Our eyes meet in the mirror, and I have to smother a laugh. Two weeks ago, I’d rather have swallowed glass than willingly spend time with Dom’s sister, but Margaux has proven unexpectedly tolerable. When she’s not actively plotting my ruin, her acid wit is the only thing keeping me from incinerating this entire masquerade. Especially when she turns it on her mother instead of me.
“This is a traditional silhouette,” Octavia snaps, finally lifting her gaze to spear her daughter with ice. “It has adorned every Blackwood bride for generations.”
“Ah yes,” Margaux replies with a sweet smile. “And we all know what glorious testaments those marriages turned out to be. Plus, I would’ve expected you, Mother, of all people, to loathe this pageantry. Or has playing the society wife for too long made you forget your origins?” Her voice drops to a hiss. “Chaos and carnage were practically scripture where you came from.”
Octavia’s ruby flares. Margaux’s lips slam together with an audible click, her jaw straining as she claws at her mouth, eyes wide in theatrical outrage. Before Octavia can bask in her victory, a flicker of defiance pulses through the air. The spell shatters with a whisper, and Margaux throws her head back in a peal of laughter that rings through the marble chamber.
“There she is,” she says between laughs. “I was beginning to think all that refinement had finally suffocated the warrior beneath.”
The comment seems to hit a nerve I didn’t even know existed, making me wonder just what kind of past Octavia’s trying so hard to bury beneath all this propriety and tradition.
“This wedding,” Octavia grits out, “symbolizes the union of two powerful—”
“Puppets on gilded strings?” I offer sweetly, earning another ‘accidental’ jab from a pin.
“Families,” Octavia snaps. “Which is precisely why every detail must be immaculate, traditional and uncompromised.”
“But Mother,” Margaux drawls, inspecting her nails with languid elegance, “what is a Blackwood wedding without at least one concealed blade? Besides, have you seen the guest list?”
Near the door, Raze makes a noise that sounds suspiciously like a choked laugh. Kane, stationed opposite, remains expressionless, though the faint twitch at the corner of his mouth betrays him.
After a week of enduring Kian’s overzealous bodyguards—one of whom thought escorting me into the bathroom was part of the job—I snapped. Turns out, even Blackwood’s best weren’t trained to handle a bride-to-be with no filter, no patience, and nothing left to lose.
By the time Kian finally decided I was worth his attention, six of his best were nursing bruises in the infirmary. His expression hovered somewhere between amusement and admiration when I suggested Kane and Raze as replacements. I promised to stop maiming his men if he gave me actual professionals. Either he was feelingcharitable, or too busy to care, because he signed off with barely a shrug.
At first, they acted as if they’d been spell-bound, silent and rigid, their eyes following my every move as if one wrong breath might see them vaporized. It took cornering them in the hallway and informing them, with calm clarity, that if they didn’t stop acting like cursed statues, I’d personally tell Kian they were too incompetent to guard a houseplant, let alone his future daughter-in-law.
That did the trick. Now they’re tolerable, still tracking my every footstep under Kian’s orders, but at least they remember how to blink. Almost reminiscent of the old days, if you ignore the fact that their job is to document my existence as glorified snitches.
The rest of the morning dissolves into a blur of tailored torment. Pins dragging across my scalp, silks molded to my ribs, and Octavia barking orders like a war general with a vendetta against asymmetry. By the time she deems me fit to be seen in daylight, my skin feels two sizes too small for my own bones.
We arrive late at The Celestial Gardens, not that anyone notices. Time here bends to presence, not punctuality.
The structure rises, conjured straight from a fever dream, suspended high above Eclipsera on unseen anchors. Vast domes and walkways form from interlocking hexagonal orbs of gold-veined crystal. It’s less a venue, and more a floating greenhouse cathedral, every surface refracting light into fractured constellations that dance across skin and glass alike.
As I cross the threshold, the shift in atmosphere strikes with the rush of a first breath after drowning. Outside, late fall still lingers—wind-lashed, brittle, edges honed to cut. Inside, summer waits in suspension, preserved as if the season itself refused to fade. The air hums with artificial bloom, dense with perfume and magic-tinged heat. Sunlight filters through charmed crystal panes in slow, syrupy ribbons. Fountains gurgle between winding walkways, their waters laced with shimmer that refracts impossibly.
Flarewings, tiny creatures no larger than my palm, drift through the air, their translucent wings dusted in molten hues. When one brushes my shoulder, it leaves behind a whisper of heat, the afterglow of a kiss from the sun. They pulse with soft color shifts, responding to the rise and fall of conversations and the tension of unsaid things. Living ornaments, but more perceptive than most of the people in this room.
Then I see them—Starlings.
They erupt above the glass canopy in perfect formation, slicing through open-air vaults in dizzying synchrony. Blues and violets, rose-gold and pearl—every flash of movement deliberate, every turn flawless. Never straying. Never solitary.
Except one breaks off.
It arcs once around me, close enough to catch the glint of blue feathers along its wing. The exact shade of Rowe’s old Starling.
The memory cuts deeper than expected. He probably already knows. News of engagements travels faster than scandal among the Founding Families. I wonder what he thinks, if he even cares anymore. We haven’t spoken since that night at the gala, though it feels like lifetimes have passed. So much has changed, so many lines crossed, and now here I am, being fitted for a wedding dress. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s done with me entirely. Some bridges, once burned, leave only silence in their wake.
I blink hard. The sweet scent of starseer orchids clings to the air, and I force my steps forward, heels clicking against gemstone.
“Remember,” Octavia murmurs as we approach the terrace, her hand tightening just slightly on my arm, “you’re being assessed.”
Golden trellises spill with charm-bound blossoms, luminous and ever-blooming, but it’s the women beneath them who carry the real power. Draped in couture and spells, their smiles are full of venom and greetings rehearsed.
Vivienne Darkmoor doesn’t rise when we enter. She sits as though the chair was carved to fit her spine, flawless posture and expression smoothed past humanity. The ruby at her throat pulses once, a silentthreat disguised as finery. But behind her gaze today, there’s strain, brittle and overextended, as if she hasn’t exhaled in hours.
Evangeline Vale beams as if we’re old friends and none of this is an act. Her voice is warm butter, and her perfume is the kind that lingers long after the door closes. She floats forward in chiffon pastels, arms outstretched in a gesture that borders on benediction. Yet her gaze moves over me with the precision of a banker tallying debts.
