As they wove back into the heart of the night market, Kira’s eyes lit up as she spotted a faded, battered photo booth tucked between a candle stall and a woman selling handmade earrings.

She stopped walking so abruptly that Derek nearly walked into her.

"No," he said, reading her face.

"You don’t even know what I’m about to say."

"I know exactly what you’re about to say, and the answer is no."

She was already pulling him towards it.

The booth was designed for two average-sized people. Derek was not average-sized by any definition. He folded himself into the small seat with the pained dignity of a man doing something deeply beneath him, his knees almost touching the opposite wall, his shoulders filling the entire frame.

"This is undignified," he said.

"You look great," Kira said cheerfully, climbing in beside him and removing his hat. "Look at the screen." She leaned towards the screen to set the timer.

She immediately produced a sparkly blue headband with boingy stars from the small bag she was carrying and held it up.

Derek looked at it. Then at her.

"Absolutely not."

"Derek."

"Kira."

"It’s got little stars on it. Very kingly."

"I will not wear that."

She placed it on his head anyway.

"Kira, you can’t—"

Flash.

The first photo captured him perfectly: back straight, jaw locked, looking like a high-profile hostage being held for ransom.

"You have to do something," Kira said, laughing already.

"I am doing something. I am sitting here."

"With your face like that."

"This is my face," he muttered, trying to adjust his neck. He looked at the lens, squinting as he tried to figure out where the light was coming from.

The second photo captured him looking confused, one eyebrow arched so high it was nearly lost in his hairline.

"You’re supposed to smile," she told him.

"I don’t smile on command."

"Everyone smiles on command. It’s a photo booth, Derek, not a deposition."

The third photo caught him mid-frown, his brows drawn together, glancing back at the camera like it had said something personally offensive.

Kira dissolved into laughter, and for a moment she forgot entirely about timers and photos and sparkly headbands, laughing with her whole body, shoulders shaking, one hand pressed against his arm to steady herself.

Then the timer on the fourth frame began to count down.

A mischievous idea snapped into her head, she turned in the cramped space, grabbed his face with both hands, and pressed her lips to his in a quick, soft kiss that lasted only a second.

When she pulled back, his eyes were open.

Flash.

The camera caught it. Derek wasn’t scowling or confused. His eyes were wide, his hands had instinctively moved to her waist to steady her, and for the first time, there was a look of pure, startled wonder.

A look he hadn’t managed to put away in time.

She reached for the printed strip when it came out of the slot and looked at all four frames in order. The hostage. The confused man. The frown. And then the last one, where the King of Dravengard looked, for one unguarded fraction of a second, like a man who had just been handed something he didn’t know what to do with.

She folded the strip carefully and tucked it into her bag, knowing that last image was a treasure she’d keep forever.

"I’m keeping this," she announced.

"Burn it," he said.

"Absolutely not."

The shooting gallery was three stalls down, a long counter lined with moving targets and a rack of stuffed animals hanging above it in cheerful, oversized rows.

The vendor, a short cheerful man with a red apron and an impressive moustache, looked up as they approached and took in Derek’s build with the polite scepticism of a man who had watched plenty of large, confident men fail spectacularly at his stall.

"Three shots for five pounds, mate," he said. "Hit all three targets, you pick any prize from the top row."

"He’ll do it," Kira said immediately.

"Kira," Derek said.

"You’ll do it."

The vendor slid the small rifle across the counter with the professional patience of a man who had seen this before. Derek picked it up, turned it over once in his hands, and looked at the targets moving slowly across the back of the stall.

He raised it, fired three times in a row, so quickly that the sounds ran almost into each other, and put it back down on the counter.

All three targets dropped.

The vendor stared at the back of his stall. Then at Derek. Then at the gun, as though checking it had not done something irregular.

"Top row," Derek said.

The man pointed wordlessly at the prizes. Kira picked a giant panda with both hands, hugging it against her chest.

"Again," she said.

Derek looked at her.

"Please," she added.

He won four more times. By the time they stepped away from the stall, Kira was buried under a mountain of fluff. She was carrying a panda, a lion, a neon green frog and something purple that may have been a dinosaur, and a bear that was almost as tall as she was.

The vendor watched them go with the expression of a man mentally revising his business model.

A group of children had gathered nearby, watching with wide eyes. When Kira spotted them, she immediately walked over to them.

"Here you go," she said, holding the bear out to the nearest child, a small boy of about five who had been watching the prizes with the focused longing for a while.

The boy reached for the bear, then looked up at Derek standing behind Kira and his face crumpled.

"He’s crying," Kira said, turning to Derek with wide eyes.

"I can see that," Derek said flatly.

"You’re scaring him."

"I’m not doing anything."

"You’re looming."

"I’m standing."

"Could you perhaps stand less?"

Derek took one step to the side and looked away, which seemed to help. The boy stopped crying with the speed of a child who had decided the prize was worth the risk, grabbed the bear with both arms, and ran back to his group.

The others surged forward with the immediacy of children who understood that generosity had a limited window, and Kira distributed the remaining prizes until she had nothing left but the small frog, which she tucked under her arm with no intention of giving it anywhere.

They walked more slowly after that, falling into an easy pace through the quieter edges of the market. Derek had stopped looking at the crowd like it was a tactical problem to be solved.

Kira noticed it without saying anything, the slight ease in his shoulders, the way he was actually looking at the stalls now rather than scanning them. It made something warm settle in her chest.

"Are you not hungry?" he asked, looking down at her stomach. "You shouldn’t starve yourself, not even for fun."

Kira grinned. "I am actually starving. And I know a place where we can get the best noodles for pennies. It’s a proper ’cheap eats’ spot."

He looked at her sideways. "Please tell me it is not somewhere in this market."

Kira chuckled, bumping her shoulder against him. "Relax, Your Grace. The food won’t kill you.

"That is not the reassurance you think it is."

She was still smiling when Derek stopped walking. She turned to find him standing in front of a small jewellery stall, looking down at something in the display with an expression she couldn’t quite read.

He spoke to the vendor quietly, and the woman behind the counter lit up and began explaining something, gesturing with her hands.

Kira watched him from a few steps away. He looked relaxed. More relaxed than she had seen him in weeks, perhaps since they had married. His hands were in his pockets, his posture loose, the permanent tension he carried around his shoulders gone for once.

Something tugged at her heart. She thought, not for the first time, about telling him that she knew the truth now—that her father, Rolf, was the one who had orchestrated the massacre of his people.

She knew he hadn’t married her for "peace." He had married her for a deeper, darker reason rooted in that pain.

She wanted to know. She wanted to ask him the reason he married her, but every time she saw less of the man who had forcefully taken her to wife and more of the man who was letting loose, she told herself it wasn’t the right time.

One day, she thought. One day when the moment was right, she would ask him the real truth. But not tonight. Let him have this one night of being a man instead of a haunted King.