She knocked on a low wooden door tucked away in a dark alcove.
“Come in,” a voice said.
A pungent herbal scent hit her in the face as soon as she entered. Ferisa was in practical garb, hair tucked beneath a scarf, leather apron protecting her clothes. She looked up from the granite mortar filled with crushed leaves, and her eyebrows—two thick charcoal strokes emphasizing her onyx eyes—shot up when she noticed the look on Melia’s face.
“Tell me the news,” she said.
The smell made her dizzy in a good way, so Melia took a deep breath and walked further into Ferisa’s orderly realm, where potions were kept in neatly labeled bottles and vials stacked in cabinets, and herbs were dried and packed in little bags, hidden in the deep drawers. She gently patted the shell of a taxidermied turtle.
“Father is marrying me off,” she said.
“To Maren?” Ferisa was incredulous. “Now? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“No.” She approached the worn wooden desk where Ferisa was working and laid her trembling hands on it. They looked like dry twigs, thin and knobbly. “To Prince Amron.”
“Oh.” Ferisa laid her pestle down. “That’s a major match. The highest one can get.”
“So high up the air is thin and freezing.” Melia inched her hand forward until the tips of her fingers touched Ferisa’s.
Their eyes met. There had been few secrets between them before Rovin died, and none since.
“You are strong enough, I know you are,” Ferisa said.
“No, I’m not. I’m weak and afraid.” She squeezed Ferisa’s hand. And then, acting on pure, desperate impulse, in a move that spat in the face of cold darkness, she pressed her lips to Ferisa’s, tasting the bitter arrowfoil that kept her alert. It was an act of defiance, a gossamer bridge that led from nothingness to life.
“No, little raven, not like that.” Ferisa pushed her away gently.
“I love you,” Melia said. “Only you.”
“I know.” Ferisa wrapped her arms around Melia. “I know.”
• • •
Three months later,Melia watched from the battlements of Syr as the royal procession meandered up the road. It the afternoon sun, it glimmered like a fairy-tale serpent, an explosion of gold and blue. Three hundred people, knights and ladies, courtiers and clerks, soldiers and servants—more than her father had in the keep on a good day. A river of people in splendid attire, cheerful and noisy, crashing like a colorful tidal wave over the dour red stones of Syr.
The procession was an affront, a slap in the face of the heavy silence that ruled the corridors. Melia watched it pour through the main gates of the city like the breath of a glorious spring in this place where all seasons looked the same. It climbed up the narrow streets, followed by thousands of curious eyes, greeted by the rusty, half-hearted cheers of the people who’d forgotten how to celebrate in public. It flooded the inner courtyard of the keep, bringing clamor and disorder and pure, unbridled life.
Melia rushed down the stairs, exhilarated against her will, picking up the skirts of her new gown, careful not to tear it. Heavy silk, in a moss green hue that favored her complexion, the finest fabric and cut her father’s money could buy. She’d thought she didn’t care about clothes, lurking in the empty chambers in her dark wools and worn-out linens, but it was only because she’d never seen clothes like this before.
Through the dark corridor and into the arched gallery, straight above the noisy crowd of light-skinned people, speaking in accents as far and foreign as the snowy mountains of Virion. She was not allowed to come down and show her face beforethe signing of the contract, but no one had forbidden her to look from the safe shadow of a massive pillar. She spotted her father, wearing black silk, of course, but a fine, heavily embroidered black silk, his hair neatly tied back, his face cleanly shaven, looking almost welcoming. Melia wasn’t looking for him, though, so she turned to where the crowd was thickest, into the tangle of guards and banners and huge snow-white horses.
While her eyes flew over the faces, young and old, handsome and homely, her fingers played with the thin golden bracelets around her wrist and she wondered if she’d be able to recognize him again in that sea of strangers. Then, as if on cue, the crowd parted and the noise died down. A rider sat alone in a circle of courtiers as the light bent towards him and the shadows scurried away. The illusion lasted half a heartbeat, barely enough to make her gasp, and then he dismounted, greeted her father, and followed him inside.
Up close that evening, when they signed the wedding contract, there was no magic to him. Like every child in the kingdom, Melia had heard the legend of Amris the Golden-Haired a hundred times, but the young man who walked in her father’s great hall, surrounded by an entourage whose jewels were worth more than all the precious things in Syr heaped together, had nothing divine about him. She remembered his lean frame and his sharp face, slightly more mature now, and his quiet, measured voice. Back straight as a rod, every hem and fold on his attire perfectly sharp, every step carefully choreographed. He spoke with a precise, haughty diction strange to her ears; with the clear, clipped words of someone used to giving orders.
Roderi of Elmar smiled, but Melia recognized disdain in the curve of his lips. She read her father’s thoughts easily, his contempt for the arrogant Northerners, for their lavish ceremonies and indulgent ways, for their inability to survive on the barren, windswept soil of Elmar.
If he’d felt that burning derision, the prince did nothing to reveal it during that long, unbearably dull ceremony of presenting the bloodlines of their families ten generations back, of reciting the endless clauses of their wedding contract, of reading aloud every detail of her dowry and displaying and describing every royal gift she would receive. He barely looked at her throughout the evening, and they got no chance to speak in private.
Melia tried to read him, to see if he remembered her, if he liked her, but his face revealed nothing, and his eyes, blue-gray like rainclouds, remained cold.
It was almost midnight when the formalities ended and the tide of people drew them apart. They were not allowed to be together yet, not before the binding ceremony, so she let a group of women she barely knew lead her to her chambers, where she muttered “I want to be alone,” and slammed the door in their faces.
She sighed and leaned on the carved wood, grateful that the long day was over.
“So, do you like him?” Ferisa asked.
She sat in a dark corner of Melia’s room in her somber priestly garb, her face unreadable.
