“You’ll be at the altar?” she asked.
He met her gaze. “Where else would I be?”
For a moment, her expression flickered—softening into something almost startled. “Don’t be late,” she said.
“I won’t be,” he tilted his head, stepping away. “You’re the one with the dramatic entrance.”
Chapter 2
They called it the Palace of Binding. A name far too poetic for a place so cold it could freeze marrow. It was built on the steep cliffs of northern Calveran, with tall, black towers, constantly covered with snow.
Her footsteps echoed too loudly, swallowed at once by the hush of the palace. Behind her, the two Silverwards kept their measured distance, their grey cloaks dragging behind them.
The veil dragged across her face like a second skin. Ivory lace, adorned with argent symbols of union, oath, obligation. A script of a new life.
The halls inside were lined in polished, onyx tiles that reflected the light. The frost had crept over the windows in curling shapes, like vines that had forgotten how to bloom. Evelyne for as long as she could remember found solace in the cold, but this one had forgotten mercy.
She walked at her father’s side, her hand resting in the crook of his arm. Burgundy velvet was wrapped around his broad frame. The Tresselyn crest—sword-point down in stone—was embroidered on his chest. His face was serious, as always, but today he wore the image a man who had secured something important and meant to keep it. He walked very tall, with unruly red hair and a reddish tint to his fair skin.
She had been promised to Dasmon Dvorenic since she was five.
When they met, he had been ten, all elbows and solemnity, with the palest blond hair she’d ever seen and eyes like melted ice. It had been her first diplomatic visit to Calveran, not so long after her mother’s death. The journey had taken three months by ship and sleigh, and she remembered thinking the entire country looked as if it was frozen in time.
She was also frozen, in more ways than one.
After that he sent her books each year, always with a note tucked inside.
During a state dinner in Calveran, when she was pressing a hand to her stomach under the tablecloth, he’d slipped a sprig of silvery northern sage into her wine goblet. When she looked at him across the banquet table, brow raised, he simply nodded and said, “It’s for the pain.”
Dasmon had never been passionate, but there was a certain comfort in that. His love had been in remembering her preferences and silently passing her a warmer cloak.
He will make a good husband. He already was.
“Thalen would like it here,” her father said at last, glancing sideways.
The corner of her lips lifted.
Thalen, her ten-year-old half-brother, had been left behind. Kept safely tucked in Vellesmere with Ysara, his mother. It had been deemed too dangerous a journey for a child, especially one with an heir’s blood and a habit of running off to chase shadows in the rose orchard.
She missed him most of all today, on her wedding day. After this, she would stay in Calveran, far from the capital of Edrathen, with solely her maid for company. Thalen would grow up without her, and she would listen from a distance, a sister in name but a stranger in presence.
Evelyne gave a small nod. “He’d be elbow-deep in snow within an hour. Clever beyond what’s reasonable for ten. Smiles like an angel, bargains like a Zhareshan trader. His mother and the poor nursemaid haven’t a prayer between them.”
Her father hummed, but there was something else behind it.
“Youshould be married by now,” he murmured after a while. “With your own child to scold.”
She didn’t respond immediately. Her palms itched to smooth her gown.
I was supposed to be.Until my lungs tried to collapse and someone decided that made me a poor investment.
For a heartbeat, she imagined what waited in the chapel. Rows of proud Calveran nobles with snow-colored silks and silver brooches. Dasmon would wait at the altar, his thin mouth softened by the faintest smile. His mother would cry, father would narrow his eyes, brothers would exchange jokes and sisters would giggle.
She felt nothing. Or rather, she made herself feel nothing. There had been excitement once, when she was still a girl tracing dreams in frost on the windowpane, imagining her wedding veil. But that version of her had faded with fever.
The sound of a wedding bell rolled over the halls.
The veil caught as she descended the stairs. Isildeth moved to adjust it with fumbling fingers, her brown eyes flickered to the windows. The moon was full, slowly vanishing into the morning.
