Somewhere in this realm, a dam burst mere hours ago, flooding the lowlands. Currents are sweeping through rotting families, letting an avalanche of souls tumble into a void where they cry out for direction. And what is their guide, the darker half of the universe, doing?
Gettingmarried.
Standing beside an iron sconce inside this old chapel, adjusting my white cravat as I suppress a groan at this farce. What a waste of a perfectly good Tuesday.
I look down at the rope tied around my chest. A symbol of union, the scrawny priest behind the altar explained, but all that coarse, primitive thing does is destroy the fine velvet of my umber coat.
Wed him. Bed him.
Slit his throat and break the curse.
I shift my weight, the stone floor hard beneath the boots of my mortal form as I wait for my…wife. Does Elara really think she can end the curse with this lunacy? Chain me with a ring on my finger, and save the remnants of her brother’s life?
The thought is almost adorable.
But only almost…
My chest clenches as it often does when I think of her. Had Elara been sensible, she would have wished for her brother’s health. Then she could have chosen a mortal man whose nature doesn’t leave her shivering under a table. A mortal to put a child in her belly with excitement rather than fear, securing her succession before she kills him to feed the crown.
A man she can love.
Images flash before my mind, unbidden and vivid. Elara smiling up at some faceless noble, her hands tangling in strands that aren’t mine. Blond, probably. A kind man. A wholehearted man.
A man I can never be for her.
Something curls beneath my ribs, strange and sudden. Not pain exactly. More like a stretching, a tightening.
Utterly foreign…
I look down at the culprit, at that damned ceremonial cord strapping down my lungs. I roll my shoulders. Exhale hard. Then I expand my chest with a deep inhale, fighting the trapping sensation.
It doesn’t yield.
It cinches relentlessly against my sternum, forcing my breath into something shallow. The pressure draws attention to what lies beneath: not a heart of muscle and valves, but hollow numbness and scar tissue clinging to the remnants of my heartstrings.
Torn. Forever broken.
Exactly how it needs to be.
I lean against the nearest column, arms crossed, and glance back at the priest. “How much longer can this possibly take?”
“Her Majesty is almost ready,” someone says, who is most definitely not the lanky priest, his face unmemorable in the way most mortal things are.
I turn my gaze toward the voice.
Miss Hampshire walks into the chapel with two candles and a tight mouth, that aura around her still pulsing with a vigor that started to bore me too many months ago. That woman just won’t die…
She pauses when her gaze crosses mine, recognition narrowing her eyes. “Good morning.”
I scoff. “Is it?”
Miss Hampshire doesn’t flinch. It’s a quality of hers I always respected, earned over decades of service to blood-crowned kings and slaughtered queens.
She moves to the altar, placing the candles in their proper places, adjusting cloth, setting out a braided cord—all ceremonial nonsense—with what’s left of her hands.
A soft scrape of shoes on stone pulls my attention to the chapel doors. A woman’s.Elara’s mother.
She enters quietly, wrapped in a plain shawl that has been mended more times than it has been washed, hollow eyes immediately finding mine. When she stops in front of me, she doesn’t hint a bow, doesn’t fidget, doesn’t do what sensible peasants do in palaces. She simply looks, long and slow.
