Loren would not be so blind.
“Devotion.” The High Priestess burned her dark, milky gaze into him. “Love. Protection. These values were passed from the Father to the Mother.”
From Keon to Anwen. They had only one thing right, from Loren’s vantage point. They descended from the coveted line of Keon’s wife and therefore held the god’s blood in their own veins. It was why their traditions held their Caersan women’s blood so highly. They were to put Keon and Anwen above all others.
“Devotion, love, and worship,” the High Priestess continued as she shifted those strange eyes to his bride, “are the values passed from the Mother to the Father. These three pillars are upheld throughout the union by each tied together. The blood shared binds them together beyond their final parting.”
The words had been spoken once before for Ariadne. While by law her previous marriage did not exist, he could not be so certain that the High Priestess’s words had not been what drove that half-breed’s enchantment home into Ariadne’s mind. As such, Loren knew in that moment what he had to do.
Killing Azriel Tenebra would not be enough. He had to erase the bastard from the face of the world and annihilate his entire soul to free her of that monster’s grip.
“By holding the blood of the Father,” the High Priestess turned her attention back to Loren and continued, “you must be willing to step forth and lead. It is your duty amongst those devoted to Keon to lead them unto him and guide them toward the light of Empyrean.”
She spoke to a King as though he did not already know his responsibility to his wife and his people. It was a task he undertook with the utmost seriousness.
“By holding the blood of the Mother,” she said as she refocused once more on Ariadne, “you are to follow he who leads. It is your place to never question and to always serve the one who will bring you to the gates of Empyrean.”
Beside him, Ariadne’s shoulders drew taut. Oh, Loren was going to enjoy this. Since the moment he had found her on the side of the highway, she had given him quite a difficult time. She did not yet know how to hold her tongue before his soldiers. It would take time for him to instill the values of the Mother in her—those that included silence and obedience and, most importantly, kneeling before her husband.
“Your hand.” The words were hardly out of the High Priestess’s mouth before Ariadne presented her hand, palm up, for the wizened Caersan to draw her blade across. It swept over her perfect, unmarred skin, tainting it with a thin ribbon of blood.
“With this blood,” Ariadne repeated the words fed to her by the Priestess as her blood dripped into the obsidian bowl, “I give unto thee my body, soul, and heart until my dying night and beyond.”
Before Loren could so much as react, the High Priestess took hold of his wrist in an oddly firm grip and turned his hand beforedrawing the knife across his palm. He repeated the same words, letting his blood mix with Ariadne’s at the top of the column of stone, anxious to reach the next part of the ceremony.
“Intertwine your fingers.”
As they did so, Ariadne looked up at him, her face barely visible beneath the veil as the High Priestess wound a cloth around their hands, fastening them together. His blood heated at the sudden attention. Yes, he enjoyed her eyes on him. The eyes of his wife.
Hiswife.
“These wounds,” the High Priestess continued, “were created together and will heal together. They bind your body as one in the eyes of the gods and to all those who witness you tonight. The blood you spilled together now mingles in harmony.”
From another satchel came a tiny cup that the Priestess dipped into their pool of shared blood. It dripped red, a small stream of it running down the side of her hand and wrist, as she lifted it high so all the ceremony guests could see it clearly.
It was then that Ariadne finally used her free hand to lift the veil, revealing all her queenly beauty. Draping it back over the diadem atop her head, he reveled in the way those blue eyes searched his face, and her red lips parted ever so slightly. Oh, he could not wait to part them more later. Maybe in the carriage on the way to the reception…
“This first taste of your life together shall bind you as one.” The High Priestess passed the tiny chalice to Ariadne first. She lifted the cup to her lips, never taking her eyes off him, and tilted the blood into her mouth. Something sparked there as she indulged, and it sent an anticipatory shock through his system. “As you move forward into the next stage of your life together, do not forget: what happens to one shall impact the other. As of the moment the blood touches your lips, your bond shall never be broken.”
Precisely what Loren needed to hear. An unbreakable bond between them. This was how that bastard entrapped her. Now she will be free of the half-breed’s thrall and forever be bound tohim.
The small chalice dipped into their blood again, and Loren took it, divulging in their unique mixture of flavors with gusto. Her blood swept across his tongue in a glaze of sweet, floral honey—just as he always imagined she would taste. Perfection.
“We have now arrived,” the High Priestess said as she snatched back the cup, “at the end of our ceremony. We close with the witnessing of the first feed.”
Unraveling the cloth, they each took back their now-healed hands. Loren waited with thin patience for the High Priestess to move forward so he could finally—finally—sink his teeth into that pale skin. Without hesitation, Ariadne held her arm back out to him, and he mirrored her. He took it, poised and ready to strike.
At last, the High Priestess began the final words that he had been ready to hear since the start of the ceremony. “As you partake for the first time, remember this: you are now one being, and to each vein, you shall be faithful.”
All around them, the Caersans repeated those final words. “And to each vein you shall be faithful.”
And Loren struck.
Ariadne stepped into the carriage, unwinding the salted cloth at her wrist as she went. Four puncture scars, two more fresh and pink than the other, gleamed back at her in the low lightprovided by their small lanterns. She sat, running her thumb over them as her stomach knotted in disgust.
“Follow behind,” Loren’s command answered the question from Nikolai that Ariadne did not care to hear.
There had never been a time in Ariadne’s life that she believed Nikolai to be her good friend, though she had held a certain reverence for him as her Elit. Seeing him now, as Loren’s glorifiedwatchdog—a term she recalled her new husband using to describe Azriel when he was still a guard—she could summon nothing more than pitiful revulsion for him. Nikolai had always followed Loren like a stray puppy longing for a home. Now he found one at the heels of his master.
