Chapter 17 #2
They would die together, and Argyle would be free.
Her muscles coiled as she tightened her grip. The sharp point hovered at her wrist.
For a trembling instant she imagined pressing the sharp point inward instead, ending it herself before chains could be fastened. No one would save her. Not now.
Her family was gone. Her kingdom stolen.
Maybe… maybe it would be easier to fade like the rest of them.
She pressed harder, feeling a prick of pain before it bit flesh. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears. To fall here at his feet would mean denying him Argyle’s throne. The perfect revenge.
May her death end quickly.
Alora shut her eyes, praying the pain would not last. She simply wanted to vanish into nothing.
Please.
Cool fingers wrapped around her wrist in a grip of iron, sending a tingle over her skin.
Her lashes flew open as Prince Eldrik slipped the spindle from her fingers and tucked it into his sleeve without the crowd noticing. She stared at him wide-eyed.
A sly smile edged the prince’s mouth as he slid a ring onto her finger next. Not the golden monstrosity she’d expected, but a dark, beautiful band. Onyx metal twisting like vines, with a ruby center that pulsed like a living thing.
“Do you choose to bind yourself to me by accepting this ring?” he asked.
The strange words weren’t loud. But they stilled Alora’s thoughts and the beat of her heart.
The prince gazed back at her, calm and unreadable.
The torches dimmed.
Shadows flickered unnaturally against the wall, and Alora swore Eldrik’s shadow stretched behind him up the wall, forming like horns above his head. And for a moment, his eyes caught the torchlights, flickering with flame.
Her breath hitched.
The throne room doors burst open with a thunderous boom.
Prince Eldrik stormed in with his guards, expression contorted with fury. “Impostor!” he bellowed.
Gasps rang through the room.
Alora and the wedding guests stared at the prince then at his twin standing beside her.
The impostor’s smile curved into something terribly familiar as his blue eyes bled red. She stumbled back when shadows burst from his body. They blotted torches one by one, ripping through the chamber. Cries rang out as wind wailed through the air and the chamber drowned in darkness.
A black cloud rippled on the altar. From it, emerged a figure of nightmare. A man she didn’t know but had met in her dreams.
Long black hair spilled around a pale face chiseled like marble, beautiful in its otherworldliness, garnet eyes glowing in the dark.
He loomed above her in a black ceremonial coat, a cape streaming behind him like a veil of blood.
His ears were tapered to points, and crimson markings thrumming across his skin with a life of their own.
Alora was rooted in place, blood going still in her veins. Her body knew him before her mind could name him.
Rune.
He grinned wickedly at the gawking crowd, fangs gleaming. And his voice rumbled in the silence, dark amusement curling in every biting word. “Praise the Seven.”
The High Priestess’s face drained of all color as she pointed at him with a trembling finger. “The Shadow God!”
Panic erupted.
Rune laughed as people fled in all directions, screaming. Calveron’s guards struggled to move forward as the frantic throng pushed against them.
“Stop him!” Prince Eldrik shouted, drawing his sword. “Who closed the curtains? Tear them down, damn it! Let in the light—”
Rune raised a clawed hand.
The shadows surged out, spearing the guards. Swords and windows shattered. Men flew backward. The castle shook as fissures veined the walls.
And yet Rune never looked away from her. He stood before her, towering, terrible, crimson eyes unforgivably calm. Ancient and burning.
Prince Eldrik and his men charged forward, but everything slowed, as if they existed out of time itself.
A sly knowing smirk rose to Rune’s face. He took her chin in his fingers, black claws cool against her skin, and he asked once more. “Princess Alora of Argyle, do you choose to bind yourself to me?”
Her heartbeat slowed.
The unusual proposal felt mythic.
A ritual written in spirit and bone.
The room trembled and the shadows writhed on the wall, as if awaiting her answer. Perhaps he had always been her way out, or perhaps it was simply the fact that Rune still gave her a choice. Accepting his ring would spare her from Eldrik’s clutches. And that in itself was reason enough.
May her mother and father forgive her.
“I do,” she breathed.
Her reply fell like stones into a still pond. The ring pulsated with a heartbeat not her own and the sensation sank into her being, as if weaving through her soul. She gasped, the bouquet slipping from her grasp.
Wind ripped through the chamber and the ground vibrated beneath her feet. Screams and the clash of metal rang into focus as time resumed. Eldrik leaped up in the air, raising his sword above her head with a furious roar.
The shadows swallowed her whole.
Alora opened her eyes to darkness and abrupt quiet.
Her chest heaved with wild breaths, heart hammering at how close she came to death.
She stumbled back, her heels clacking on the hard stone, struggling to adjust her sight.
The scent of damp earth and dust made her cough.
At last her vision cleared with the faint moonlight trickling from the small opening in the ceiling far above.
She knew this place.
But this time… no dragon lurked in the cavern.
Alora whipped around.
Shadows clung to Rune like a living mist. His crimson eyes glowed bright as they watched her intently. A predator who had been kept waiting.
“Welcome home.” The God of Shadows smiled, the edges of his fangs glinting. “Wife.”