He appeared in our estate as a guest, but everyone knew—he was my father’s prisoner. A twenty-year-old man, the son of Duke Coerly, whom his own father had simply handed over to his longtime enemy as a guarantee of a truce.
Handed him over like some kind of thing.
I hated Alexis Coerly with all my heart. But my father decided for me.
— I don’t care what you think about each other, — he said. — In the near future, you will get married and have so many children that they’ll fill all the lands all the way to the north.