The blue of ice, the blue of death. The blue of a bloodless body rotting beneath the earth.
When the guards appear at my door and usher me from the room, I don’t resist. Each step I take feels heavy and thick, like trudging through quicksand. Like a funeral dirge.
The sunlight pouring in through the open archways feels too bright. The rusted bands around my wrists are too heavy, even without the chain linking them together. The silk against my skin is too tight, too constricting.
But none of it fazes me. My emotions have been sanded down to apathy.
I don’t care what happens to me. I only care about protecting the people I love for as long as I can.
I can’t let Kylian get to them. I can’t let him torture Kai until his body gives out for good. And I can’t let him grow more powerful by marrying me.
That’s what I remind myself as the towering doors of the chapelyawn open to an ivory fever dream. It looks like the happy ending to a fairytale. Something triumphant and glorious, meant to be everlasting.
Only the white roses smell sour. The pristine silk carpet awaits my first steps like the tongue of some beast waiting to swallow me whole. It stretches past the endless rows of fae, past the floating orbs filled with tiny candles, past the overhead loft where a choir of angel voices echoes through the rafters. Leading all the way up to the stunning male at the altar, in a sparkling golden crown and epaulet of ruby-studded suns.
I don’t hear the music as I’m nudged forward, carrying a massive bouquet to hide the heavy blood ore cuffs still encircling my wrists. No one walks beside me as I make my way toward Kylian. He beams, bright as the sun itself. Bright as the light filtering in through the stained-glass dome stretched high above the altar, casting the room in brilliant rainbows.
I wish he were different. I wish I could love him. I wish he were a better male.
But things are not different. And neither is he.
Numbly, I drift past row after row of wedding guests, whom I’ve never even seen before today. I don’t even feel the blinding need to claw Ilspeth’s perfect face again as she oversees the ceremony contemptuously from her gilded throne.
Kai stands beside her, a golden guard looming at his back. The shadows beneath his eyes are a deep purple as he stares at me, horrified.
There is nothing he can do. There is nothing any of them can do. It’s up to me.
I’m sorry, I murmur to him in my mind.I’m sorry, all of you. Zadyn. Jace. What I wouldn’t give to say goodbye to you both.
To tell you that I love you.
Kylian extends a sun-kissed hand to guide me up the two remaining steps to the dais where his High Priest waits. Behind him, the cathedral ends in a delicate sheet of glass. Just a thin, transparentwisp standing between the wedding and the cliff-lined sea. Between confinement and freedom.
So close and yet so,sofucking far.
Kylian lifts my veil, tucking it behind my head and allowing me to see the space with more clarity.
Such a waste, I think, taking in the wild splendor of the room. What a gloriously beautiful wedding, wasted on the two of us. Wasted on what will never be.
The High Priest recites a prayer in Ancient Fae as he hands Kylian an ornate dagger. Dragging it across his palm, he squeezes a few drops into the depths of a golden chalice. Then it’s my turn.
With steady hands, I accept the dagger, sunlight glinting off the silver blade.
Two futures stretch before me in this moment: the choice to finish what I started today on this altar and the choice to thrash against my chains.
Against fate.
But what if there were a third option? One carved from love and selflessness and sacrifice. One that guarantees to alter the fixed destinies that await my decision. One so great it would be impossible not to have a rippling domino effect on the future.
I don’t accept my fate.
Instead, I tell fate to go fuck itself as I plunge the dagger into my waiting heart.
* Cue:Black Beautyby Lana Del Rey
15
ZADYN
