You may not apply again.
Sincerely,
High Sage Gieffroy Triche
Three times she rereads it, hoping that this is just a nightmare. She blinks tightly, willing herself to open her eyes to another world. Another life. Anything, anywhere else. She’s overwhelmed with nausea. She had not realized just how desperately she wanted this until now, until she was told she couldn’t have it. Whoever the god of stars and nightmares is, Claudia hates him and hopes he’s suffering. He destroyed her fate. He ruined the stars that have always called to her. He damned her to a life she doesn’t want and a man she doesn’t love.
Panic stains her senses. Her vision goes black. It feels like there’s glass in her veins, metal in her stomach, a fist around her throat. Burning, burning everywhere. She’d made a grave mistake—confusing a dream with destiny. They are almost never the same.
BETROTHAL
The Gods choose who can apply while the High Sage chooses who gets accepted.
Once rejected, always rejected, unless a God intervenes.
The Book of Cygnus: Admittance 1:14
Claudia’s twenty-third birthday falls like a scythe, slicing December in two. She’s in the sitting room waiting to meet her betrothed for the first time. While she waits for his arrival, she dangles a gray mouse by its tail like a pendulum—back and forth between life and death. Bishop, her white rat snake, stretches across the blue rug at her feet and opens his mouth for dinner. Usually, he’s upstairs in her room curled up in his enclosure, which is an old wooden trunk that’s too warped to close. Claudia brought him down with her today for emotional support, and for defense in case Lord Fournier is too eager to touch her. Bishop knows how to strikeand run. He’s bitten Claudia’s father more than once, but never unprovoked.
“Get rid of that monstrous thing. You know I don’t approve and neither will your betrothed,” her father scolds while he paces the dim foyer. He has hated Bishop ever since Claudia found him three years ago hidden in the snow, his body as white as the harsh winter that would have killed him if she had not brought him inside. Her father’s hatred made her love Bishop all the more. She has a talent for loving anything her father hates—snakes, stars, stories. Most of all Claudia loves life, as cruel and cold as it can be. Whereas he does everything he can to escape it, she wants more of it, as much life as she can swallow, even if she chokes on it. She wants to taste it all.
The mouse twitches and turns until it can meet Claudia’s cold green eyes. Its tiny hands wring as if in prayer, and its black eyes glisten with fear. She pulls the mouse farther back. Claudia has fed Bishop this way for years without so much as a flinch, but this mouse looks different, like it’s begging her to let it live.
Bishop ate fairly recently. He will survive a few more days until Claudia can find him another meal—one whose death won’t make her feel so guilty. Surely there are older and uglier mice around here, and who knows the state of her newly betrothed’s home. It could be perfectly rife with delicious rodents. She could release this mouse and give it the chance that has been taken away from her.
There is a knock at the door. Claudia’s father snatches her arm. She drops the mouse directly into Bishop’s waiting mouth.
“No!” she yelps. Her father jerks her wrist, pulling her tightly to his side.
“No?” he growls.
The corners of her mouth fall when she glances over her shoulder. “I was going to save the mouse.”
Her father leans in, his acrid breath scraping the side of her cheek when he laughs. “You are no one’s hero.”
Her nostrils flare. “Am I not yours? Saving you from the debt you have wrought?”
“You’re the one indebted to me, you selfish girl.” His grip moves from her wrist to her ring finger. “You should have been married years ago. You were never meant to be my problem for so long. I had to find a way to keep you fed.”
Fedisn’t the word that Claudia would use. Alive, yes. But hardly fed. Her dresses lie like bedsheets around her frame. Hunger is a whetstone that has sharpened all of her features.
There is a second knock, this time louder with growing impatience. Claudia ushers Bishop under the couch. The mouse’s tail hangs from his mouth like a second tongue. Her father places a firm hand between her shoulder blades and shoves her toward the door.
She twists the knob slowly, terrified of the face that is waiting on the other side. When the door screeches open, it’s worse than she imagined. Lord Fournier is a shriveled man with spotted hands and thinning hair. A gray coat swallows his frame. It must’ve fit once upon a time, but he’s shrunken with age. His tired, lazy gaze roves over her body. He seems pleased, though his face is doubled over in wrinkles. His smile isn’t strong enough to reach his eyes.
“Lord Fournier,” her father says with a smile while he wraps a heavy arm around Claudia’s shoulders. “Allow me to introduce your betrothed—my beautiful daughter, Claudia Jolicoeur.”
The old man’s fingers tremble when he kisses the back of Claudia’s hand. “Hello, darling.” His voice sounds like wet skin sticking to itself. She winces. She’s not his darling. The title feels like shrugging on a too-tight coat.
He nearly loses his balance when Claudia retracts her hand. She hates that she pities him when he’s the one stealing her future, but he looks so weak. He could die from a tight embrace. All of these sad imaginations fill her mind: Old Lord Fournier eating alone, across from the empty chair where his true love once sat.Old Lord Fournier’s hands shaking while he throws back his morning medicine. Old Lord Fournier wishing his kids still lived close. He’s such a sad sight. She almost feels bad for him.
Almost.
“Shall we retire to the sitting room?” her father says when the silence stretches too long.
“Please,” Lord Fournier says, stumbling through the doorway, bracing himself on a gilded cane. Her father sits on a torn leather chair in the corner. Lord Fournier sits on the long sofa and sinks into the thin cushions. Claudia begins to sit in her mother’s old rocking chair, but her betrothed says, “Won’t you sit beside me, darling?”
Her father glares at her, eyes full of warning. Slowly, she moves toward the couch, toward the man who bought her before she knew she had been fitted with a price.
