The ring burned.His wife wanted him, called for him, whether she knew it or not, and the ring bound him to her desires.
His desires, too.
Yet… he could not move.He’d wed for the wrong reasons, and those reasons crowded round him, chain-shaking ghosts who wanted him to know the error of his ways.
He pushed into the hallway and up the stairs.Her damned cousin wanted her dead.Her aunt did not seem to care she was missing.Where were her friends among the transcendents?The ones to push at Fordham for answers, to go looking for herin the countrywhere Fordham said she’d retired.
Temple seemed to be her only friend.
No, there’d been women from Lady Guinevere’s there today.The famed potion mistress herself had attended, sitting tall and inscrutable near the back of the church, Mr.Bran curiously absent.Diana had friends, allies.Only none in the class she’d been born to.
She didn’t belong to them anymore.
She belonged to him and to those who saw her strength and to herself.But where did he belong?They were both travelers, weren’t they?Exiled from their homelands and navigating the new streets of foreign lands.
He might not have achieved what he’d set out to achieve by marrying her.
Didn’t matter.Not tonight.Tonight was about him and her, and all those others be damned.
The door to his bedchamber gave easily beneath his touch, and he slipped into the room quietly.She was not sleeping.His ring told him that much.The iron buzzed, too lively, too excited.
She was not even in the bed, though.She stood before the looking glass in the corner, her hair tumbling down her back, wearing only a sheer shift.The nearby fairy orb drenched her form in light, outlining the curves that awaited beyond the thin linen.
She had not seen him yet, and he leaned against the doorframe.What an oddly satisfying feeling, to watch a wife.An unknown benefit of the married state.Such a domestic moment.It hummed his body into a state of oppositions—satisfaction and anticipation, relaxation and arousal.
No need to rush.They had all night, all morning, the rest of their lives.What a satisfying?—
Diana… changed.
Between one breath and the next, she slipped into a different body—smaller, thinner, hair duller, face sharper.Her but not her.This the woman he’d first seen the night they’d met.And beneath that wavering, starlight image—therealher.
Diana wore a glamour.
* * *
It wasodd to look at her old reflection in a looking glass that reflected her new life.The glamour felt clumsy and ill-fitting.Diana had not seen this glamoured face of hers since her grandfather’s death.A stranger to herself back then.It had made her feel sick to know she was not as she’d thought herself.But eventually she’d gotten used to her new appearance, her true appearance, and come to… love it.Her ears might be too big.Her nose a bit too sharp.But it was her, no masks, no hiding.
She hated the glamour.She had no use for it tonight.Had never had any use for it, actually.It had been entirely for her grandfather’s benefit.
Tonight was for her and her husband, the man who’d dragged her down the aisle, held her hand and kissed her hard in front of everyone she knew in this new life.He’d claimed her, and even though she’d never had a wedding night before, was rather a novice at the whole thing, tonight she would claim him.
Wearing this glamour right now—a final farewell to her old self.
“May we never meet again,” she whispered.
Her ring glowed, the constant soft hum of warmth around her finger shifting higher.It burned a little.
“Ow.”Dropping the glamour, she lifted her hand and… something felt wrong.The ring, but also the air in the room.
She was not alone.Out of the corner of her eye?—
Her husband stood in the doorway.
Oh God.She reached for the nearby post at the foot of the bed and held fast because her body had gone numb, her legs collapsing.The last time she’d been discovered casting a glamour by a man, he’d tried to squeeze the life out of her.
“T-Temple.How long have you been there?”
He seemed a creature of the night, dark hair blending with the hallway shadows behind him, strong, corded throat bare above a rumpled shirt and unbuttoned waistcoat.He leaned against the doorframe like a lazy beast of prey.Muscles long and loose.But ready.
