It was his expectation that she would be delighted at this generous offer that made her answer hotly. “Valmar? But why should I marry him? The beard can’t hide it. He’s nothing but a stripling boy!”

She stopped, seeing his surprise and, yes, disappointment. Whatever she wanted to argue with King Hadros about, it was not the manliness of his oldest son.

But where she had expected hot words in return, he said quietly, “He is still young, Karin. Perhaps you would prefer to wait a year or two. There has mostly been peace of late among the Fifty Kings, and even the upcountry bandits and southern booty have provided less opportunity for boys to be hardened into warriors. Most of the ships now on the channel are merchants’ ships, not war ships. I had already killed three men in combat when I was Valmar’s age.” She thought he was finished, but then he added, almost under his breath, “Of course, there are some, like Roric, who do not need war to make them men.”

She clenched her fists until the nails bit into her flesh. “And he is the man,” she said in a voice that she was dismayed to hear tremble, “that I shall marry.”

Again she expected a hot answer, but Hadros only went perfectly still for ten seconds, then turned to look at her gravely. “He did not say he had spoken to you already…”

She caught herself just in time from shouting, “And would that have made any difference in your ordering him killed?” Instead she kept her fists clenched at her sides and asked as evenly as she could, “And how can you possibly object to my marrying him?”

“You have always been a princess, even before your brother died. You were a hostage, but I intended to treat you as though you were my own daughter, and no man without a father could marry a daughter of mine.”

“ You’re his father just as much as you’re mine.” She spoke in a low, intense voice. No one else was in the hall, but there might be highly interested maids outside the open doorway.