Kiem opened his mouth, then shut it again. How did you say that? How did you say, My partner thinks it’s his duty to sleep with me, even though he isn’t into it in the slightest? Kiem hadn’t ever been in bed with someone who wasn’t fully on board with the idea, and he’d now discovered he didn’t like it one bit.

He couldn’t remember what he’d done to give Jainan the wrong impression.

He’d thought Jainan had been flirting. He’d been badly wrong.

But none of those were things he could air out of the bedroom, even to Bel.

“Yeah. It’s not me you should be feeling sorry for.” He gave his best nonchalant shrug. “Could have been worse. I know a whole bunch about heraldry now. Ask me about clan patterns. Now let’s see those cuttings.”

He reached over to the table for the red press folder, a collection of text filmies between discreet blank covers. It updated itself every day but he usually dipped into it once a week or so, just to check that there wasn’t anything awful.

As he sat down and opened it, a fan of images reshuffled themselves above their accompanying articles. Most of them showed the post-wedding kiss or the official final photo—Jainan’s smile was sweet and dignified, Kiem’s looked inane, but that was normal—but a couple of the newslogs had gone with shots of them signing the contracts. Kiem’s hand still had red ink on it.

Kiem looked morbidly over the headlines that went with them. Restrained but romantic: Prince Kiem marries Thean count in discreet ceremony. The Resolution and the treaty renewal had been discreetly relegated to the second paragraph. And another one: Prince K’s royal wedding—it’s the perfect match.

They’d put in the quotes from his press statement, which he’d virtuously stuck to during all the interviews afterward. Kiem was usually not that bothered about press coverage, unless it actually got him exiled, but he could imagine what Jainan would think when he saw those articles. Most of them had raked up Taam as well, in a “tragically grieving Jainan finds love again” way that made Kiem feel ill. It would almost have been better if they’d gone all-out on the Galactic politics.

“Turn over,” Bel said.

“I don’t think I want to.” Kiem turned to the back, where the press office usually put the negatives. Two images appeared of them all trying to rescue the documents from a pool of spilled ink and Kiem looking perilously close to laughing. Luckily they hadn’t gotten Jainan in those shots. Then the third came up.