The first thing Dean learned after becoming the future consort of Alamina was that congratulations were a form of warfare.
Congratulations came with smiles.
With old nobles crowding in too close with the pretense of bringing blessings, foreign representatives speaking in careful layers, and relatives from three separate royal bloodlines eyeing him as if he had just been made a national monument and should thus be open to admiration from several angles.
Dean endured seventeen minutes of it.
He counted.
By the eighth minute, he had begun making a private list of people he would ban from all future events if Alamina gave consorts that power. By the eleventh, he had accepted that Alamina probably did not give consorts that power and began considering how quickly he could acquire it through charm, blackmail, or marriage.
The last one, unfortunately, had already been used.
