The Queen Dowager and the Lords of Argyle stood stiffly on the left side of the chamber, their clothing disheveled and their eyes heavy. Across from them on the right, stood Calveron soldiers and fae nobles. Strangers with sharp smiles and sharper weapons. The carpet runner stained with her father’s blood had been removed, along with all evidence of incursion and Argyle’s flags.
Now Calveron’s colors adorned the halls and once again she didn’t recognize her home.
No one offered to walk her down the aisle.
No music played.
And at the front on the dais, Prince Eldrik stood tall and too still, clothed in an opulent white coat veined in gold. With him waited the Archbishop and the High Priestess.
All eyes were on her.
Princess. Daughter. Pawn. Bride.
Alora wore the titles like her veil as she strode forward alone, each step echoing against the gleaming floors. The throne room loomed around her like a monument to duty and sacrifice.
The arches stretched high overhead, but the light was all wrong, dim, sickly, devoured by shadows that danced too hungrily around the torches. They had drawn the heavy drapes over the windows to dowse out the bright light of the beacons outside.
The weight of every stare fell on Alora as she climbed the steps of the altar and came to a stop beside Eldrik.
He was not the same prince from last night. His features were sharper, colder. His smile absent. And though his eyes faced forward, something beneath his skin twitched. Like something waiting to crawl out.
Alora couldn’t look at him. She searched for something to ground her, eventually letting her gaze rest on the broad golden medallion hanging from the Archbishop’s neck, gleaming with the embossed symbol of a sun and seven rays. A representation of the Seven Gods.
Yet there were no gods here.
The Archbishop lifted his hands, rings glinting in the candlelight, and his voice rolled through the vaulted chamber.
“By the Seven who guard the Gates, we are gathered in witness of a sacred union. Before gods and men, before lords and crowns, two Houses are bound this night. As steel is tempered by fire, as ships are tested by storm, so shall their marriage be sealed in trial and endure through eternity. Let no hand nor fate sunder what is joined beneath Heaven’s gaze.”
Alora’s stomach knotted at the weight of the proclamation. The words tolled in her skull, the bouquet trembling in her grip.
The hall answered in a hush of“So it shall be,”and the sound crawled over her skin like a burial shroud.
Beside her, Eldrik gave a low chuckle, soft enough for only her to hear. “Touching.”
His mirth was cynical and unnerving, as though he mocked the ceremony and the Seven themselves.
The Archbishop droned on, his words muffled into a dull hum as she stared at the pulse Eldrik’s neck. Her fingers drifted to her corset where she’d hidden the spindle.
She could draw it out now. End this before it was too late.
Instinct warned he was impossibly fast and would overpower her before she ever had a chance to kill him. Still, she carefully, subtly slipped out the long needle, using the bouquet for cover. It was cold as ice in her palm, and as long as a small blade. Alora pictured driving it through his throat, through the pomp and pride, silencing him forever. His men would cut her down before the blood cooled but she didn’t care.
They would die together, and Argyle would be free.
Her muscles coiled as she tightened her grip. The sharp point hovered at her wrist.
For a trembling instant she imagined pressing the sharp point inward instead, ending it herself before chains could be fastened. No one would save her. Not now.
Her family was gone. Her kingdom stolen.
Maybe… maybe it would be easier to fade like the rest of them.
She pressed harder, feeling a prick of pain before it bit flesh. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears. To fall here at his feet would mean denying him Argyle’s throne. The perfect revenge.
May her death end quickly.
Alora shut her eyes, praying the pain would not last. She simply wanted to vanish into nothing.
