Chapter 59
THE OFFICIAL WEDDING announcement comes quickly. Maybe Drystan is worried I’ll change my mind. We have to stand before the entire court and declare who our attendants will be. The Apothic looks pleased when his name is announced—Drystan repaying him for his work on my medicine. And his silence.
There’s some upset when Drystan chooses Asti as his primary attendant rather than someone of higher political ranking, like Lord Mastelle.
Seeing her reaction, though, the surprise and then the dawning pride—it fills my chest. Both for her and because… I think Death might be making friends.
Meanwhile, my choices receive a more mixed reaction. Min. Of course. And, of course, that raises eyebrows. A scarred royal sartor as the future queen’s attendant.
“How provincial.” I hear Phaedra say those exact words as Min comes and stands at my side.
Which makes my second choice all the more interesting. Her.
It silences her for a long moment as she eyes me as if seeing me afresh, before approaching the dais and standing the other side of me.
Covered by the applause, she leans over. “It’s a peace offering, isn’t it?”
I barely incline my head, smiling out over my future subjects.
“A politically shrewd choice,” she concedes. “I have to respect that.”
And maybe she does, because in the run up to the wedding, she’s compliant—helpful, even. She works on my pronunciation of passages I have to recite in the old tongue. I check them with Drystan—I wouldn’t put it past her to teach me the wrong thing so I make a fool of myself.
But she steers me true.
She even takes charge of decor for the event. I brace myself for some subtle insult in the choice of color or motif. That’s exactly the way unseelie would spell out their displeasure.
As promised, Drystan gets a message to Lowen at the next opportunity, though of course he can’t come to the Underworld to attend.
Still, I know he’s safe and well, preparing to move out from the cottage.
His employers have even given him a second chance after he abandoned work to throw himself into his search for me.
It feels like we’ve barely finished the announcement when the wedding day arrives, less than a month later.
My stomach is in knots, though Min does all she can to settle me as we get ready. Even Phaedra tells me I look “very pretty. For a human.”
At least it’s civil.
The cat snakes around my legs, purring furiously, tangling in my gown. He only comes out when Min crawls in and grabs him.
Then, she insists on placing me in front of the mirror, which she’s covered with a velvet drape, and, with a suitably dramatic flourish, sweeps it away.
To show… me.
At least, I think it’s me.
Because this woman… She’s resplendent. Radiant.
The gown Min’s made for me isn’t just fit for a queen—it’s fit for a goddess.
From a distance, at a casual glance, someone might think it was simply white.
But that isn’t the whole picture.
Just like a shell that seems white, then catches the light in an iridescent rainbow, the sleeveless gown glistens in the pale whisper of pink, purple, blue, green, yellow. It shows off my olive skin, how rich the color has become since I stopped taking poison.
It takes me a moment to register exactly how low the neckline slashes—as far as my navel—and I throw Min a questioning look.
But we have a wedding to get to.
Jewelry is placed around my throat. A pearl-studded veil is attached to my hair with a gem-encrusted comb. Min works her magic with some shimmering powder that disappears into my skin until it catches the light in gold, shifting to copper and teal. We almost forget my shoes.
Then, somehow, I’m at the doors to the ceremony hall.
I drank skullflower tea while we were getting ready. It feels like I need more.
Or—gods—no. Did I get it mixed up with my belladonna?
Min squeezes my shoulder and raises her eyebrows meaningfully, while Phaedra fusses with the floor-length veil. “Everything all right?”
“Yes, just…”
“I know.” She smiles, eyes bright. “If it helps any, you look gorgeous, and we unseelie are a shallow lot—we’ll forgive a great many sins if you’re only beautiful enough.”
Laughing eases the tension quivering through me, making it easier to breathe.
Phaedra gives me a once-over then nods in what might be approval. “It’s time.”
The doors to the ceremony hall open. It’s a match to the Great Hall, with a higher ceiling, taller windows and rows of seating. Phaedra and Min leave me, passing sedately down the central walkway, arm-in-arm as though they’re the best of friends.
Then it’s my turn.
A raven caws. Silence reigns, leaving my breath loud in my ears.
Hundreds of eyes are on me, sharp like they’re waiting for me to trip.
My vision swims. The walkway seems as long as the Gauntlet of Despair. Somewhere at the end, Drystan is a tall, black shape. Behind him three arched windows show the clear night sky bright with moon and stars.
I see everything and nothing. The room seems so full. Of people. Of glittering lights. Instead of black, Phaedra has chosen clear-crystal droplets, which hang from the ceiling and windows. As the light hits them, they throw tiny rainbows into the room and on to the faces of all the watching fae.
One thing I’ve learned since arriving in the Underworld is that they don’t have rainbows.
Something to do with the light given off by their sun.
It’s something they remember from the surface—something they miss.
So this feels like… Well, from Phaedra, it’s a compliment.
Good things come from the surface—sometimes.
The shimmers hit my gown, merging with the opalescent colors, glistening on the beads and gemstones Min has sewn on.
Once I’ve taken in the excess, I push my attention toward the front. I focus on Kishel first. He wears that small, encouraging smile. It’s like a comforting hand upon my shoulder.
He glances at the tall, dark form to one side and gives a subtle nod.
The king—my king—turns. His lips part.
Suddenly, I can take a full breath.
Suddenly, the way to the front doesn’t seem so long.
As I get closer, I realize he isn’t in black. Not entirely. The fabric of his suit sheens blue and purple like Nos and Tywel’s feathers. The dark counterpart to my outfit.
He seems taller than usual. Regal. Unreadable. The only movement is his eyes, following me all the way until I stand before him.
Once I’m close, he gives me a tight smile. As we turn to face Kishel, he tugs at his cuff.
I suppress a frown as Kishel begins his opening speech, welcoming our guests.
At my side, eyes still on Kishel, Drystan turns his head fractionally toward me. “Has anyone told you that you’re breathtaking?”
I duck my head, trying to hide my smile, grateful I’m wearing a veil and have my back to the members of his court. Our court.
“Because if they haven’t, I’ll have to take all their tongues. You look… You aren’t just breathtaking—you’ve got Death himself forgetting what it is to breathe.”
My throat is tight at the compliment, but I find myself reminding him of the precipice we stand upon: “Last chance. You can still marry a fae, someone easier, someone who—”
“Did it ever cross your mind that I don’t want someone else?
” he hisses. “That maybe I want a troublesome human who’s possibly the strongest and most stubborn person I know?
Who’s not afraid of me and tells me exactly what she thinks?
” His eyebrows slash upward, cutting off any argument.
“Because I can’t think of anyone better to be my queen.
Anyone better for my people… or for me.”
Words escape me. I blink up at him, nod once, then let out a soft “Oh.”
Like that settles it, he inclines his head and gives me a faint smile. But I catch how he straightens his perfect cuffs, again.
“What’s wrong?”
He gives a low sigh. “I didn’t want to worry you. The Consort’s Seal is missing.” He glowers at the altar behind Kishel where a black velvet cushion sits, conspicuously empty.
“Not down the back of the settee, I’m guessing?”
The corner of his mouth twitches. “Unfortunately not. It was in the vault. Only someone with the blood of Arawn’s line and the key may enter. I have the key, but…”
“Your brother? Effan?”
“He’s the only other person who can enter. It would explain his disappearance—theft and fleeing rather than kidnap or murder.” He glares ahead with a look that could incinerate. “I’ll send the Wild Hunt after him and, if that doesn’t work, I’ll go after the damn fool myself.”
“Does it matter that much?”
“Without it, your position isn’t considered symbolically legitimate. It’s a missing piece.”
I hear the gaps in the words. “I need it to access the consort’s power.”
He dips his chin infinitesimally.
Kishel finishes his speech on the importance of marriage to the kingdom of Mordren and the people of Rigor Gard, his gaze sliding to us. “If you two are quite finished?” he murmurs for our ears only before circling behind the altar.
He spreads his arms. The drifting fae lights dim. And the ceremony begins.
“The surface is for the living,” he intones, voice deep and slow as he crumbles rich, dark soil into a huge pestle and mortar. “This world beneath is for the dead.” From a shallow case, he produces a single small bone.
A finger bone.
It goes into the mortar.
“Yet we are alive. Here. Still burning.” The two thick candles at either end of the altar splutter to life. He nods and Drystan takes my hand, placing it above the mortar. The Apothic takes the obsidian blade from the altar and gives it to Drystan.
My breath catches. I’ve been so caught up in reading about medicine, I haven’t looked that closely at unseelie wedding rituals aside from learning the lines with Phaedra. There was something about a binding, but…
Not this.
“With this blade crafted from the Dark Throne, we let the offering of life.”
Drystan takes the blade and holds my gaze with a level look. I need to hold still. Hold steady. Show no fear.
He presses the razor edge of the glassy black stone into my palm, following the line a fortune teller once said meant I would never find love in this world.
He said nothing of the Underworld.
Before I can follow that thought far, a bead of blood wells up. I school myself to stillness, ignoring the sting of my broken skin. He only allows a drop to fall before he licks my skin clean.
I can’t suppress the shiver that runs through me at the hot, slick touch of his tongue, the intensity of his gaze, the feeling again that he has consumed some vital part of me.
It’s only a drop, and yet the fae in the front rows lean in, eyes wide, breaths heavy, hungry gazes upon me.
I swallow, afraid, excited, unsettled, and carefully cut him in the same spot.
“Take more,” he murmurs as I tilt his hand over the mortar, and I understand. He took only a drop of my blood to avoid stirring his subjects into a frenzy, but the mixture requires more liquid to make it bind.
A thin, crimson rivulet runs off his palm and over the bone, soaking into the soil.
After a few seconds, Kishel nods and indicates for me to return the blade. “The offering is made. Death. Life. Our king and his chosen queen.” He raises the pestle high above his head and brings it down, thundering.
The sound echoes off the walls. Within the mortar, there’s a crack.
He does it again. Again. Then, chanting in the old tongue, he grinds the pestle in circles.
Bone crumbles into soil, binds with blood. Life and death and death and life, all together.
Messy. Transformative.
Inevitable.
Death stands at my side and he is not what I expected at all.
Kishel lifts the mortar above his head. At his direction, Drystan unbuttons his shirt. I freeze. Please don’t say we have to fuck on the altar in front of the entire court. I hold my breath, waiting as Asti slides it from his shoulders and folds it. He doesn’t remove anything else.
He circles around to my front and lifts my veil, while I face out over the hall. He pauses there for a long moment, surveying my face, chest rising and falling deeply, slowly, before at last he dips his thumb into the mixture.
A steady drum beat reverberates through the space. My pulse falls into time with it.
He smears a line upon my cheek. Surprisingly warm. Smooth. Thoughts of whose bone coats my skin fade away as I enter a different space. One where there is only Drystan and I and blood, earth, bone.
He speaks in the old tongue, but I hear the translation I’ve memorized.
“In blood and bone, I take thee.”
A line upon the other cheek.
“In ash and earth, I give myself.”
A line down from lips to chin to throat to chest, as low as my navel. Daubs on my shoulders, the insides of my elbows.
“In life, in death, in all the aching moments between, I am thine.”
My skin tingles. The hairs on my arms rise. The thundering drum beat takes over.
It’s my turn to plunge my thumb into the mortar, to trace lines upon his cheeks. I’m so consumed by it, I barely remember speaking the words. It’s as though I’m not there at all and yet entirely present. My body remembers each stroke of the ritual like it’s inked upon my nerves.
My thumb dips into the divot between his collarbones, down over the steady rise and fall of his chest. He doesn’t blink, merely lifts his chin as I take the line downward, daring me to continue.
The corded muscles of his stomach tense under my touch, and I only stop when I hit the waistband on his trousers.
I pause there. His skin is warm beneath my thumb. The blood smear tacky, slow to dry. A heartbeat later, it does—mine on him. His on mine. A perfect mirror.
Pale, painted in blood and limned in half-light, Drystan looks all the more a dark god. Primal. Sacred. Eternal.
The god inclines his head, eyes bright in this dim light, and speaks one soft word as his gaze skims from my lips down the lines he’s marked upon my flesh: “Flawless.”
I think he means how I look, but Kishel makes a sound of approval before he raises his voice. “The Rite of Blood is complete. Your queen stands before you wearing the bones of our people, the blood of your king, and she wears it well.”
Drystan takes my hand and lifts it so they can better see where he’s daubed my shoulder and the crook of my elbow.
Applause rushes over us. Warm. Overwhelming.
“Flawless,” he says again, low in my ear.
My cheeks flush. I’ve performed well. Lines correct. Not a wince at being cut. No foolish human recoiling at the smear of bone upon my skin.
As the crowd quietens, I gather myself for the next rite. We’re not married until the entire ceremony is complete.
Forward steps Phaedra. She smiles at me as absolute silence descends. Drystan’s fingers twitch around mine.
That tiny reaction makes dread twist in my belly.
She sweeps around to address the crowd. “Our would-be queen certainly looks the part, but a consort must do more than wear blood and bone prettily.” She lifts her chin. “I invoke the Right of Challenge.”