“Why the rush, my blushing beauty?” Artoris replies, trailinghis fingers in the basin water. “I want to savor every moment with my sweet bride on our wedding day.”
She rounds on him, teeth bared. I wonder for a moment if she’ll go at his face like a cat, claws-out. But she stops herself, casts a sideways half-glance toward the ivy wall and my own lurking place, and seems to think better of it.
“Open the front of your robes,” she snarls, standing rigid before her bridegroom.
“So eager?” says he, with a tilt of his brow.
“I hate you,” she answers.
“How delightful. I cannot wait to discover how your hatred will manifest itself on our wedding night.” The mage opens the front of his robes, exposing his bare chest. He looks pleased, as though he fully expects she will forget her anger and admire what he offers her. But she barely looks at him.
Dipping her hand in the basin, she turns to him, holds up her dripping fingers, and growls, “Artoris Kelfaren, Miphato of Evisar.”
“Ilsevel Cyhorn,” he answers with mock solemnity, “Princess of Gavaria.”
She draws a long breath as though preparing for a plunge. Then, spitting the words hastily from her mouth, without any trace of song: “By the Blade of Tanatar shall I spill my blood for your protection. By the Darkness of Lamruil shall I reveal and discover those secrets which are to be ours alone.”
There is such dissonance in her tone, an unloveliness I nevercould have imagined in the voice of my gods-gifted wife. It is as though she never heard song before in her life.
She makes her way through each vow, naming all seven of the gods and their gifts. Finally, gritting her teeth, she snarls out the final words. “Will you accept these vows, Artoris?”
“I will,” he answers, his face wreathed in a smug smile.
Ilsevel hastily makes a sign in the air between them. “By the seven gods,” she says in a rush. “By the seven names.”
It looks to me as though she’s meant to touch the mage, to trace the sign directly on his skin, not unlike when Onor Vamir painted theruehnarsymbols on our breasts the night of ourvelarinvows. The similarity sends a jolt of pain straight to my gut.
Artoris dips his hand next and begins to speak the same vows, more graciously, perhaps, than Ilsevel managed, but still without truth, without beauty or real meaning. They are simply words: hollow, devoid of sacred power. When he is through, he plants two fingers at the hollow of her throat and trails water down her breast, marking the marriage sigil.
Then his fingers begin to wander, slipping underneath her gown . . . and I see red.
My muscles, flooded once again with heat, tense for a spring. In another moment, I will launch myself from this hiding place and slaughter this man, rip him apart with my bare hands, and leave him broken and bleeding in that basin, turning that pure water red with his death, and damn any consequences.
A hand falls on my shoulder.
“Don’t,” a voice whispers in my ear.
Turning sharply, I find myself face-to-face with a stranger. She must have approached up the stair behind me, absolutely silent as a phantom. My heart jumps to my throat, choking out any cry of surprise. She’s a young woman, fine-boned and elegant, but with a hard strength in the line of her jaw. There’s something strange about her, something I cannot first grasp in those initial moments of surprise. Then I take a closer look.
Her eyes are blue, very pale in her equally pale face . . . and yet, somehow, almost inexplicably, she looks like Ilsevel. So alike, in fact, that the family resemblance cannot be ignored. I know at once that she must be Ilsevel’s sister.
I could throw her hand off easily enough, and yet . . . there’s something about her grip that freezes me in place, preventing me from taking action. Magic—I sense it in the atmosphere. Similar magic to that which I perceived on Ilsevel. I know suddenly who is the source of Ilsevel’s profound memory loss.
She seems to be reading my mind, her eyes intent as they fix on mine. “If you care about Ilsevel as you claimed to a few minutes ago,” she says in a smooth, unruffled sort of cadence, “you’d best keep your voice down and not move a muscle.”
It sounds like a threat, but could be merely a warning. “Who are you?” I demand.
Her lips curve. “Guess.”
The answer is already there in my mind. “Lyria?”
“The same. Interesting that she told you that story about the two of us finding this place all those years ago. I didn’t think she remembered.”
“She said neither of you ever found it again.”
“Shedidn’t,” Lyria concedes. “I made sure of that. This is a dangerous place, and her gods-gift was as yet undeveloped. She couldn’t navigate these ways safely. It might be different now, only her gift seems to have vanished altogether.”
“Along with her memory,” I growl.
