4. Chapter Four
They say you shouldn’t see the bride before the wedding. It’s supposed to be bad luck or something equally moronic. Blah-fucking-blah.
All of that nonsense was moronic. Anything we did in this opulent Catholic Church - the Irish home invaders insisted on it - would be meaningless compared to what we had already shared.
Last night, we burned a man alive as an offering to my bride, a small part of the revenge on her abusers that I had vowed to give her.
She had screamed into the wind, and the wind screamed back, reflecting her pain and anger as the flames licked higher, cooking the man on the pyre until he was nothing but barbeque.
I had stayed up late disposing of him. It was my husbandly duty to do so. To erase the wrongs of the past, and to wash her clean of all the old hurts.
Every husband should offer that to his bride on their wedding day. And she didn’t get a bachelorette party, or a bridal shower. So it was the least I could do.
I was tired and delirious when I got to bed. I remembered nothing of what happened when I got to our room. Just that my body had stopped aching and I had fallen asleep. Then woken to Evie, looking at me with longing in her eyes. My bride.
In a short time, I had gained a fiancée who, at our first meeting, tried to stab me. Now, I was her knight, ready to slay her dragons and present their heads on silver platters. And she had insisted on a pledge I knew she did not mean. I tried to stop her, I truly did. I had seen her scars and did not want to cause her another one… but she pushed, and I am a weak man. I let it happen. I let her make a pledge that she did not mean because I wanted it.
I wanted her to myself, body and soul. Hell, I wanted my name tattooed over those scars of her body, replacing old marks with ones of my own.
I looked down at the red mark on my palm, running my thumb along it just to feel the sting. I liked the pain of it. The ache that it caused in my heart.
Her empty promises.
I didn’t resent her. She needed an anchor in this insane world. And I could be that if that was what she needed. I just wish she hadn’t insisted on something so… permanent. Scarification would be a hell of a thing to get rid of, when she realized she was free. When she finally tasted freedom, she wouldn’t want a reminder of this life.
But she’d insisted, and I believed her. I believed her because of my own stupid wishful thinking. I caved in to the most dangerous thing on earth – hope.
A delicious, painful hope that this could be real, and we could be one.
I wanted her to tell me who Ryan was.
I needed that last part of her. The last thing to make her my true wife.
Then she had refused me the name, the identity of the man who called her his moonlight, and reality crashed down again.
She kept a part of herself away. A part of herself for another man. A man she cherished in that book. By the looks of it, she had touched that page again and again over the years, for longer than she had known me.
I clenched my fist. I didn’t know who that man was, but I hated him with every fiber of my being.
Maybe it’s selfish - hell, I know I am selfish - but I didn’t split the difference. I don’t take second place.
I am not the kind of man who does things in half measures. I do not chain a person to me if their heart isn’t in it. So the choice was hers. She could be my true wife, or she could be an arranged marriage, just as we were always meant to be. I would protect her. But if she hardened her heart, then I needed to re-build my walls.
Just… not yet. I was shameless enough to take this time for myself.
To take my rewards while I was of use to my queen of the night. I would wait. And still, the fluttering wings of hope kept batting against the empty cage of my heart.
If I practiced patience, for once, then maybe she would tell me who he was, and what he was to her. She would let me have that last bit of her… maybe if I just worked a little bit harder. Maybe if I…
I swallowed the lump forming in my throat, and shook my head at the restless church that waited for the start of the procession.
I looked over at my sister, my best man, in her tuxedo, her hair pinned up. She had strands of it curled around her face, and her lips were pink. She had put some effort into her appearance today, and I was grateful for it.
Likewise, I saw Rose in the front row with the Green boy. I looked on in envy as he cradled her stomach with a tenderness that made my stomach squeeze. The bastard loved my daughter. It was the only reason I let him live.
They were devoted, and beautiful together. Their children would be eternally loved by each other, by me and my sister. And maybe that was all the family I would ever need.
The music started. Crashing into me like a wave. It wasn’t that long ago that I had walked my daughter down the aisle and given her to an Irish man. Now, I was receiving an Irish bride.
One that I had first met, and harassed, at the last wedding.
How things had changed.
The great doors of the church opened, and there she was.
A sweet, white veil covered her to her elbows, and her dress flowed like a watery cloud about her. It was made of tulle, gray, then with layers of flowing black, just as she had said. In her hand were a bouquet of black orchids, long and draping down in front of her, almost touching the ground.
Black roses, like the ones I had given her on our first day together, peppered her bouquet. A silver ribbon, like a woven moonbeam, wrapped the entire thing together, and was held in her manicured hands with blood red nails.
She stood alone. She walked herself to me, giving herself freely. It was not a brother, or nephew, or other man who gave me her hand in marriage. It was herself.
I could taste the sweetness of it. The sting in my eyes, and the heaviness in my heart wanted me to enjoy that sentiment. To enjoy her thoughts. But she would never be mine. It hung like a dark cloud over my head.
She was mine, for the time she would need me. But I was not the kind of man to make danger or create a crisis just to feel useful. I would slay her demons, and like a true queen, she would dismiss me when I was done. As a man of honor, I would walk backwards out of the glory of her presence, having served my purpose, and I’d spend the rest of my life in the darkened shadows, away from her light.
And I’d count myself lucky for having had what moments I could.
I wish I could have paused the story right at that moment. To have everything end here, with the possibility of vows and forever.
But the story cannot end in the middle, and a hero cannot stop fighting just when they have satisfaction. Journeys do not end until they have ended. It was a lesson I had taught to Yuliya when she was a child, when she wanted her bedtime stories to end before the heartache and pain. She begged to end her fairytales in the first act, before the villains made their appearance, but I never let her.
And I wouldn’t let myself either.
The crowd was in awe. I knew it. They got to their feet and stared at the little witch walking to the haunting music. There was no bridal march for her. Not for my woman. It was her song, the one she would hum with a little half smile, set to an organ by my piece of shit son-in-law. His musical talents were a marvel. But he was still a piece of shit.
My palms were sweating. I wanted to run to her, throw her over my shoulder, and get her in front of the priest. I wanted to get that wedding band on her finger and declare her mine, and fuck all of these people who were here to spectate. I didn’t care about any of them. Not right now.
Let me get lost in the illusion of it. That we could ride off beneath a pale moon, into the comfort of darkness and tender night!
Her slow, languid steps up the aisle were haunting. Was she a pagan goddess, walking on water to bestow a mission on her chosen vessel?
As she got close, her eyes met mine through the white of her veil and she smiled.
Again my soul cracked, because it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. A beauty so perfect because it would be fleeting, like sand through my open fingertips.
When she stood before me, I raised her veil, revealing her perfection to the eager congregation. I kissed her, without provocation.
I should have waited until after the vows, but I couldn’t help it. I needed to taste her lips with the desperation of a starving man, because I wanted to live in the illusion that she was mine. That we were starting our lives together. A long, pleasant life where I’d watch her hair turn from red to white, and to see the laugh lines grow deep, permanent on her face.
I wanted to cry out to the deity for a moment, to beg them to make this moment real. Just for a second. Just for one, pure and perfect moment, let me believe it to be real.
When the organ music faded, the notes evaporating like morning mist, I pulled away from her and there were tears in her eyes.
“I love you,” she whispered.
If she had stabbed me in the heart, it would have hurt less. I cupped her face in my hands, staring into her green eyes. I kissed her forehead, before the moment was broken by the coughing of the Irish priest.
Fucking Irish.