They lined the long tables in their finery: silks, velvets, and furs trimmed with silver thread, jewels glinting at throats and wrists and woven through elaborate braids of ink-black hair.
Goblets rose and fell in endless toasts, dark wine sloshing over rims, staining the white tablecloths like old blood.
The roar of conversation filled the vaulted space, bouncing off stone walls hung with tapestries depicting ravens in flight, ravens in battle, ravens picking clean the bones of fallen enemies.
I stood at the entrance to the hall and counted my enemies.
The elders at the high table, watching me with eyes that missed nothing. The young warriors clustered near the fire, their laughter too loud, their glances too sharp.
The women in their gorgeous gowns, diamonds dripping from their ears, their smiles showing just a few too many teeth when they looked my way.
Raven shifters. All of them.
I could tell by the black of their hair, the sharp angles of their faces, the way they moved, fluid and predatory, even when reaching for a bread roll.
Their eyes caught the torchlight and reflected it back like polished obsidian, and when they turned those eyes on me, I saw what they saw.
Human. Weak. Wrong.
The whispers had already started. I’d heard them in the corridors, in the kitchens, in the rustle of servants’ voices when they thought I couldn’t hear.
The human bride. The strange one. The girl who had cracked the mirror in the entrance hall, who never ate, who walked the corridors at night like a restless spirit searching for a grave it couldn’t find.
The girl whose reflection had shattered.
I smoothed my hands down the new black velvet gown with silver embroidery crawling up the bodice like frost on a window.
The Raven King had been watching me closely all day, ever since finding me with Lowen in the tower, and that scrutiny felt heavier than the dress.
A servant had laced the corset tight, arranging the heavy skirts. Another had attempted to warm my cheeks with rouge, then wiped it away. Too bright. Too stark.
“The elders are not pleased with my choice.”
He spoke near my ear. I hadn’t heard him approach, hadn’t felt him, hadn’t sensed anything. He moved like smoke, a shadow given form and purpose.
I turned.
The King stood close enough that I could see the silver thread in his coat.
He was dressed in black, as always. His dark hair swept back from his face, his eyes fixed on the crowd beyond my shoulder.
“They think I should have chosen a shifter bride,” he continued. “Someone with proper bloodlines. Someone who could give them heirs that would strengthen the clan rather than dilute it.”
His gaze slid to mine. “Someone with warmth.”
“And what do you think, my lord?”
The title came out mocking. I hadn’t meant it to. Or perhaps I had. I still didn’t know what he wanted from me, why he’d bought me, what game we were playing.
His lips curved. Not quite a smile. “Warmth is overrated.”
His gaze traveled down my body, slow and deliberate, lingering on the low cut of the neckline, the pale column of my throat. “I think cold has its own appeal.”
I should have felt something. A flutter. A catch. The racing pulse of a woman being looked at like that by a man like this.
But there was nothing in my chest to race, nothing to flutter.
I needed the petal.
