling their strikes, and at the end of it he was breathing hard and she was breathing hard and she took one half step back and said, very softly,
"I know."
He went at her.
She let him.
She let him press her back across the yard, let him bear down on her, let him close her guard, and then on the eighth exchange she did something very deliberate with her hip and his own momentum, and Katsuki found himself on his back in the black sand staring up at the red sky of Vulkrath with a training saber on his throat and his captain kneeling over him.
He did not move.
She did not press the blade.
She looked down at him for a long quiet moment. Her hair had come all the way loose. The red of it hung around her face and blocked the sky.
She lowered the blade and set it, carefully, on the sand beside his head.
She leaned down and pressed her lips, very gently, to the center of his forehead.
It was not a kiss for a lover. It was a kiss for the crown of a prince. For a boy she had trained with for six years. For a man she had loved from a pace behind and would now love from a border away. Her mouth was warm and steady and her hand, when it came up, cupped the side of his face for one half-second and no more.
"Happy birthday, my beloved prince."
Then she stood up. She picked up her saber and sheathed it.
She walked across the lower training yard of Vulkrath Fortress, and she did not look back, as she went.
Katsuki lay on the black sand.
He lay there for a long time. The forge smoke moved overhead. Somewhere above him, on one of the upper terraces, a bell rang the hour.
His aide found him there, eventually. Kaminari came in under the archway at a run, saw him on his back in the sand, and skidded to a stop with the particular expression of a man who had known this particular prince since they were both nine years old.
"Your Highness."
"...Yeah."
"Your Highness, the engagement feast begins in three hours, and the Queen says, and I am again quoting, that if you are not bathed, dressed, and standing in the antechamber in two hours she is going to have you dragged through the fortress naked, which she says is a time-honored Vulkrath tradition I have been unable to verify in any history, but I believe her, Your Highness."
"Yeah."
"...Your Highness, are you crying?"
"Shut up, Kaminari."
"Yes, Your Highness."
Kaminari helped him up.
Katsuki stood on the lower terrace of Vulkrath with black sand in his hair and his captain's kiss on his forehead, and he let his aide lead him back up through the fortress to his chambers to bathe for his own engagement feast, and he did not look back at the yard.
He did not look back once.
----
Katsuki stood in the antechamber of the Throne Hall in orange and black, and he did not want to be there.
The tunic was new. His mother had commissioned it three months ago, the moment the treaty had been sealed: a close-cut high-collared piece in the deep orange of new fire, the color of flame in its first hour before it banked to embers. The trim was black, polished obsidian-thread at the cuffs and hem, and a single thin line of gold ran down the front seam. Over it he wore the short prince's mantle, black, clasped at the throat with the Bakugo crest. His boots were polished. His hair had been washed, dried, and attacked at length by a very nervous valet with a comb.
The whole arrangement was meant, traditionally, to say one thing: Behold the Crown Prince of Vulkrath at the turning of his year, a new fire kindled.
It did not. He felt like a forge lantern. He felt like an ornament.
"Stop scowling." Queen Mitsuki reprimanded him.
"I'm not scowling." He told her with a gruff on his voice.
"You look like you are planning to eat the herald."
"I am not..."
His mother seized his face in both hands.
Mitsuki was in full regalia: the seven-pointed crown, the red mantle of the Ember Queen, the heavy obsidian gorget that only came out for state feasts. She was also, at present, squeezing his cheeks together hard enough to make his teeth click.
"Listen to me, brat."
"Mrgh."
"Tonight is your twenty fourth moon. Tonight is also your engagement. Tonight the whole of my court is going to watch you stand next to a foreign princess who flew in on a pumpkin and baked you a cake with her bare hands, and if you scowl at her for one more second I am going to take this gorget off and hit you with it, do you understand me?"
"Mrgh."
"Do you understand me, Katsuki."
"Yes, Mother."
She released his face.
She immediately set to straightening his collar. She tugged the mantle. She fussed at his hair with the side of her thumb. She spat on the edge of her glove and scrubbed at an invisible mark on his cheekbone, and he jerked back in pure outraged reflex, and she grabbed him by the ear and brought him back.
"Hag."
"Brat."
"I am twenty four."
"You are four, and a half, and also a toddler, and also my son, and you will stand straight tonight, or I will have you stuffed. Masaru, is he straight?"
Katsuki's father, loitering near the tapestry in his own black-and-gold with his hands behind his back, tilted his head with the air of a man judging a horse at auction.
"He'll pass, dear."
"He'll pass. The boy is the Crown Prince of Vulkrath and my husband says he'll pass."
"He looks very handsome, darling." Masaru added to his compliments.
"Thank you, Father." Katsuki smirked.
"Do not thank your father, he is a traitor to this family. Stand straight."
Katsuki stood straight then doors at the far end of the antechamber opened.
"Stand straighter."
"I am standing, hag..."
The herald's horn sounded, clear and high, rolling up into the vault of the throne hall beyond.
"Her Royal Highness, Princess Izuku Midoriya of Erdvahl, Bearer of the Emerald, Friend of the Wood, betrothed of His Highness Prince Katsuki Bakugo of Vulkrath."
Katsuki turned to look.
He forgot, for the second time that day, to be angry.
She came through the great inner doors of the antechamber, and she was...
She was wearing the softest orange he had ever seen. Pale, almost rose-gold where the brazier light caught it, the color of the inside of a peach or the sky the minute before dawn. The dress was long. The bodice was fitted, closely, to the line of her ribs and her waist, with a sweetheart neckline that sat at the top of her collarbones and small capped sleeves of the same pale orange that bared the curve of her shoulders. The skirt fell from her waist in one long unbroken line of pale fabric that shimmered, very faintly, as if there were dust of gold worked into the weave. It caught on when she walked and moved like water.
Her viridian hair, which had fallen past her hips at the morning's arrival, had been lifted and pinned in a high soft coil at the back of her head, with a few deliberate loose curls left down around her face to frame her jaw. The tiara of pale gold laurel was on her brow again. Her ears, which he had not noticed at luncheon were bare, now held small drops of amber that matched the color of her dress.
Her freckles were visible from across the room.
She is a picture, and she is not your type, and she is a princess in a parlor gown who bakes cakes with parlor magic, and you do not like parlor games, and you do not...
She drew closer.
She drew close enough that he could smell her.
Green tea, was the first thing. Warm green tea, and under it was a clean and cool and unmistakably the smell of rain on leaves.
He had no idea what to do with that so just he stared at her.
She saw him staring. She lifted her chin just a fraction, and she said, in that low warm voice and almost laughing, "Good evening, Prince Katsuki. I hope I did not keep you."
He realized his mouth was open so quickly shut it. "No," he said. "You didn't. Princess."
"You look very fine." She said with a bright smile on her face.
Katsuki, he tried to deny but failed, was enraptured. "...So do you."
He had not meant to say it. It had come out. He watched her smile, seemingly pleased, and he watched her go pink across the freckles, and behind him his mother made a noise that was somewhere between a cough and a swallowed laugh, and he wanted to die.
He offered his arm.
She took it. Her hand was very light on his sleeve.
Together they walked into the Throne Hall.
----
The Throne Hall of Vulkrath in full feast-light was a thing to see.
The long feast-table stretched down the middle of the hall, draped in black and orange silk. The high table at its head sat on a raised dais under a canopy of beaten bronze worked in the seven-pointed flame.
Katsuki led his princess to the high table. He seated her at his right hand. He sat down. He breathed, he didn’t event realize he was holding it in.
The court was arrayed at the long table below. A hundred nobles in their reds and blacks and golds. Envoys from Erdvahl along one side, in soft greens and creams. The honor guard along the walls, in the full Vulkrath regalia, pikes gleaming, faces impassive.
Kirishima was there. In full military robe. Their eyes met but the captain lowered hers.
Then Queen Mitsuki rose.
The hall went silent.
"My lords of Vulkrath. My ladies. My friends from Erdvahl." She lifted her cup. "Tonight we gather for two fires. The first fire is the turning of my son's year. Twenty four moons ago he was born under the sign of the forge, and I will say now, publicly, what I have never said to him privately, because he does not deserve it yet but now, he has grown into the prince this mountain needed."
A murmur of approving laughter filled the hall. Katsuki stared at the tablecloth with murderous intensity.
"The second fire is the one we light tonight. The betrothal of the Crown Prince of Vulkrath to Princess Izuku Midoriya of Erdvahl. Two hundred years our two kingdoms have traded across the Ashrun. Tonight we marry them. Tonight a green branch takes root in our black stone, and tonight my son begins the fire he will carry for the rest of his days. A new fire before it becomes embers. A fresh start. A long burn."
She raised her cup higher.
"To the prince. To the princess. To the forge that will hold them both."
The hall roared.
"To the prince! To the princess! To the forge!"
Katsuki lifted his cup. He drank. Beside him, Izuku lifted her cup, drank, set it down, and when the roar had died down, she rose from her seat.
Katsuki was perplexed, he had not known she was going to rise.
She stepped down from the dais. She moved, in her pale orange dress, into the open floor between the high table and the long one.
She turned to face him.
She smiled at him, her eyes only at him.
Then she clapped her hands once, lightly, and the whole hall dimmed.
----
It was not dark. It was a slow, careful, deliberate dimming, as though a great hand had drawn a veil across each of the seven braziers at once. The flames did not go out. They turned into low warm glow, and the polished obsidian floor caught the light and held it, and the hall itself became a bowl of soft reddish shadow with the Princess of Erdvahl standing in the center of it.
She lifted her arms.
A pale green light gathered around her wrists. The same light from the luncheon.
She spread her hands, then the light drifted down around her in a slow spiraling column, and from the light, petals began to fall.
Apple blossoms.
Real, soft, faintly-scented apple blossoms, pale pink and white and the softest possible green, and they did not fall from the ceiling—they came out of the green light around her, and they drifted down in a slow widening ring around her and continued to flutter.
Then she began to dance.
----
She moved in slow curves through the falling blossoms. Her dress moved with her. Her bare arms drew shapes in the air, and the green light followed them, and where her fingers passed, more blossoms opened out of nothing.
She turned, and a trail of petals spiraled around her hip. She stepped, and the blossoms at her feet lifted and settled again in a wider ring. She lifted her arm, and a small branch of white flowered apple appeared in the air above her head. It bloomed. It dissolved into petals that caught in her hair as they fell.
She was dancing in an orchard.
She was making the orchard as she danced, and she had done it for him. Katsuki’s stomach dropped with the realization and was leaning forward on the high dais without deciding to.
Both of his hands were flat on the table. His cup was forgotten. His mother, beside him, had gone very still. The court was silent. The whole long table had stopped eating. The Erdvahl envoys were smiling quietly, the way people smile at something they have seen before and love. The Vulkrath nobles were staring. One lady near the middle of the table had put her hand to her mouth.
Izuku turned. She lifted her face. She swept her arms up through the falling blossoms, and the green light at her wrists pulsed.
Her dress changed.
It happened in one slow ripple, from her shoulders to her hem. The pale orange stayed, but it deepened. Panels of Vulkrath green appeared along the bodice, dark as forge-copper, with fine threads of gold. The skirt shortened to the knee in front and fell long in the back.
Her sleeves lengthened to her wrists. A black sash appeared at her waist with a small obsidian clasp. Her tiara stayed the same. But her hair came down out of its coil in one soft spill, and as she turned, it rebraided itself into the high crown-braid worn by Vulkrath noblewomen.
She was wearing his colors.
The last of the petals faded in the air, each one dissolving as gently as it had come the she finished her last turn facing him.
She sank into the low bow of an Erdvahlian daughter to her betrothed's house. One hand at her heart. The other extended, palm up, in the old gesture that meant I come to your fire.
The braziers brightened again.
The hall stayed silent for one long beat.
Then it erupted.
Katsuki had never heard the Throne Hall of Vulkrath make that sound. Not at a coronation. Not at a victory feast. It was not polite court applause. Vulkrath nobles and Erdvahl envoys were on their feet, cheering for the magnificent performance.
He realized he had not been breathing. Again.
---
Beside him, he became slowly aware that his mother was not applauding.
His mother was elbowing his father.
"Masaru. Masaru. Look at him."
He saw Masaru glancing at him and replied in a low voice, "I see him, dear."
"Look at the brat, Masaru."
"Yes, darling, I'm looking."
"That is the face of a boy who has been hit by a chariot." Mitsuki cackled, forgetting etiquettes.
Masaru just shook his head while smiling at his wife’s antics, "Yes, dear."
"He'll thank us. He'll thank us. Mark me, husband, I'm calling it now. Six months. He'll come to me on his knees and thank me for the arrangement. Six months, Masaru, and I want it in writing from you."
"A gold mark says a year."
"A gold mark? A gold mark is for amateurs. I'll bet you the east-ridge summer house."
"Done."
"Done."
"Our son is a very handsome young man, dear."
"Our son is an idiot and I love him very much, and he is about to lose his entire mind over that girl, and I am going to win the east-ridge summer house."
Katsuki's ears were, by this point, the color of forge-copper.
He turned his head to them.
"Oi," Katsuki hissed.
Two pairs of eyes snapped innocently forward. "The King and I were discussing horses, brat."
Katsuki glared, "You were discussing me."
Mitsuki scoffed, "Briefly. In passing. You were not the topic. Turn around."
"Hag."
"Brat. The princess is coming."
Katsuki turned around and indeed, Izuku was climbing back onto the dais. She was flushed across her freckles, and her eyes were bright, and a single stray apple blossom was caught in the braid at her crown that no one had the heart to tell her about.
She sank into the chair beside him in her Vulkrath-cut gown. "Did you enjoy it?"
Her voice was a little breathless. She was looking at him sidelong with the same anxious hopeful look she had worn over the cake, and Katsuki opened his mouth to say something crushing, something dismissive, something that would preserve the increasingly threadbare fiction that he was not, at the moment, losing his entire mind.
"Yeah," he said. "It was good."
Her smile was instant. It was also smaller than he expected. Pleased, yes, but contained, like she had trained herself not to take too much from a single good.
"I'm glad."
"How long did you practice that?"
She paused.
She considered him. She tilted her head, the way she had over the cake. Then she looked down at her hands in her lap, small and folded, and she said, very quietly, almost to herself,
"All my life."
He waited. She did not elaborate.
"What does that mean?"
"It means what it means, Prince Katsuki."
"That's not an answer."
"No." She lifted her eyes, and she smiled at him, and the smile had a shape to it he had not seen before. Not the courtly smile. Not the nervous one. This one had a small quiet edge. "It isn't."
Before he could press her, his mother rose again. The hall quieted.
"The feast begins," Mitsuki declared. "Eat."
----
The court fell on the food the way Vulkrath courts always did, with great noise and very little restraint. Platters of roasted boar, blood-sausage, forge-bread, and the heavy spiced stews covered the long table. The Erdvahl envoys poked at the fire-peppers and exchanged wide-eyed looks. Izuku ate two and asked, again, for the recipe.
Katsuki watched her out of the corner of his eye.
He was meant to be attending to the lord on his other side. He was nodding. He was making the appropriate sounds. He was, in the back of his skull, tracking the way his princess's sleeve brushed the rim of her cup, and the way her thumb rested on the stem, and the way a single stray apple blossom was still caught in her hair.
Halfway through the second course, Izuku set her cup down and turned slightly toward him.
"Prince Katsuki. May I give you a second gift?"
He raised a brow at her, "A second one."
"The cake was for your birthday in court. This is for you."
He turned to look at her properly. There was a small mischief at the corner of her mouth he had not yet seen.
"What is it?"
She nodded to one of her ladies. The lady came forward with a covered tray, set it between them, lifted the cloth, and stepped back.
On the tray was a single wine glass. Silver. Thin fine rim, stem twisted in the old Erdvahlian braid-pattern, the cup plain and deep. Beautiful. As far as Katsuki could tell, still just a wine glass.
"Thanks," he said, dry. "It's a cup."
Izuku's mouth twitched. "Pick it up."
"Princess."
"Humor me."
He picked it up. It was heavier than it looked. The silver was warm in his hand, which was strange; the hall was cool.
"Now," she said, very low, her eyes bright with that same mischief, "hold it and think of something to drink. Anything. Don't say it out loud."
"...What?"
"Anything, Prince Katsuki. A wine you had as a child. A drink that does not exist here. Whatever you like. Hold the cup and think about it."
He looked at her and decided, with a small flicker of heat low in his stomach, to humor her.
He thought of a specific thing. A dark spiced mead from the northern traders, the one in bone-black bottles that he had been rationed at one cup a feast, by his mother, since he was eighteen. It was in the cellars. It was not on the table tonight.
Heat pulsed once against his palm then he looked down at the glass. It was fucking full.
Dark amber. When he lifted it under his nose, the smell that rose off it was the precise smell of the northern mead that was not on the table.
His head snapped up.
Izuku was wearing a winning smiling into her cup of honey-wine. "Drink it," she said under her breath. "Quickly. Before anyone sees what it is."
He drank and it was exactly what he had thought of. Down to the burn. He set the glass down. Empty. He looked at it. He looked at her. "What," he hissed, low, "is that."
"A gift."
"Izuku." He drawled.
"It's old trinket. Erdvahlian. Bound to its owner. You think of a drink you've tasted, or one you wish you could, and the cup gives it to you. One pour at a time. Then it resets."
"Where did you get it?"
The mischief at the corner of her mouth bloomed into a full crooked grin. It was not princessy. It was the grin of a woman who had done something she was not supposed to do and was pleased about it.
"My father's private collection," Izuku murmured. "He won't notice for years. Please don't tell anyone, Prince Katsuki. If the Erdvahl envoys see what it is, they'll have to report it."
"You stole this?" Both brows rose and he was met by a mischievous smirk, "I borrowed it, on the occasion of my betrothal, for my betrothed."
"Your father is a king." Katsuki pointed, thinking again for the mead and the cup filled it.
"Yes, he is."
"You stole from a king." He said as he drank again.
"Borrowed, Prince Katsuki."
He stared at her. He stared at her for a long second.
She looked back at him over the rim of her honey-wine, and Katsuki felt, somewhere deep in the bedrock of his convictions about the soft green princess in the soft green gown, a crack appear.
She was not cutesy at all.
She was not definitely princessy.
She was a small, well-mannered daughter of Erdvahl who had flown across a continent in a pumpkin, baked him a cake with her bare hands, danced an orchard into his mother's hall, magically changing her dress, and stolen an enchanted glass from her father's cellar to slip him black-market mead at his engagement feast.
The thought arrived, unwelcome and very clear: I want to know every other thing she has stolen.
Katsuki turned his head away before his face could do something treasonous. He picked up the silver cup. He turned it once. He set it down.
"...Thank you, Princess."
"You're welcome, Prince Katsuki."
"Don't do it again."
"Do what?"
"Steal from kings."
"I make no promises."
She was already turning back to her honey-wine, the picture of innocence, the stray apple blossom still caught in her braid, and Katsuki sat on the high dais of his own engagement feast and thought, for the first time that day, perhaps this is not going to go the way I planned it.
The feast went on.
----
The feast ended the way Vulkrath feasts always ended, with the Queen rising, lifting her cup a final time, and announcing, dryly, that the court had eaten enough of her boar.
The tables were cleared. The braziers were banked low. And the kingdom's high priest stepped forward from the shadow of the north pillar where he had been standing, patient and silent, since the dance.
He was an old man. He wore the red robes of the forge-priesthood, and his beard was the color of cold ash, and he had officiated at Katsuki's naming, at his father's coronation, and at the funeral of every Bakugo who had died in the last fifty years. He was not a warm man. He was not supposed to be.
He climbed to the dais. He bowed to the Queen. He bowed, more briefly, to the King. He did not bow to Katsuki; the prince bowed to him.
"Rise, Your Highnesses."
Katsuki rose and Izuku did so beside him.
The priest gestured them both forward, to the open space in front of the high table where Izuku had danced. A ring of seven small braziers had been set in a circle there during the feast. They had been lit without Katsuki noticing. The flames in them were low and steady, and the space inside the ring was warm.
He led Izuku into the ring. They stood facing each other.
The priest raised his voice to fill the hall.
"By the fire of the mountain, and by the green of the far kingdom, these two come before the Forge."
Silence. The whole court had gone still.
"Prince Katsuki Bakugo of Vulkrath. Princess Izuku Midoriya of Erdvahl. You come here of your own will, to be bound in the year to come, before the gods of the hearth and the gods of the wood."
"We do," they said, together.
"The Prince will give the token."
Katsuki reached into the inner pocket of his mantle. He had been carrying it all night. His mother had pressed it into his hand in the antechamber, and he had not looked at it, because he had not wanted to. Now he drew it out.
It was a ring. A thin band of Vulkrath silver, old, worn smooth by long wear. Set into it was a single chip of forge-copper, the dark red-gold that came out of the mountain's deepest veins. It was not a showy ring. It was a kingdom's ring. It had belonged to his grandmother, and her grandmother before her, and three Vulkrath queens before that.
He took Izuku's left hand. Her fingers were smaller than his. He slid the ring onto her fourth finger.
It fits.
"The Princess will give the token."
Izuku reached to her sash. Clipped to the black fabric at her waist was something small that had not been there when she sat down at the high table. A brooch.
She unclipped it.
It was the size of his thumbnail. Gold. Worked in the shape of a single apple leaf, the veins picked out in fine green enamel, and at the base of the leaf, a small chip of the same forge-copper he had just set on her hand.
She lifted the brooch to his mantle and pinned it, with careful fingers, at his left shoulder, over his heart. Her hand rested there for one breath after she closed the clasp, and then she took it away.
"The Forge binds them," said the priest. "The Wood binds them. The fire of the mountain and the green of the far kingdom bind them. Let no man unbind what has been bound tonight."
"Let no man," the hall murmured.
"I present you, the Prince and Princess of Vulkrath."
The braziers in the ring flared once and settled.
The hall began, slowly, to clap.
----
It was tradition for the betrothed couple to dance once, in the ring, before the court. Katsuki had known this was coming and he had been dreading it for weeks.
A small group of Vulkrath musicians had assembled quietly at the edge of the dais during the ritual. They began to play: a slow old tune in three time, the kind of thing Vulkrath princes and princesses had been dancing to for a thousand years. It was not a complicated dance. It was a step, a turn, a step, a turn, one hand on the partner's waist, one hand in the partner's hand.
He offered her his hand and the princess took it.
He set his other hand at her waist. Lightly. Through the deep green panel of her gown, he could feel the warmth of her. "I don't know this dance," she said, very softly, so only he could hear.
"It's easy." Katsuki whispered as his hands settled properly on her waist.
"Lead me."
He led her.
At first, he had expected her to stumble, at least once. Yet she did not. She picked up the step on the first turn, and the second, and by the third she was moving with him as if she had been dancing it her whole life. Her hand in his was small and warm. Her waist turned under his palm. The hem of her green-and-orange gown brushed against his boots.
She looked up at him. "How am I doing?"
He met her wondrous gaze, "Fine, Princess."
Her nose twitched at his reply, "You said that about the cake."
He shrugged about it and said, "The cake was fine."
"You had two pieces."
"Izuku." The princess giggled at the prince’s exasperation and danced along.
They finished the dance, then the court clapped. Katsuki led her out of the ring of braziers and back to the high dais, and the priest bowed to them both, and the Queen rose.
"The engagement is sealed," Mitsuki declared. "Everyone drink."
The hall drank. Someone in the back called for a song. The musicians shifted into something less ancient. The formality broke. The nobles rose from the long table and began to move in the easy patterns of a late feast, and the Erdvahl envoys mingled with the Vulkrath ones, and the court became, at last, a party.
Katsuki and Izuku sat down again at the high table.
He looked down at her left hand, at his grandmother's ring. She was turning it, absently, on her finger.
"It fits." Izuku said in amazement, still wondering how it fits like it’s made for her.
"Yes." He gazed at her.
She looked up at him. Her smile was small and a little amused.
Katsuki was silent for a while and decided to tell a short tale, "It's an old ring. The priest blessed it. Old rings know who they are for. The late queen told me something like that would happen. I wasn't sure whether to believe her."
"Your grandmother told you?"
Katsuki nodded, "It was the same ring during my parents’ engagement and even the previous holders. They said it simply fits."
"...Hmm how magical."
He did not know what else to say so he reached for his cup.
She watched him drink from her gifted wine glass. Then she said, carefully, "May I ask you something, Prince Katsuki?"
"You can ask."
"The treaty my father signed with your mother—the protection clause in article nine. It doesn't include the free cities of the Ashrun basin, does it."
Katsuki set his cup down. He looked at her warily.
"...No."
"May I ask why?"
Katsuki straightened his back, "The Ashrun free cities pay neither of our kingdoms. They sit on the border and they take whichever side is winning. My mother will not send Vulkrath blades to defend people who would hand us over to the enemies if the wind changed."
Izuku was slightly leaning, as she hummed, "So they are unprotected."
"By us. Yes."
"Which means when the southern raiders come up the river this spring, as they did last spring, and the spring before that, the free cities will be sacked. Again."
He paused. "...Yes."
Izuku leaned back and held her hand on her lap, "Your steelworks in the second terrace buy iron ore from the free cities."
"Yes."
"The price of ore will rise."
"Yes."
"So Vulkrath will lose money, and Erdvahl will lose grain trade through those cities, and the raiders will become stronger, and in five years they will be strong enough to come up past the free cities and raid your lower terraces." She tilted her head. "Forgive me, Prince Katsuki. That seems a strange thing for two kingdoms to accept."
Katsuki stared at her. He had read the treaty. He had read it three times, furious, looking for a reason to call it off. He had not read it the way she had read it. He had read it as a prison. She had read it as a map.
"Who told you about the raiders?"
"No one. My mother gave me the last six years of Erdvahl's southern trade ledgers before I left. The pattern is there if you look for it. The free cities have had four bad springs. Each one worse than the last."
Katsuki asked, surprised how a princess was interested with political trades, "You read your mother's trade ledgers?"
"I asked for them." She replied as if its natural.
"You asked your mother the Queen of Erdvahl about the southern trade ledgers, before you came here, so you could..."
"So I could talk to my husband about them." She said it lightly, almost apologetically. "I didn't know if you'd want to. I didn't know if you'd let me near the treaty at all. But I thought I should at least know what was in it. In case."
He was staring at her again. He realized he had been staring at her for some time. He looked down at his cup.
"The free cities," he said slowly, "are a problem."
"Yes." She agreed instantly.
"My mother will not send Vulkrath blades for free."
"No.” She countered, “But Erdvahl has grain we could pay with. And the free cities have old silver mines that neither of our kingdoms has touched since the last war. If one of us held protection over them in exchange for mining rights, the ore-price for Vulkrath drops, Erdvahl gets a share of the silver, the raiders stop before they reach your terraces, and the free cities stop losing their children to the river every spring."
She stopped. She looked down at her hands. "I'm sorry. I've been thinking about it for months. I've gotten ahead of myself."
Katsuki was quiet for a moment.
"...No," he said. "You haven't."
She looked up. Hopeful.
"I didn't think of the mines," he said. "I read that treaty three times. I didn't think of the mines."
"Oh."
"I'll tell my mother tomorrow."
"Y-you will?"
She looked down at her lap. The pink had climbed back up her neck and settled at the tops of her ears. "You could tell her with me," she said, after a moment. "If you wanted. I brought the ledgers. I can show her the numbers."
"Yeah. Sure, we can go together." He answered while taking another sip.
"Yes?" Her eyes glowed bright and excited.
"Yes, Princess. Tomorrow. Bring the ledgers. We'll go together."
She exhaled, a small pleased sound. “Okay!”
He looked at her hands. Her mother's ring, his grandmother's ring, on her finger. Then to the small green gold leaf at his own.
Something in his chest, which had been tight all day, loosened a quarter turn.
----
The feast ran long. It was past the third bell before the court finally thinned, and the Queen rose for the final time, and the Princess of Erdvahl was released from her duties.
Katsuki walked her to her chambers.
They did not say much on the way. They had said a great deal at the table, most of it about iron and grain and the spring raiders of the Ashrun, and she had surprised him six more times before the final course, and he was quiet now because he was still thinking.
She was quiet too. Her small hand rested on his forearm. She had kicked her embroidered slippers halfway off, under the table, during the third course. He had noticed. He had not said anything.
Now, he saw that she was walking in them as if they were not quite sitting straight on her feet, and he had the sudden absurd urge to offer to carry her the last of the way down the corridor.
He did not.
They reached her door and she turned to face him. "Thank you, Prince Katsuki."
"For what?"
"For the evening." She paused. She tilted her head. "For listening. About the ledgers. I wasn't sure you would."
"I told you I would."
She smiled again, "Yes. That is why I thanked you."
He did not know what to say to that.
She lifted herself, lightly, onto the balls of her feet. Her hand came up to rest against his upper arm, the way it had at noon. She pressed her lips to his left cheek. Then his right.
"Goodnight, my prince."
"Goodnight, Princess."
She stepped back. She opened her door. She looked at him for one more moment, with the stray apple blossom still, somehow, caught in her braid.
"Sleep well," she said.
The door closed.
Katsuki stood in the corridor.
The east wing was quiet. The braziers along the wall had been banked for the night. The place on each cheek where her mouth had been was warm, and then warmer.
He had enjoyed her company.
He could admit that. He was not a liar, even to himself, most nights. She was smart. She was very smart. Smarter than him, maybe, in some specific kind of way, the kind that read trade ledgers for fun and remembered where the silver mines had been in the last war.
She was funny. She was pretty. She was brave enough to steal from her own father for a man she had never met. She had spent months studying a treaty she had not asked to sign, so she could be useful to her future husband.
He had enjoyed her company. Truly.
And his chest still hurt. It hurt in the specific, exact shape of a red braid coming loose in the black sand. It hurt in the shape of a thumb on his lower lip. It hurt in the shape of a mouth on his forehead, and a voice saying happy birthday, my beloved prince, and walking away across a training yard without looking back.
His betrothed was smart and kind and the most beautiful woman he had met in his life, and yet his heart was still in the lower training yard on the fourth terrace, and he did not know what to do about it.
He walked away from her door.
He did not go south.
He went other way around.
----
The lower training yard was empty.
Of course it was empty. It was past the third bell, and the junior guards she trained were all in their bunks, and she was not there either, because she was gone. He stood under the archway of the fourth terrace for a long time looking at the yard, at the patch of black sand where he had been on his back that afternoon. The torches along the wall had burned low. There was no wind. The forge-smoke from the lower terrace drifted up through the yard in thin red streaks.
No red braid. No laugh. No sword.
"She's gone, Your Highness."
He did not turn. He had known Kaminari was behind him for some time.
"I know."
"The border garrison sent word, sir. She rode out two hours ago. Before the ritual. She asked me to tell you, after."
"...Two hours ago."
"Yes, sir."
"She could have waited."
Kaminari hesitated for a while then replied, "She said it would be easier if she did not."
Katsuki stood a moment longer.
"Thank you, Kaminari."
"Yes, Your Highness."
He turned from the yard. He walked back up through the fortress until he reached his chambers.
He went inside and closed the door.
He unclasped his mantle. He unpinned the small green gold apple leaf from his left shoulder, and he set it, carefully, on the table beside his bed, and he looked at it for a long time.
Then he lay down in his ceremonial orange and black, on top of the covers, and he stared at the carved obsidian ceiling of the Crown Prince's tower, and he did not sleep for a long time.
TBC.