Page 50 of The Poison Princess and the Lord of Misrule

But I trust her.

Gods help me, I trust her with everything I am.

“Three days,” I whisper back. “And in that time, and any time after, no matter what happens…come to me. Come here. I will wait for you every day here at this same time.”

She nods against me, and I kiss her—slow and deep and aching—and I try not to think about the fact that in just three days, I’ll stand in a crowd and watch her marry a monster. Knowing I can do nothing to stop it.

Even if it kills me.

Especially if it kills me.

Chapter 15

Renick

The cathedral is dressed in crimson.

Not the soft, virginal white of every other royal wedding I’ve heard tell of. Crimson—Aldric’s color, the color he draped his bride in at the feast, the color of the banners and the roses and the long carpet that runs the length of the nave to the altar where he stands waiting like a wolf, his maw ready to bare teeth.

The whole court has crammed itself into the pews, perfumed and jeweled and buzzing with excitement for the spectacle.

I stand at the back, where a fool belongs, crushed against a stone pillar in my motley with my dead bells on my hat. I made sure they were silent. I bound them in cloth this morning with shaking hands, because I couldn’t bear the thought of them jingling while the only woman I’ve ever loved is marched to slaughter in front of me.

The organ begins.

And she appears at the end of the aisle.

Hells.

She’s adorned in crimson, too. A gown the color of fresh blood, the bodice cut low and laced tight, binding her in it. Her dark hair is swept up beneath a crown that isn’t the small silver one she wears in her chambers—this one is heavy, gold, dripping with rubies that look like wounds against her pale throat.

She is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, and the most terrible as she walks down that aisle like a woman walking to the gallows.

Her spine is straight. Her chin is high. Her face is a mask of porcelain calm.

But I know her. Have spent weeks learning the language of her stillness, and I can read what no one else in this cathedral can.

She’s screaming behind that calm.

She doesn’t look for me, and I don’t know if that pains me more than if she did.

I keep my face a mask just in case, knowing the moment our eyes collide it will crack me in half, and there will be no hiding the misery, the utter heartbreak on my features.

Ever disciplined, her gaze stays fixed ahead, on the altar, on Aldric, on the future she’s been sold into. But once—just once—as she passes the pillar where I stand, her eyes flick my way. The barest waver. A flicker of dark to meet mine.

And in that single stolen glance, I shatter.

She looks away before my torment bleeds into her, but I still see her.

The girl behind the crown. The one who laughed at a fool who fell on his face for her. The one who let me press sugar to her tongue beneath the moon. The one who knelt with me on the floor of a dead queen’s library and let me worship her like a goddess.

She passes me, and I’m left gripping the pillar so hard my fingers ache, my heart being drawn out of my chest one slow, vicious beat at a time.

The ceremony might as well be a torture devised in some lower realm of the hells.

The priest drones on as I stand at the back and I make myself watch, because to look away would be a cowardice I can’t afford.

Aldric speaks his vows in that smooth, carrying voice, and the court is enraptured by their king, over how beautiful he is, how noble, how generous to have lifted a poor princess from her crumbling dominion. Every word out of his mouth is a lie dressed in crimson silk, and every word lands in me like a blade.