The young Duke is nervous, as might be expected, because it's the morning of his wedding. The servants hustle and bustle about him, all as nervous as he for more than one reason, and they check over his full dress finery again and again. His suit, his sword (with just enough lessons to flourish the thing without stabbing someone by accident), the dragon's clan-markings delicately etched into his skin, the gloves he keeps nearly chewing on... he gives the servants no rebuke when they nudge him away from his nerves and towards the door between their readying-chambers.

"How are you feeling?" his wife-to-be calls from past the door. Her voice is a husky-smooth contralto. She's dizzyingly exotic to him, and he knows she's gotten dressed up herself, in all the jewels and rubies she loves, and in paints and henna tattoos, and a flowing dress of many layers of silk, and horns woven into her hair and claw-gauntlets decorating her beautiful hands.

"I already vomited," the Duke says, "a little while earlier." He's shorter than her, in human form, and younger by a few years---barely an adult---but she's never taken him badly for it. He leans against the door, where he can hear her gauntlets clack-clacking against the wood on the other side.

His wife-to-be laughs. Her little Duke has always had an iron stomach, even at the worst of times. "It won't be *that* bad," she says, and sighs, because if it weren't for the tradition of the veil and wedding-day secrecy she'd have already given him a little kiss to help reassure him. "You'll say your lines, I'll say mine, and---well, we can get you a potion to help with any... anxiety."

The Duke blushes, and one of the comelier maids giggles and gives him a little pat on the shoulder. She's one of the brave ones, so stay so near to him and his intended, and he makes a mental note to reward her for it later. "It's not like I'm---well," he says, "youthful games, and all," though he looks barely more than a youth himself. But he and his wife-to-be have never been further than kisses, and he's never lain with one of her sort.

The maid titters again, in the sort of way that makes clear she enjoys the gossip but won't share it, and she adjusts the buttons of his jacket. From past the door the Duke's intended laughs, too. She knows his past well enough and he knows hers, and they've both had plenty of time to call it off, but neither has any wish to. The Duke isn't quite sure if it's love, but it's certainly something like it. That they like each other so much is a beautiful thing to add to the simple affairs of state.

----

"...you may now mate the bride," the old priest says, and his cheeks flush pink.

The Duke lets out a little happy puff of breath---he almost laughs it---and leans up to tuck back his bride's gold-gossammer veil. Delicate lines of tiny gems have been glued and painted into place with the clan-lines painted on her face, and they vanish into the shimmery teasing half-transparent bodice of her dress. "You're beautiful," he says, and he kisses her, and she kisses him back and lifts him to his toes as she embraces him.

The crowd erupts into hoots and cheers. There are detractors, here and there, but on the whole the most of them support the union. Some don't so much support the manner of it---not in *public*---but that's why the earthier, less proprietous---and, with the dragon's recent gifts, rather more welcoming---common crowd are closer to the event than they might otherwise be.

"No anxiety then, lovely?" the Princess says, and kisses the Duke again, and helps him out of his jacket and sword and clothes. His body is slender and delicate and almost girlish. Unlike her he bears no markings, but for the barest trace of clan-marking on his face, custom-painted for the new line they will make together.

"Of course not," he says, and becomes a dragon again. The crowd roars as they see his golden scales gleam in the sunlight. He gently catches his bride up in his claws and lays her against the altar, on her belly so that the tiara-crown can stay on her head, with her rump up in the air.

----

"You do know he didn't *really* breathe fire when, ah, well," the Queen says as she looks over the painter's preliminary sketches. One hand touches the canvas, with the other at her very rounded belly. She's taken to wearing very little in her advanced pregnancy, barely more than translucent silks and jewelry in the royal chambers, and the painter has to fight to keep his eyes above her beautiful, flawless neck.

"Of course," the painter says, "but he *could* have, you know. It's a... metaphorical thing." He fidgets with his brushes.

"I suppose so," says the King, from the lap of that same pretty maid who had helped calm him months before. She strokes his fluffy blonde hair and rubs his shoulders.