It did not get easier.

The pain of rejection was not something easily stifled by pride. In fact, pride made the whole thing worse. Every night, Anahita would think of all that she gave up just for uncomfortable dresses, legs that betrayed her, and a husband who did not love her.

At first, Chamber had tried. Rather, he had tried to try.

"Anahita," he said at breakfast, rolling his food around his plate with a silver fork. The ocean stirred behind the town in the huge window that framed him. "The Bishop tells me that your previous activities are not sufficient to annul our marriage, as you were not yet a human of the Gods' world, and therefore akin to being unborn." He said it with great scepticism.

Anahita looked up from her bread roll, on which she was spreading twelve spoonfuls of blackberry preserve. "That's good, is it not?"

"Certainly," he said, unconvinced. "But as your husband, I do hold some reservations." He said the word 'husband' with extreme disinclination. "We shall try to make this work."

"Of course."

"And," he said, his eyes rolling up as he searched for the words, "if we were to speak of...numbers?"

"Oh, you mean of mermen I..." She made a little gesture.

Chamber closed his eyes. "Yes, that."

She shrugged. "I cannot recall."

"You lost count?"

"I get the idea it holds more spiritual significance in your society," she shrugged, her mouth full.

"About that," he said, crushing an egg with his fork. "You must renounce the whale."

"What's 'renounce the whale'?"

He waved a hand. "The God-Whale."

"Oh," she said. "It is not a God-Whale. It is more of a metaphor. We believe that life in the sea came from some sort of divine mother, which we represent as a –"

"Yes, all that, you must renounce it in front of the church." When he saw that he was not getting through to her, Chamber put down his fork and looked at her with the air of a father who had been pushed to discipline. "Anahita. We are at war with the heretics of Ahriman who worship beastly gods. I cannot have my wife be a heretic – it is hypocrisy. It is also against the gods."

"You can worship your people, I can keep the whale. It is no problem."

Chamber rose from his seat, and it scraped loudly across the floor. "Anahita, this is not a joke. I expect you to renounce the whale, and to take our gods. It is the bare minimum I expect from you as a wife."

Admittedly, the whale did not hold a huge significance in Anahita's life. She knew folk who strongly revered the whale, but most of Anahita's close family considered themselves people of science, and the religions of the Grey Sea took more of a cultural role in their lives than a spiritual one. However, in this moment Anahita found herself a strong believer out of sheer insubordination.

"I shall not renounce the whale," she said. "It is part of my culture and I like it."

He threw up his hands. "Anahita, you are not making this geasy for me! Thousands of my men are dying each day in Ahriman to rid the world of heresy and here I am, wed to a believer of a God-Whale! It is simply not what I expect of a wife and future Queen of Cragen. It is honestly unacceptable – and please do not forget that I was so generously willing to put aside your...past."

"Clearly it is on your mind."

"Anahita," he sighed, resting his hands on the back of his chair. "I just had an idea you were a different sort of person."

"A maiden who does not like whales."

"You may like whatever fish you please, Anahita! I just wish you to neither worship them nor have unholy relations with them! It is disgusting, and I will not tolerate it! I do not even know how it works!"

"Oh, well, you just –"

"You must stop making that gesture." He slammed his hands down on the table. The plates rattled. "I have unknowingly wed a tavern wench. That much is done. But there are things we liked about one another, Anahita." He looked at her with equal parts beseechment and regret. "Just stop making trouble and it will all be alright."

She looked at him, squeezing the cutlery until it made welts in her palms. "Tavern wench," she said. "I am a physician. Or, I was. And I liked it! And I will not feel shame for the fact that I lived a good life, and I will not worship some gods just because you presume to exert authority over me as my husband."

Chamber nodded. He straightened up, smoothed his jacket down, and he left.

-

Each morning Anahita would wake, put on her gloves and veil, and take breakfast with Chamber, Lyda, The King, and the Queen. Lyda would always remark politely on the weather, or on recent politics. Whenever Anahita would reply, there would be an ugly little silence and then the conversation would resume without her. She learned quickly that these meals were formalities, and her words were unwelcome.

During the day, Chamber would always find a way to be out hunting, or training with his soldiers, or on a trip to review the pearl trade. He would act as distant as etiquette would allow. It disgusted Anahita to compare his previous affection to this new glacial politeness. He had sat by her with his shirt sleeves and trousers rolled up, eating cake in the sun. Now he curtly bid her farewell in a marble corridor and hurried down the palace steps with his coat under his arm.

The closest Anahita was allowed to the sea were the palace gardens.

The palace gardens were dark and geometrical under the prevailing storms. They had been designed only fifty years before by an architect with a fondness for maths and wisteria. Everything was meticulously placed. The dark shrubbery was groomed into the shapes of spheres and diamonds. The wisteria trembled up the walls of the palace like a quivering purple cliff. They were not a winter flower, but somehow relented against the rains.

Anahita walked to her favourite stone bench every afternoon to cry. It was by this point her main pastime. She would hitch up her skirts and walk there on unsteady legs. In the late afternoon the sky was as purple as the wisteria, and Anahita would sit on her bench and watch the sea. It always spoke and she could never understand it.

She would look out at the rolling waves and weep. It was always a huge, good cry that shook that body and left her mouth hoarse. By the end, she was often out of breath, or occasionally with hiccups. Her eyelashes were heavy with tears and rain. Her nose was leaking and each new sob that surged up her throat tired her a little more. When she was finally finished, she would wipe the tears and rain from her face and walk back to the palace to have some cake.

Like this, they slipped into winter. For months, Anahita's new husband ignored her in the hallways and she slept alone, listening to the sea. Whenever festivities were held, a golden-haired double stood at Chamber's side while Anahita stayed in her bedroom. There was nothing to do in there. She could not swim, she could not speak to anybody, and she could not read the language they spoke here. Any request she made was met with, "I am sorry, Your Highness."

The first time anyone spoke to her, Anahita was crying on her bench.

The sky was purple when Lyda sat neatly beside her. She wore her military coat, trousers, and boots, and she pulled out a spyglass. She did not spare Anahita a glance. She put the spyglass to her eye and gazed out over Cragen, into the sea.

Anahita reluctantly paused her weeping for a moment to follow the line of vision of the spyglass. She looked over the town of Cragen, and somewhere into the ports. The sea was indigo, sparkling with amber lanterns. Lyda was looking at a ship.

"What is that?" Anahita asked, peering out.

Without moving, Lyda said, "A spyglass."

"What are you looking at?"

"The lens of my –" She stopped herself. "It is confidential."

"I shall tell everyone about your tavern expedition."

Lyda took a huge, laboured breath and set the spyglass down in her lap. She clicked her tongue. "I thought you had forgotten about that."

"What are you looking at?"

"The sea is very nice. I like to..." she waved a hand impatiently. "Gaze."

Anahita narrowed her eyes. "You do not. I am here crying every day and I have never once seen you gazing at the sea. I am gazing at the sea."

Lyda was on the verge of replying but something caught her eye. Sharp as a hunting hound, she snapped the spyglass back to her eye and followed something.

Anahita looked out to see what was moving. "Whose ship is that?"

"Be quiet, fish."

A large black vessel drifted somewhere in the distance. Anahita could not make out more details about it than that it was huge and moved very very slowly.

"You are doing something you oughtn't," Anahita said. "And if I tell everyone, I shall not be the only enemy of this horrible palace."

"If you tell everyone," muttered Lyda, "we shall both be dead."

"Then you may as well tell me. I shan't tell anyone because I do not want to die."

"That surprises me." She put down her spyglass again and said with the smallest trace of sympathy, "He does not treat you well."

Anahita suppressed the sob that came rolling up her chest. She steadied her face and looked back out to sea. "I was a medic. I watched shipwrecks. I spoke to people every day and I had things to do. I gave it up by choice."

Lyda looked at her, and the cold wind sliced through the wisteria, decapitating some of its petals and sending them flying. She said, "Stupid choice. Make the most of it." And with that she packed up her spyglass and left.

Anahita frowned into her lap. Lyda was right. It was a horrible choice. But she had been misinformed. If she had known how lonely the black and white marble halls of the palace would be, she would never have surrendered her ocean. Everything was so loud here. The wind, the way it howled. The rain, and how it slapped the stone walls, and how it struck the dark earth. Even the sea was loud from above. Everything was chaos, all the time.

She rose her head.

A carriage had arrived at the steps of the palace, with Chamber and his hunting party. She could hear men and dogs.

Anahita stood shakily. With great effort, she strode on her quaking legs, holding fistfuls of fabric in her hand to lift her skirts.

Chamber was laughing with her friends, his golden hair crowned in little droplets of rain.

"You!" she bellowed, her voice still hoarse from crying.

He looked up and his face dropped. "Anahita!" His hands rose. "Your veil –"

"You bloody slice of shit little bastard!" she roared, striding to him as the storm that barely touched him whipped her hair.

Chamber seized her wrists. "What has gotten into you?" He glanced at his friends and back to her.

"You have no idea!" she shouted, struggling against his grasp until she broke free. "You have no idea how it feels! I gave up everything –"

"You chose to be here, Anahita."

"I did not know what I was choosing! You sold me a lie!"

"I sold you nothing, Anahita, you came here on your own!"

"You sold me on adventure, and dancing, and love, and –" She fumbled for words, blinded by the final liberation of her frenzy. "Conversation. You do not speak to me, Chamber! You all pretend as though I do not exist – as though I am some hideous secret. You chose me too!"

"And I too was sold on a lie," he said, tempering his voice. "I thought you were somebody else. I thought you were some harmless beautiful maiden who saved my life. Now I marry you to find you are a heretic whore above all else." He took a step back from her. "You refuse to accept our Gods – you even look Ahrimani."

"I don't know what that is!" she protested.

"I'd wager they sent you! You likely caused the very shipwreck you saved me from just to win your way into the palace! I had thought I could love you," he went on. "Anahita, do I not still allow you to live in this beautiful palace with all the food and books and clothes you could ever want? Can you not just sit and smile and be quiet and be grateful?"

Anahita breathed sharply. "I will not pretend that I am alright for you. How much more of this do you want me to do? Ten years? Twenty? My whole life just sitting? Speaking to nobody, permitted to do nothing?"

"Can you see how ungrateful you sound? You have everything you could ever want!"

"I wanted to speak to you, Chamber. That is all."

He nodded, barely looking at her. "Go to your bedroom, Anahita."

"I will go back to the sea."

Chamber scoffed. "You will drown."

"It would make my life easier."

"And mine."

Anahita was briefly shocked at such a cold reply to her melodrama. It stung worse than if he had struck her. "Is divorce permitted in your religion?" she asked, filling as much derision as she could into the final word.

"It is unfortunately only reserved for the most grave of cases."

It was at that moment that Anahita resolved to become the most grave of cases. She hitched up her skirts and limped into the palace to burn something.

The next weeks were chaos.

Anahita convinced a servant to order seventy peacocks into the ballroom. They burst their tails open and bit the courtiers. Chamber had them served as part of a banquet. Anahita took up viola lessons and decided from the start that she was a bad player. The chandelier of the ballroom shook with the skidding screech of Anahita's halfway attempt at music. Chamber had violas declared as unconstitutional. Every time the palace cooks began to prepare a meal, Anahita would stand close to them and chant in imaginary tongues so that they would have to threw the food to the pigs or the poor, worried that it was potentially cursed with seafolk magic. Every time she passed a courtly lady, she would roll her eyes back in her head and fake a magical seizure or inform them that Chamber was pitifully impotent. Every time she passed a lord, she would request some adultery. She was courteously denied.

Instead of crying, Anahita would sit on her bench and scheme, staring at the churning sea.

Lyda occasionally joined her to watch ships through her spyglass.

"I shall put mice in the butter," Anahita schemed. "And cut the seats out of every chair so the courtiers fall through them. I shall corrupt the Bishop."

"Be quiet, fish," Lyda would say, and then, after a pause, "You should flash him your legs."

She did so in front of the weekly congregation. Next, she set the royal doves free. Chamber sent a hunting party out to return them, which through a rather predictable miscommunication ended up shooting them all.

"You will be the death of me, woman!" Chamber thundered when he passed her in the hallway.

Anahita, whose walking had improved tremendously from getting around from misdeed to misdeed, dared him, "Divorce me then!"

"I promise you; I am trying!"

They ate doves for supper that evening.

The next day on the bench, Anahita said, "He still will not divorce me."

Lyda, looking out for her ship as always, said, "The Bishop will not grant him permission. He has become quite fond of you."

Anahita scowled. "I will bother him further."

"Embarrass him," she suggested lightly. "He loathes it. I daresay he cannot stand it."

"I think I can," Anahita replied.

Putting down her spyglass for a moment, Lyda replied, "I do not doubt it." 

--

[A/N: Let me know what you think so far! Which characters do you like, and what do you think Anahita is going to do next? My favourite part of writing is hearing from you guys! Lots of love

Also if you liked the chapter, please take a second to drop a vote, and say hi!!]