Author's Note-Well, they're finally getting married! The rest of this particular narrative has finally fallen into place and I finally know most of what has to happen to Amaline and Artur before the beginning of Murder Most Royal. I should be able to update this more frequently, but I'm making no promises, as I'm also working on around four other pieces. Enjoy!

Augusta

Disclaimer:I own nothing in this chapter to the best of my knowledge. Check the Guide if you want to verify it.

Don't panic, Amaline told herself, panicking. Now is not the time to panic. Oh, Light, I'm panicking.

"Remember, Amaline, what I told you about-" Mailinde broke off from her lecture to give Amaline a concerned look. "Are you all right, child?" Only Mailinde would call an Aes Sedai 'child', Amaline thought irrelevantly.

"Perfectly all right," she said weakly. "I'm just more afraid than I've ever been in my life."

The day all of Shandalle had been waiting for with bated breath had finally arrived, the day Prince Artur married the Lady Amaline Tagora Aes Sedai. Amaline had been as delighted as anyone until she woke this morning and the full weight of the day hit her. Now she thought she'd die of terror. From what impressions she occasionally got through the bond, Artur wasn't in much better shape, but his fear was of another sort. He was afraid that, even now, she might leave him. Bonwhin's visit had shaken him, taking away the stability of his firm belief in Amaline's very devotion. She couldn't bear the thought of him thinking that the Tower meant more to her, but at that moment she wanted to run back to Tar Valon as fast as she could and throw herself into the Mistress of Novices's arms. Calmyn Sedai might not have beeen there, but Mailinde was, and Mailinde was giving Amaline her rare, glorious smile.

"Of course you are," Mailinde said soothingly. "I'd think you were unnatural or mad if you weren't, Amaline. I was shaking so hard everyone assembled could see when I married Myrdin, and later he asked me if I had taken a fever! Every girl is afraid on her wedding day. The next time you'll be this afraid is when your first child is born. Why do you think I only had Artur? I thought it was like that every time, but my ladies assure me that it isn't quite as harrowing after the first time."

"Please, Mailinde, don't talk to me about children. Let's get past the wedding first."

Mailinde laughed. "Child, child, I am going to be your mother-in-law in less than an hour. I reserve my right to badger you and embarrass you, dearest. You are the daughter I never had."

"Thank you, Mailinde. You just helped me make a very hard decision." Quickly, before she could change her mind, Amaline took off her Great Serpent ring and slipped it up her sleeve. "The Amyrlin lost her rights as my mother when she tried to make me leave Artur," she said, responding to the unspoken question in Mailinde's eyes. "You have taken her place and that of my own mother, Mailinde." She embraced the older woman compulsively and was surprised when Mailinde held her for a moment.

"I am sorry that you are forced to give up what you worked so many years for, Amaline," the queen said quietly.

"Don't be. It was my choice, Mother. To give my support to Bonwhin would be a betrayal of everything I hold dear-I could never bring myself to call her Mother, never mind do as she asked me to do."

"Artur was more distraught that you know when that witch left," Mailinde replied. "It took days before I could convince him that you were no reed in the wind, to bend at the slightest push. Don't prove me wrong, Amaline."

"I won't, I swear it, and I cannot lie." They both laughed, if a little shakily. Even if Amaline had renounced the Tower, the Three Oaths still bound her.

Mailinde smoothed her hair and fussed with her gown for a moment. "Well..." the queen started brushing off imaginary dust motes from Amaline's veil. "I suppose we had better be going along, Amaline."

Amaline swallowed hard. "Yes. I-I suppose we should. We must not keep everyone waiting."

Amaline was painfully aware that every eye in the Great Hall was on her and her maids-in-attendance as she made her way up through the gathering of nobles. Approximately half of them switched to Artur when she finally, after what seemed like half a lifetime, reached the front. Artur attempted to smile, and Amaline attempted to smile back, hoping her effort wasn't as pathetic as his. Myrdin was making a speech-he did love to make speeches. The thought darted through her head and was gone. Thinking was not an easy thing to do.

The vows were mercifully simple, brief oaths of faithfullness and honor and loyalty to each other and Shandalle-even in a wedding ceremony, matters of state could not be forgotten for the Prince and almost-Princess. Amaline's hands were shaking visibly. Artur seemed most reluctant to meet her eyes, meaning he noticed the missing Great Serpent. Ring? he mouthed.

Later, she mouthed back, then turned her attention to Myrdin-Father-in-law, now, she reminded herself. He was speaking to the crowd.

"This day is of great importance not only to the Royal Family, but to Shandalle itself," the King said, a slightly sentimental catch in his voice only those who knew him well would have caught. "This country is now assured a queen in the future as well as in the present." Myrdin paused and gazed around the Hall. "Some, however, would say that a woman cannot become a queen without first being a princess. We of Shandalle are famous for our ability to improvise, are we not?"

He smiled warmly, his dark eyes alight with mischief. It was easy to forget, sometimes, that Artur got his humor from his father. "Amaline is not a princess, so I will make her one." There were titters among the courtiers, but Amaline knew that Myrdin's light tone was a mask for deadly seriousness. Mailinde approached Myrdin carrying a cushion with a simple coronet on it, the same she had worn as the youngest of the nine Moreinan princesses when she came north to marry Myrdin. She made the tiny curtsy of queen to king as he took the coronet and placed it on Amaline's head. A tense silence lingered until Myrdin broke it. "I believe now would be the correct time for you all to give your respects to my daughter-in-law, the Princess Amaline Paendrag Tagora of Shandalle." A shocked murmur ran through the assmebly. Never before had any woman not born of royal blood been called princess, but the King was demanding that they all adknowledge that ranks as belonging to a woman whose birth would not have caused most of them to give her the time of day.

One by one, with varying degrees of unwillingness, they did it, each kneeling or curtsying and murming the standard, "Light bless you, Princess." Amaline found herself administering the return blessing in the time-honored and half-forgotten manner of an Aes Sedai. Hot anger flashed in the eyes of the White Tower emissary, a young Red sister, at that, and Amaline smiled calmly back at her. She no longer feared the Tower's wrath. Not even Myrdin himself could take back the rank that he had conferred on her. Even if she was never crowned queen, she would be a princess until she died and there was nothing Bonwhin or anyone else could do to change that. She was safe again, safe in her rank and in the knowledge of her husband's love for her, and she would never give into fear again.