A/N: Betriz on her wedding day

"Betriz, stand still. You're going to wear a hole in the floor."

"I have to move around, Iselle. Are you sure we can't take a quick ride?"

Iselle laughed. "You're getting married in less than two hours. Besides, you'd ruin your lovely hair." The hairdresser had been in earlier to sculpt her hair into the same ornate coif that she had worn for Bergon's investiture as the general of the Son's Order and that Caz had seemed to admire. Betriz fiddled with her fingers and sighed. "Relax. We used to rehearse this day all the time."

"That was years ago! Fantasizing about you're wedding day as a girl is very different from living the actual day." She tried to resume her pacing, but Iselle gently held her in place with a hand on one of her shoulders as she reached for one of her underskirts with the other.

"Everything will be fine. Besides if we don't get you dressed soon, Nan will come in here and give you the speech about wives and wedding nights that she gave me when I got married."

"Don't frighten me with an idea like that. That speech would certainly convince me never to consent to that holy rite." She stepped into another layer of undergarments. "But don't you lecture me about being nervous. I thought you were going to faint dead away on your wedding morning."

"At least I had valid excuses. I barely knew my future husband and was possibly committing treason." Betriz had to concede that there had been more risk in Iselle's wedding than her and Caz's. She chided herself once again on her baseless uncertainty.

She was glad that Iselle had banished all the waiting women from the room after that, insisting on dressing the bride herself. She hated the idea of her temporary ambivalence reaching Caz's ears through servants' gossip.

Her thoughts returned to him with a vengeance. Doubts that had been battering the edges of her mind came to the forefront. Did she really know him? She felt like she did. But there was always some barrier between them, his role as her tutor or the presence of others or his fear that he would not live long enough to properly honor their attachment. Even after their betrothal they only had snatched moments together. One or the other of them was always busy consolidating support for Iselle and Bergon's reign or cleaning up the messes left over from the curse. What if they didn't get along as well as she thought they did?

However, she remembered all the time that they'd shared together.

Her mind wandered back to the first time she'd seen him at dinner the first day he arrived in Valenda, and the next morning when she brought him clothes for the Daughter's Day celebration. She had wondered who that strange gaunt man was, beyond a former page for whom the Provincara obviously retained some affection. He looked like he needed kindness and someone to keep him from his never imagined that she would be the one to do it, or create memories to replace them with hope.

Then, he was her tutor, a charming and effective tutor, but still just a tutor. She couldn't remember exactly what the first conversation was that caused her to think of him as something more. Whatever it was led to ever more detailed exchanges. When they moved to the Zangre, there wasn't as much time for such dialogues, but they occasionally had time to speak privately.

Iselle was still working on dressing her while she mused. She was barely conscious of raising her arms for various garments to be slipped on over her head. Now it was time to step into her gown.

Iselle began tightening the laces on Betriz's corset. It really was a lovely dress, done in the colors of the Daughter and similar to Iselle's wedding gown. It all had started with the Daughter's Day, but it was the Son's season that was the most significant. She still remembered the uneasiness she'd noticed in Cazaril from the first day they received the summons to the Zangre, when she and Iselle had both thought it a grand adventure. He had been right, of course.

Such thoughts had no place on her wedding day, but her mind was drawn unbidden to the sensation of Dondo dy Jironal's eyes on her, as if they would sear her to her very skin. She quickly pushed aside the remembrance of Cazaril's look of horror after the incident with the pig that was the source of so much trouble. Then, all the recent events of Caz's sickness and his mission and the reordering of Chalion-Ibra played through her head.

The most recent memories had the most power over her, both for their content and proximity. She had known at some level, ever since the breathless night ride from Valenda, that her and Iselle's lives were at stake, but it was Caz's safety that most concerned her. She wanted to know that his uncanny tumor hadn't endangered him or that he hadn't met some accident on the road. Her thoughts confirmed more than ever that her feelings were not mere infatuation.

She would not fear any longer. Love for him coursed through her with an acute familiarity. She was well suited for him and he for her. In the few months of their engagement, she had never doubted that he would be a good husband to her; it was only in the last few days that she convinced herself that all she felt for him could not endure once the first flame of wedded bliss passed.

She'd never seen any evidence of men or, particularly, women who remained happy in marriage. Her father had told her stories of his and her mother's happiness, but she had passed on to the Mother of all before they had the opportunity to make that happiness lasting. Lady Ista and Royina Sara showed the greater disasters that could be the results of unhappy unions.

But surely she and Cazaril could be the exception to the rule.

She didn't have much knowledge of men and their dealings with women beyond the occasional pretty court flirtation, but she couldn't imagine anyone else stirring the deepest part of her the way Caz did. No one else shared her humor or history. She took a deep breath and stilled entirely. She was going to be Caz's wife, and it felt right.

As Iselle was fastening a simple silver chain around her neck, she commented, "I see that you've come to your senses." Betriz only smiled a little more widely.

She left the room ahead of Iselle. After all, her man would be waiting.