Chapter 17
Alora
Rain drummed against the windowpanes, mirroring the dread that curled through Alora’s chest like a slow-moving poison.
She sat stiffly at her vanity with her back straight and her hands folded in her lap to hide the way they trembled.
Her thumb pressed against her fingertip scar, turning her finger white.
Theia brushed out her golden-brown hair with gentle strokes. Tears lined her lower lashes, but she did well not to cry. Most of the servants and castle guards had been slaughtered in the invasion, including her ladies-in-waiting.
Neither spoke.
Alora’s reflection was pale, ghostly even, her dull eyes swollen and rimmed pink from weeping. Eldrik had a floor-length mirror sent to her room, forcing her to gaze upon herself.
She looked more like a sacrificial offering than a bride.
The wedding gown was a sickly white that clashed with her pale skin, made of thin layers of gossamer and silver silk.
The fabric shimmered like liquid moonlight.
It hardly covered her modesty, leaving her arms bare and cleavage for every eye to see.
The translucent fabric was beaded with silver drops and pearls, like dew on morning leaves.
The peculiar fabric itched, and the pointed shoes pinched her feet.
The delicate, whimsical fae clothing would have better suited a lady of the fair folk.
The Calveron guard at the door watched them meticulously, a silent sentinel sent to assure she arrived at her own sentence without difficulty.
Theia lifted the lark pin to place in her hair, but Alora shook her head. She wouldn’t mar her mother’s memory by wearing it to a ceremony built on blood and manacles. The sun lowered in the sky, counting down the minutes until she lost the last thread of her freedom.
Alora rose with a sigh and headed for the bath chamber. “I need to relieve myself,” she announced feebly.
Of the contents in her stomach.
The guard attempted to follow but Theia intercepted.
“She is a princess!” Theia said shakily but with every ounce of bravery she could muster. “Do not demean her further by taking away her privacy to use the damn chamber pot!”
The fae guard curled his lip but said nothing as Theia rushed her into the bath chamber and shut the door.
“Alora…” Theia’s voice was barely a whisper as she gripped her shoulders with shaking hands.
“I received a note from Caelum this morning. He and a small group of his men managed to escape the castle last night. They are waiting in the tunnels beneath the throne room. They plan to attack during the ceremony and steal us away.”
Alora blinked, her lashes heavy with unshed tears and her heart warmed. She sadly smiled, taking her best friend’s hand.
“No…” Her voice wavered. “He would get himself killed, Theia, and I have enough blood on my hands. When I am taken, run to Caelum and flee this place. I will not see you both die for me.”
The words were bitter on her tongue.
Defeat. Regret. She would wear those words like a veil tonight.
Theia’s shoulders slumped and she stifled a sob. “You can’t marry that awful fae, Alora. Their marriage customs will bind you to him forever, then you will never escape him. Once he gets what he needs from you, he will kill you.”
Alora already knew that.
Eldrik married her for the sake of tradition and propriety, so no other lord could rebel once he was legally owed the crown of Argyle. Her hand secured him the throne. An heir secured him the kingdom.
Her body chilled at the thought of being forced to lay with that man, to birth his child. Her stomach churned with the urge to vomit.
Theia’s fingers trembled as she straightened Alora’s veil. Neither spoke for a long while, the air heavy with everything they didn’t wish to say.
At last, Theia’s voice broke, tears gathering on her lashes. “Do you think it’s possible…to learn to love someone you were forced to marry?”
Alora’s throat tightened.
She knew Theia wasn’t asking about Prince Eldrik.
Alora turned, catching Theia’s hands. “Love is not a thing that can be forced,” she said softly. “But sometimes… it finds us in the darkest of places, when we least expect it. And when it does, we recognize it, even if the world tells us we should not.”
Theia’s eyes shimmered, searching hers, but Alora pressed on, her voice firmer now.
“Flee with Caelum. Start a new life in another land far from here. And be happy.” Alora embraced her. “Goodbye, my sweet dreamer.”
A heavy fist banged against the door, making them flinch.
“Make haste in there!”
Theia hugged her tighter. “I… I prepared a parting gift for you.”
Alora smiled faintly, swallowing the lump in her throat. “Oh?”
Theia turned, rifling through the closet stacked with folded towels and bath oils. When she returned, her hands trembled slightly as she offered her a bouquet of flowers. Oleanders. Pale pink and perfect, their scent soft and cloying.
Alora inhaled slowly. The flowers were beautiful, and utterly lethal.
Her gaze flicked to Theia’s, and their teary eyes met with understanding.
It was a mercy.
An escape in a world where men offered none.
Alora nodded once, a barely perceptible motion. “Thank you,” she whispered.
She kissed Theia’s cheek, then slipped away without turning back. The bouquet was a symbol of love, but she had no need for poison.
Her escape had already been secured when she’d slipped the crimson spindle within the boning of her corset. She would drive it into Eldrik’s neck—or her own.
Either way, Alora vowed, she would not end this night as his broodmare to rut and breed.
She would bow to no crown but her own.
Two new Calveron guards waited in the antechamber of her bedchamber. One a hulking brute, the other a petite woman who barely reached his elbow. Neither were faces she knew. All the ones she did were dead.
Alora silently followed them down the corridor. The castle was silent as a tomb, torches sputtering in the draft. The bodies had been cleared away, but dark red smears staining the stone were left behind. Perhaps as a warning.
Here be what remains of those who defy us.
Alora walked with slow, deliberate grace, her fists clenched to still their trembling. She kept her chin high, refusing to let them see the fear roiling beneath her calm. Even if her heart raced with every step that brought her closer to the end.
They passed under the great archway and into the throne room for her wedding. The air smelled sweet, flowers and Calveron’s banners adorning the walls. But tension roiled like a storm cloud trapped beneath the ceiling.
The Queen Dowager and the Lords of Argyle stood stiffly on the left side of the chamber, their clothing disheveled and their eyes heavy.
Across from them on the right, stood Calveron soldiers and fae nobles.
Strangers with sharp smiles and sharper weapons.
The carpet runner stained with her father’s blood had been removed, along with all evidence of incursion and Argyle’s flags.
Now Calveron’s colors adorned the halls and once again she didn’t recognize her home.
No one offered to walk her down the aisle.
No music played.
And at the front on the dais, Prince Eldrik stood tall and too still, clothed in an opulent white coat veined in gold. With him waited the Archbishop and the High Priestess.
All eyes were on her.
Princess. Daughter. Pawn. Bride.
Alora wore the titles like her veil as she strode forward alone, each step echoing against the gleaming floors. The throne room loomed around her like a monument to duty and sacrifice.
The arches stretched high overhead, but the light was all wrong, dim, sickly, devoured by shadows that danced too hungrily around the torches. They had drawn the heavy drapes over the windows to dowse out the bright light of the beacons outside.
The weight of every stare fell on Alora as she climbed the steps of the altar and came to a stop beside Eldrik.
He was not the same prince from last night. His features were sharper, colder. His smile absent. And though his eyes faced forward, something beneath his skin twitched. Like something waiting to crawl out.
Alora couldn’t look at him. She searched for something to ground her, eventually letting her gaze rest on the broad golden medallion hanging from the Archbishop’s neck, gleaming with the embossed symbol of a sun and seven rays. A representation of the Seven Gods.
Yet there were no gods here.
The Archbishop lifted his hands, rings glinting in the candlelight, and his voice rolled through the vaulted chamber.
“By the Seven who guard the Gates, we are gathered in witness of a sacred union. Before gods and men, before lords and crowns, two Houses are bound this night. As steel is tempered by fire, as ships are tested by storm, so shall their marriage be sealed in trial and endure through eternity. Let no hand nor fate sunder what is joined beneath Heaven’s gaze. ”
Alora’s stomach knotted at the weight of the proclamation. The words tolled in her skull, the bouquet trembling in her grip.
The hall answered in a hush of “So it shall be,” and the sound crawled over her skin like a burial shroud.
Beside her, Eldrik gave a low chuckle, soft enough for only her to hear. “Touching.”
His mirth was cynical and unnerving, as though he mocked the ceremony and the Seven themselves.
The Archbishop droned on, his words muffled into a dull hum as she stared at the pulse Eldrik’s neck. Her fingers drifted to her corset where she’d hidden the spindle.
She could draw it out now. End this before it was too late.
Instinct warned he was impossibly fast and would overpower her before she ever had a chance to kill him.
Still, she carefully, subtly slipped out the long needle, using the bouquet for cover.
It was cold as ice in her palm, and as long as a small blade.
Alora pictured driving it through his throat, through the pomp and pride, silencing him forever.
His men would cut her down before the blood cooled but she didn’t care.