Like death.
I ought to sneer. The fact that I can’t seems far more damning than any vow I’m about to speak.
“Don’t talk to her.” Elara gently catches Mother’s elbow and draws her away from me, seating her on a nearby pew as she looks over her shoulder back at me. “You stay away from my family. You understand?”
I’m accustomed to being unwelcome among a mortal’s loved ones, but the raw loathing etched into Elara’s features somehow has my muscles tense. She looks at me with pure hatred.
Which should content me.
The sooner Elara realizes that she can’t possibly love the god who lied, manipulated, and deceived her toward her slaughter, the faster she’ll give up this ridiculous notion of breaking the curse.
And yet, looking into eyes that find me so thoroughly detestable... I find no joy in being proven right.
I simply raise a brow despite the sensation, shifting on the stone to banish the tension from my muscles. “Charming as always.”
“Your Majesty,” the priest says softly from the altar. “The ceremony…”
Elara turns from her mother and approaches the altar with the same sure stride she uses when she’s walking into a house full of rot. She stops beside me, close enough that the heat of her body bleeds through silk and into the air between us.
“If you ever get near my family again,” she grinds out, “I’ll slit your throat for the sake of practice.”
I make a point of not looking at her, and how difficult she renders even that. “Careful. Trust I carry my own frustrations…best not make me indulge you in them.”
The priest clears his throat. “Join hands.”
Elara extends her hand, mumbling under her breath, “Is that a threat?”
I take her palm, calloused from years of digging graves, yet vibrating with life. “There are a great many ways a husband can deliver pain to his unruly wife. Involving my lap. And my hand. On your ass.”
Her brow furrows, her mouth parting, then snapping shut when the meaning lands—red creeping up her throat in a furious flush.
She came to the tower a virgin, fumbling through the act with grit rather than grace. And I…I met her with nothing but eons of observation. And yet no amount of watching prepared me for the intensity of it, the overwhelming pleasure of being inside her. Of coupling like mortals do, of being so heatedly close with someone where I’ve only ever known cold solitude.
And that…that has sparked a hunger that is entirely, utterly inconvenient.
Elara’s grip tightens around my hand, chin lifting in that annoying, stupidly alluring defiance of hers. “Can we get on with this?”
The priest flinches into action. “W-we are gathered here today,” he squeaks, his eyes darting between us, “to join this man and this woman in the godly bonds of matrimony.”
A scoff rumbles under my breath. “The only godly thing here is I.”
“And yet you look like you’re being dragged to your own hanging,” Elara grates out of the corner of her mouth.
I keep my face smooth. “A hanging would have been preferable.”
The priest looks back and forth between our bickering, sweat beading on his upper lip. “If we could… The binding?”
Miss Hampshire steps up with the grim efficiency of an executioner, her gaze fixed on the trailing ends of the cincture already constricting my chest. She doesn’t hesitate. She seizes the cords dangling from my side and yanks them forward, wrapping them sharply around Elara’s torso. She loops them once, twice, pulling the knot tight with a sudden, violent jerk that forces the breath from Elara’s lungs. And mine.
That tension beneath my sternum blooms hot and brutal, sharp enough now to quicken my pulse as my gaze snaps to her. “I’m going to make you regret every second of this.”
“Most husbands claim that’s a wife’s job.” Elara trundles up the corners of her mouth, with struggle and effort, yes, but it is no less unnerving a sight. “There are many seconds in twenty years. More so in thirty.”
I lower my voice to match her insolence. “Unless you have the decency to take off that crown before you tragically, but conveniently, fall off a horse next week.”
“The rings,” the priest says, voice thin.
A small velvet cushion is produced, bearing two plain bands. Gold, unadorned. Elara takes mine first and shoves it onto my finger with more force than ceremony, as if she means to bruise the vow into place. Then she holds out her hand without looking at me.
