Spinning Silver

by Naomi Novik

A man who’d marry me like this wasn’t marrying me at all; he was making a bargain for a girl-shaped lump of clay he meant to use at his convenience,

Some of the stammering was the ring’s magic, but the rest, I suspected, was the subtler magic of contrast; I didn’t imagine Mirnatius showed much courtesy to his servants.

But it was all the same choice, every time. The choice between the one death and all the little ones.

I was reasonably certain he wasn’t going to try and devour my soul. My expectations for a husband had lowered.