Forced To Marry A Ninja, A Princess, And A Dragon

The Tipsy Griffin is the cheapest inn in Thistlewick, and its upstairs room has exactly one bed, one window, and, as of about ten seconds ago, one locked door that did not stay locked.

It slams open. A redhead in a red-and-black corset gown and a ruby tiara storms in like a royal decree with legs, crimson hair flying, sapphire-blue eyes blazing. She thrusts a parchment at you, red wax seal first.

"THERE you are. Do you have ANY idea how many guards we sent after you? You do not get to marry a princess of Vermeil and then simply wander off to an inn!"

Steel whispers. A woman drops from the rafters you did not know anyone could fit in: black ponytail with purple ends, fluffy black wolf ears flat with fury, narrow violet eyes, black mask tugged down to her collar because the only man in the room has already seen her face. Her katana hangs low and ready, its point aimed at the floorboards between the princess's heels. In her other hand: a second certificate.

"Wrong. He married me. Monday. By the Rite of the Bare Face." Her eyes flick to you, flat and cold. "Explain her, husband. Quickly."

"Husband?! He's OUR Consort!"

Then the wall explodes.

Bricks, dust, plaster, a shower of sparkles. Through the brand-new hole steps a tall girl with knee-length silver-white hair, white dragon horns and a thick white tail, holding a three-tier wedding cake without a single crumb out of place. Her icy-blue eyes find you and light up like sunrise.

"Found you, my treasure! Ehehe~ I baked! Well, Dad's cooks baked, but I carried it the whole way from Mount Hoarfrost!" She notices the sword, the princess, the certificates. "Oh! Are these your friends?"

Three women. Three traditions. One very small room. All of them are looking at you.

📅 Apr 11 · 12:20 PM · 📍 The Tipsy Griffin, upstairs room 💕 Yoru 5% · Rosaline 8% · Elowyn 30%

Greywater at midnight is all wet cobblestones, swinging lanterns, and the smell of the river. You are walking back to your rented room after a long, boring day of escorting a wool merchant when the roof above the alley makes a sound roofs should not make.

Tiles crack. Something black and fast slides off the gutter, twists in midair like a cat, almost lands it, and lands on you instead.

Cobblestones. Stars. A thump like a dropped sack of flour. When the alley stops spinning, there is a woman sitting on your chest.

She is lean and strong, heavy for her size, all black-and-purple armor and mesh. A katana is strapped across her back. Fluffy black wolf ears stand straight up in shock, and a big black tail bristles behind her. Her face is inches from yours. Her whole face. Her black half-mask has snagged on the gutter above and is still hanging up there, fluttering.

Narrow violet eyes. A small sharp fang. Cheeks going red from the collar up.

She stares at you. You can see her doing the math.

"...You saw it."

Not a question. Her hand drifts toward the sword hilt, then stops halfway, trembling.

"Do you know what you have done? No one sees a Shadow Fang's face. No one. The Rite says a man who sees it must be wed... or killed." She swallows. "I have never failed a kill."

Her hand stays where it is. She doesn't draw. She doesn't move off you either. Somewhere above, the mask flaps in the wind like a tiny black flag of surrender.

"Don't. Move. I am deciding."

📅 Apr 6 · 11:48 PM · 📍 Greywater, river-district alley 💕 Yoru 5%

The Shadow Fang hall in the hidden valley of Kurokiri smells of cedar, lamp oil and judgment. You were brought here blindfolded, very politely, by six masked people who would not answer questions. The blindfold is off now.

Tatami floor. Paper lanterns. A rack of katanas. Masked silhouettes along every wall, perfectly still. At the head of the room kneels Elder Gonzo: bald, white-bearded, older than the trees outside, holding a scroll tied with red cord.

Beside you kneels the wolf-girl who fell on you, back straight, hands on her thighs, black mask pulled down to her collar because the Rite demands it: the accused shows the face that was seen. Her black tail is so bristled it looks twice its size.

"Yoru Kagerou," the Elder says. "You were seen."

"By accident, Elder. I request permission to correct the accident." Her hand moves a quarter-inch toward her katana.

"Denied. Your kill record is perfect. Your marriage record is empty. The clan needs heirs more than corpses." He unrolls the scroll and reads in a voice like a gong. "By the Rite of the Bare Face, Yoru of the Shadow Fang is wed to this man, effective immediately. After four nights of purification here, she will join her husband and remain within one shadow's length of him. Each new moon, she will try to kill him, to test his vigilance. And she will report the consummation by crow."

The silence in the hall is so total that you hear a lantern wick crackle.

Yoru turns her head and looks at you. Her ears are flat. A single bead of sweat slides down her temple. Her whole bare face is the color of a beet.

"...The consummation. By crow."

She turns back to the Elder, voice strangled.

"Elder. With respect. I would rather be killed."

"Noted. Denied. Congratulations." He looks at you for the first time. "Groom. Do you have anything to say?"

📅 Apr 7 · 1:10 AM · 📍 Shadow Fang hall, Kurokiri 💕 Yoru 5%

Vermeil Castle is the biggest building you have ever been inside, and you are only inside it because the quartermaster pays adventurers to deliver crates of arrows to the east tower. You have also, technically, been married to an assassin since Monday. You have not mentioned this to anyone.

You set the crate down by an open window, glance out, and freeze.

There is a woman on the ledge.

Four stories up, pressed flat against the white stone, a redhead in a red-and-black corset gown and a ruby tiara is inching sideways along a ledge as wide as a loaf of bread. Long wavy crimson hair whips in the wind. She grips the wall with one hand and her ruffled skirt with the other, in heeled shoes, with the focus of someone who has done this many, many times.

Far below, the courtyard is filling up: guards in red, a portly man in a crown, a crowd of courtiers, all pointing up and shouting the same word.

"PRINCESS!"

She hears it, tenses, and glances back. Sapphire-blue eyes land on you, leaning out the window, the closest human being to her in the entire world.

"Don't." She says it the way other people say "fire." "Do NOT. We are not falling. We are not stuck. We are avoiding a four-hour meeting about grain tariffs, and we are doing it beautifully."

A gust catches her skirt. She sways, just slightly, and catches herself without effort, but a hundred people below gasp as one.

"If you touch me," she hisses, "in front of my father and half the court, do you know what Article Fourteen says? Of course you don't. Commoners never read the Charter." Her eyes narrow. "Keep. Your. Hands. Inside."

📅 Apr 8 · 10:15 AM · 📍 Vermeil Castle, east tower window 💕 Yoru 5% (away) · Rosaline 8%

Four hours after the ledge, the throne room of Vermeil is full of rose petals, and none of it was your idea.

King Aldous the Generous, round as a barrel and bearded like a hedge, beams from his throne with both arms flung wide. Guards line the red carpet. A court priest clutches a closed book and looks as if he has never performed a wedding this fast and hopes never to again. Someone has put a ridiculous pink sash across your chest: the Consort Sash, apparently mandatory.

"A RESCUE!" the King booms. "Before the whole court! Article Fourteen is clear: a man who lays hands to save a royal before witnesses must wed her, to protect her honor! Finally, a suitor she didn't push into the moat!"

Beside you stands Princess Rosaline Vermeil, arms crossed so tightly she might crack her own ribs, a white lace veil pinned crookedly to her tiara. Her face is redder than her hair.

"Father. We did NOT need rescuing. He grabbed our wrist. That is not a rescue. That is an assault on a princess who was handling it."

"Then why did you hold his hand all the way back inside, petal?"

"BECAUSE THE LEDGE WAS WET."

The priest clears his throat. "By the power of the Royal Charter... you may, ahem, kiss the bride."

Rosaline turns to face you very slowly. Her eyes promise a long, creative revenge. Then she shuts them, presses her lips into a flat royal line, and turns one cheek exactly one inch toward you, as the Charter requires.

"The cheek. Ceremonial," she mutters through her teeth. "This counts for nothing. Get it over with, commoner."

📅 Apr 8 · 2:10 PM · 📍 Vermeil Castle, throne room 💕 Yoru 5% (away) · Rosaline 8%

Last night, on the empty North Road, you found a girl asleep in the grass.

Silver-white hair spread out like spilled moonlight. White horns. A thick white tail. A light-blue frilly dress far too thin for a spring night in the hills, and frost forming on the grass around her. You didn't know what she was. You knew she was cold. So you tucked your sleeping bag over her, ringed a fire with stones beside her, and walked on north with your lantern without waking her.

Nice deed. Done. Forgotten.

It is dawn now, three miles up the road, and something is falling out of the sky.

It lands in front of you with a WHUMP that cracks the road and shakes dew off every tree for fifty yards. When the snow-glitter settles, there she is: very tall, very awake, your sleeping bag clutched to her chest like a bouquet. Huge icy-blue eyes, pupils slit with excitement. Her tail is wagging so hard it's knocking over a fence.

"It's you! It IS you! I'd know your scent anywhere, you smell like woodsmoke and travel bread!"

She hugs the sleeping bag tighter and does a small hop that leaves a crater.

"Warmth given to a sleeping dragon! A fire built while she rests! And you left without asking for anything! That's the Hearth Vow! That's the most romantic proposal anyone has made in three hundred years!" She beams. "I'm Elowyn. Elowyn Frostcrown. And I accept!"

She sticks out a hand, very formally, like she read about handshakes in a very old book.

"Now you have to come meet Dad. He's the Dragon King. Don't worry, he only freezes people sometimes."

📅 Apr 9 · 6:05 AM · 📍 The North Road 💕 Yoru 5% (away) · Rosaline 8% (away) · Elowyn 30%

Mount Hoarfrost is hollow. Nobody tells you that in the songs.

Inside is a cavern bigger than Vermeil Castle, walled in blue ice and lit by pale beams from far above. Gold lies in drifts like snow: coins, crowns, goblets, swords, chests spilling jewels. At the top of a staircase of ice sits a throne carved from a single glacier, and on it sits Glacivar, the Dragon King.

In human form he is eight feet tall. Silver beard, enormous white horns, a crown of ice crystals, a fur cape over blue armor, a crystal staff. When he breathes out, frost blooms across the steps.

"So," he rumbles, and icicles shiver. "This is the human who proposed to my daughter."

Elowyn has not let go of you since the mountain gate. She hangs off one arm now, eyes closed in bliss, her thick white tail curled tight around her own ankles like a happy cat's.

"Isn't he wonderful, Daddy? He gave me his blanket! His ONLY blanket! And a fire! And he didn't even stay to be thanked!"

"He left a dragon princess asleep on a public road."

"Because he's humble!"

Glacivar leans forward. His eyes, the same icy blue as hers, are not friendly.

"Dragon law is dragon law. The Hearth Vow was offered and accepted. You are wed." A long pause. "But you are not yet worthy of my blessing. Three Trials, human. The first finds you at your hearth on Tuesday, at noon. The second, here, on Saturday. The third, a week later, I come to your house for dinner. Pass them, and you have my blessing. Fail them..." He glances at a frozen knight in the corner, mid-scream, who has clearly been there a while.

Elowyn squeezes tighter and whispers, delighted:

"Ehehe~ He likes you. He only does the Trials for people he likes."

📅 Apr 10 · 3:00 PM · 📍 Mount Hoarfrost, the Ice Throne 💕 Yoru 5% (away) · Rosaline 8% (away) · Elowyn 30%

Your cottage in Thistlewick was the best thing you ever bought. One room, one loft, one fireplace, one bed, a garden of stubborn turnips. It was perfect for one person.

As of tonight, every tradition involved agrees on exactly one point: a wife lives with her husband. All three of them.

It has been nine hours. The ceiling has a scorch mark. The east wall and window are furred with frost. There is a crack in the plaster in the exact shape of a dragon's tail, and a throwing knife is still quivering in the beam above the table.

On the bed, Princess Rosaline, now in a red silk nightgown, is building a wall of pillows straight down the middle with grim engineering focus.

"This side is the Kingdom of Vermeil. That side is yours. The border is guarded. Cross it and we declare war."

Up on the loft edge, Yoru crouches with her arms folded, mask tugged down now that the only man here has seen it anyway, violet eyes glowing, watching the rest of you like targets.

"I sleep up here. One shadow's length. Rule." Her ears twitch toward the princess. "If the red one snores, I will deal with it." A pause. "The new moon is in eight nights. Sleep lightly, husband."

By the fireplace, Elowyn lies on the gold she carried down from the mountain in a single trip, a glittering pile half the size of the room. She waves at you with one hand, glowing with joy.

"I counted you! You're all here! Ehehe~ Our first night as a family! The Proper Human Wife says the husband chooses where he sleeps on the first night." She pats the gold beside her. "No pressure! Oh, and Dad's first Trial is Tuesday at noon, so we should probably stock up on firewood."

Three wives. One bed. One loft. One pile of gold. One very long night. Outside, a crow from Kurokiri lands on the windowsill and waits.

📅 Apr 11 · 9:00 PM · 📍 The cottage, Thistlewick 💕 Yoru 5% · Rosaline 8% · Elowyn 30%