It was like a vision. She moved with the grace of a fox, shifting from the sheets. In a moment, she was before him, her hands curling over his shoulders. “You are tense, my laird. Coiled tight from your training. But here you can relax.”
His throat was dry, but his lips were wet. She was taller than he, but still small, her whippet waist drawing his fingers near.
“It’s alright,” she whispered. “You can touch me.”
Sweat gathered on his skin. His cheeks heated with an unfamiliar fury. He felt a stiffness—the blood gathering in his loins—and his breath grew ragged as she leaned into his ear. “You can do whatever you’d like.”
“R-really?”
With a reassuring smile, she took his hand, leading him to the bed. They lay together, and his mind spun faster. His eyes locked hungrily on hers.
“Anything you want, my king.Wheneveryou want.”
She guided his hands to her skirts. She helped him slide them up. He’d never seen a woman bare before. All his life, he’d been surrounded by their grace and guile, but never had he been led to touch them. His fingers ached. His body filled with fire. She kissed him. It tasted sweet. He enjoyed it, and he wanted to enjoy her, but his mind worked against him. She kissed him again. Her lips were teases that became instructions and he was eager to follow. It was clumsy, and messy, and impatient, but she was true to her word.
He was allowed anything. And everything.
It went on that way for years. Thoughtless and yet purposeful. As he grew older, so too did his palate, and he was offered more women. They seemed to come like clockwork, whenever he desired, as if all of it was intended. No children ever came of the unions, leading Skyre to believe their arrangements had been predetermined. Under the illusion of choice, he had been offered only what he was allowed to imbibe.
But that was the function of the Thrys: to grow a boy into a man, and from a man into their king.
***
It would begin at last light.
The sun leaked beyond the horizon; the final vestiges of gold swallowed by blue.
Rhyd-hal was quiet.
Gone were the hoots and hollers of partygoers. Gone were the bards and the songs. Gone was the scent of mead and mutton. Gone was the fire in his heart. Skyre felt emptied out. All his fervor and frivolity had left him, and only slow, worrisome wonder remained.
They fed him wine laced with herbs; filled him till he was red with it, then fed him more still. He thought of the druid in his chamber across the castle. They went about their days, different…. and the same. Never meeting, yet connected by a thread. And as night came, they entangled.
They were stripped and painted. The Vaich in golden sigils of the Sun; the druid in silver seals of the Moon. Their eyes, their lips, their fingers were covered, and then they were dressed again in mantles of fur and silk—stag and wolf.
The wine burned through him, but it did not warm. It did not ease the pressure mounting against the back of his skull. Skyre flexed his fingers; the gold had already dried upon his skin. It clung to his lips, to the hollow of his throat, to the ridges of his knuckles like a brand.
The prayers were said. For their coming; for their going. The procession led him downward to the temple of Kaern’Og, to the altar room of the Eternal Flame, where beneath the blazing image of the Sun waited the vicar of the An’Atherin. The air stunk of incense, dripped through swaying censers. And at the center was a stone slab, smoothed from centuries of use. Skyre could not linger on it and turned away.
This was meant to be another link within his shining chain. But all his hopes had been twisted and turned into display. His eyes followed along the rounded walls where had gathered the Thrys and beside them, Othrik and the priests observed with stern posture. There were veterans of the old Féin—Rask and his ilk, and some elders from court. It was both familiar… and foreign. All of these people… those who had been with him since the moment he’d first taken breath… now come as executioners to his slow death.
Where was the power that was promised? Where was the might of the Sun? Where was his pleasure, his measure, his worth?
It all came down to this.
Stone scraped the floor as the doors opened, throwing torchlight over the altar.
Every head turned—Skyre’s was no exception. And there he saw him. Small and lithe, his flaxen hair in pale droves beneath his veil. He looked as if glass, entirely unbroken, and Skyre’s throat constricted at the idea of him shattering. The wine clotted in his veins. His skin burned. He wanted to press himself to that icy flesh. The druid was silver as the moon and he was… beautiful. Not in the way soft things were beautiful. But as the night and the frost and the whisper of mercy.
This wasn’t a wedding—Skyre understood far too late.
It was a reckoning.
The druid came silently, his white hands tucked within his wedding gown. On his crown rested a glittering circlet, and a mask of iron framed his eyes, its hanging pearls veiling his small, pursed mouth. He had no guide, no escort. He brought himself beside the Vaich, and then there they were.
Together.
For the smallest moment, his pale eyes rose, watching the king not in fear, nor sorrow, but something far less forgiving. That look flayed pieces deep inside him, but he could do nothing as the vicar came before them.
