Chapter Two
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Currently, in Vexillum…
Maple
Iverson Swallow has lost his flagging mind, and I will be flagged if he takes me into lunacy with him.
“Maple.” My flagging, flagging husband says my name like a plea—like a prayer for mercy he mistakenly thinks I have it in me to give right now.
“Ivy,” I retort, his name a curse gritted through clenched teeth.
Maple and Ivy. A plea and a complaint. A yin and a yang.
I scoff. It figures that we’d balance each other even now, when I’m so spitting mad at the man that I can barely see straight to keep shoving clothes into my suitcase.
We always have been a push and pull, ever since we were little kids running around his parents’ backyard screaming incoherent toddler babble.
Why would now be any different? He’s pushing, and I’m pulling.
We just happen to be doing it as newlyweds.
Newly. Freaking. Weds.
Because Iverson Swallow? My best friend in the entire world?
The push to my pull? The Ivy twined through all of my happiest memories?
The man I am hopelessly, breathlessly in love with?
He just went way off script, tricking me into going to a ball with him.
A ball that was our flagging wedding. Apparently.
“Please,” he begs some more. His dark hair falls over sharp cheekbones, framing shining green puppy eyes. The snake tattoo on his neck belies the innocent expression, reminding me of exactly who I’m dealing with. “Please, let me explain.”
I scoff.
Explain! Our wedding! Can you believe that? He wants to explain our wedding to me. As if I couldn’t possibly understand the situation on my own. As if there’s any true explanation for him lying, tricking, and manipulating me into flagging marriage, when all! He had! To do! Was ask!
My face contorts in a previously foreign emotion when it comes to Iverson: absolute, complete, irate, anger.
“By all means,” I grumble, shoving another dress into the twilight-blue suitcase lying open on my bed.
“Make your excuses.” I stomp across the room to the armoire, the white, star-studded lace of my freaking wedding gown flying behind me as I go.
I sweep a stack of dresses into my arm, then whirl, cursing as I nearly trip over my sheer white cape, and stomp back to the bed.
Ivy stands by, worrying his lower lip as I drop the garments beside the open suitcase before I start ripping them from hangers.
“Explanation,” he stresses. “It’s like I said in my vows. I love you. I love you so much, and I want to love you forever, and I want you to be mine forever, and I couldn’t stand that you weren’t.”
A second scoff answers him. He couldn’t stand that I wasn’t his?
Is he serious? He didn’t even ask if I was his!
Furious, I snap, “You know, I know you’re selfish, and normally I don’t care, because normally it doesn’t affect me at all.
Normally, you treat me like a princess. You spoil me.
You dote on me. I have never had anyone treat me as well as you do.
This, though? This is not princess treatment.
It’s not spoiling, and it’s not doting, and it’s not treating me well.
It’s high-handed red flag behavior of the worst sort.
You can’t just marry a woman because you want to without asking her, Ivy.
It’s disrespectful! And rude! Not to mention totally freaking insane. ”
I seethe as I drop to the floor to pull out a second suitcase from under the bed.
I contemplate marching to Ivy’s room in the mansion that is our shared home to steal his much larger suitcases, but quickly put the option out of my mind.
If I go into Ivy’s room, I’ll have to see all the pictures of us he has scattered throughout the space, and I so simply cannot handle that right now.
I’m too likely to do something I’ll regret later.
Like, say, smash them all to pieces, because clearly those memories don’t mean all that much to him after all.
Clearly we weren’t ever true friends. True friends stand on equal footing.
They don’t lie, manipulate, and trick each other into marriage.
They don’t wait for the marriage to be happening—in front of everyone they’ve ever known, mind you—before declaring their undying love and “requesting” a return of that love in the form of holy matrimony.
“I thought you liked my insane.” He has the gall to sound genuinely hurt. Him. Hurt!
I lose it.
I glare as I rise to my full five-foot-five height—five-foot-nine with my wedding heels.
The currently three-inch height disparity between us shrinks rapidly as he wilts under the force of my displeasure.
“You married me, Ivy. Married! Mar-riage! Without asking! Without giving me the choice to say yes or no, or to plan my own freaking wedding, or to invite who I would’ve wanted to invite, or to literally be any part of it at all beyond the doll you propped up next to you to declare your vows to—vows that said a whole lot of stuff about all this love you supposedly have for me, but what sort of love results in this?
What sort of love means that you disregard anything your object of affection might want in favor of what you want?
” I shake my head, cutting a hand through the air when he opens his mouth to answer.
“No,” I hiss, eyes narrowed. “No, Ivy. That’s not love.
Love is meant to be selfless, and what you did?
That was all selfishness. Every single bit of it.
It was about you. Not me. Not us. Not our ‘love’. You.”
Ivy’s mouth snaps shut with a click. At his sides, his hands fist before he shoves them into the pockets of the most dapper suit I’ve ever seen him don.
Typically, Ivy wears looser fits. Casual.
Comfortable. To the office, to balls, on errands, whatever—he doesn’t wear anything that could be construed as restrictive.
I should have known the moment I saw him in an impeccably tailored suit that something was off.
More fool me.
Truthfully, I should have known that something was off when he brought up the ball in the first place and specifically requested I wear white instead of the blue I was gravitating toward. He’d never once made a request regarding my clothing before that, but still, I just thought…
Well, I thought that I loved him, and he makes so few requests, and I can do this one thing for him if he wants. I can grant this one wish.
I snort. So few requests, all right, but apparently that was because he was saving them all up for this one, huge, impossible ask.
Allow me the honor of being your husband, he’d crooned in front of everyone at the “ball.” Be my wife, rosy Maple. Please. Will you?
And me, stupid stupid stupidly saying yes. Looking him dead in the eyes, more angry than I’ve ever been in my life, and lying with all the calmness I could muster up despite the storm brewing beneath the surface of my skin.
I do, I’d said.
And I had.
On a beautiful June day, I married my best friend. On Flag Day, the most romantic day of the year, I committed the most romantic act a person can commit.
A tear threatens to form as bitter despair trickles through the cracks of my anger.
“It would have been perfect,” I whisper hoarsely, fisting my dress in my hands.
The stars dig into my palms, stinging and painful.
I push harder into their spikes. I don’t know what I’m punishing myself for, really—maybe for letting myself be fooled?
For letting myself be broken-hearted by my wedding, of all things?
It’s laughable, this situation I’m in, but not at all funny.
I married the love of my life at the wedding of my dreams, and all I feel are the aftereffects of a nightmare.
It should have been perfect. It would have been perfect.
“Flag Day. The floating candles. The stars. The moon.” I laugh, but it holds no humor.
“The croquembouche. The tablecloth.” My head shakes, and a tear falls.
“It would have been absolutely perfect, Ivy.” My wet gaze meets his, and I see terror and regret swirl together in his jade eyes.
I almost feel bad. I almost don’t finish.
But in the end, I need him to get it. I need him to understand, so I continue, “It would have been perfect, if only you’d asked. ”
Then I throw my suitcases shut, zip them as much as I can, and make my exit, all the while pretending I’m not crying—pretending that he isn’t crying too as he watches, silent and still.
On the stairwell landing, outside of the weight of his presence, I hesitate.
I live with Ivy.
My brother, too, lives with Ivy, working for him as his personal chef, as members of our family always have. A Valor works for a Swallow, and a Swallow takes care of them.
My parents live with Ivy’s parents, working for them as their personal chefs, fulfilling their portion of our generational fate.
I have no other family. I have no other friends outside of the ones I share with my husband.
I’m a runaway bride with nowhere to run away to.
Another tear falls before I pull myself together, set my jaw, and say flag that. I’m not sitting on any man’s staircase crying and lonely because he decided to act stupid. If Ivy wants to create problems? Then Ivy can very well solve them.
A plan forms in my head, and I let it satisfy the petty, vengeful part of me. Should I reach for the petty and vengeful? Probably not, but it’s better than the angry and pitiful I’m currently feeling, so I do it anyway.
Grabbing hold of the emotional reprieve like a lifeline, I enact my new plan.
I head down the stairs, through a maze of hallways, and take a random set of his keys from a line of them hanging just outside the garage.
I double check that I have the emergency debit card connected to his bank accounts in my wallet, and, finally, once I’m certain I have everything I need, I make my escape.
On Ivy’s dime.