Chapter 26 Bellgrave
Bellgrave
“It’s time.” The queen stood, her gaze drifting between Rion and Eiko. She didn’t seem to know whether to wish them luck or to order them not to do anything rash or embarrassing—and by “them,” Eiko meant “her.”
Eventually, Queen Noemi settled on a wordless nod and walked to the door.
The attendants finished fussing over last-minute adjustments to their gowns and veils and herded Rion and Eiko from the mirrors—tugging Eiko behind Rion when she tried to walk beside her friend. They arranged her so that she would be partially hidden.
Okay, that’s fair, Eiko said internally.
Pretty fair, Hymn agreed with a sigh. Probably for the best.
Her heart and body were heavy and confused. She wished Ky, Kaito, and Ren were there. When it was the five of them, she felt invincible. Separated from them, she couldn’t help but feel vulnerable and exposed.
Rion’s gaze flicked to Eiko as they neared the door, her eyes wide and glossy.
Her chest rose, and stopped, and rose again, sharper.
Eiko felt it coming before she saw it—the shift in her best friend.
The sudden stiffness in her arms, the way her hands curled into fists against her skirt, the sudden heaving of her chest.
“Rion?” Eiko asked gently. “Hey, it’s okay …”
Rion looked back at the door with wide, terrified eyes.
“I don’t think …,” she whispered, each word dragged from somewhere painfully deep inside her.
“I don’t think I can …” Her voice broke, and she tried to inhale, but the breath got caught.
Suddenly, it was like she couldn’t breathe at all.
Her shoulders jerked, her eyes widening in panic, and then her body seized, struck by indecision, torn between the need to bolt or collapse, before it simply folded.
The attendants reacted instantly, swarming towards her in a frantic cloud.
“Don’t touch her,” Eiko snapped, stepping forward and blocking them before they could smother Rion with their fussing hands and frantic whispering about how she was crinkling her gown.
Rion hit the floor on her knees, then tipped sideways, one hand scrabbling uselessly at the stone as though she could dig herself out of the room with her nails alone.
Her veil slipped loose, trailing around her in a pale spill.
She made a sound that wasn’t quite a sob, her throat helplessly working for air.
Eiko dropped down with her, skirts pooling, ignoring the weight and the stiffness and the way her corset tugged when she bent.
“Rion,” she said, low and urgent, “look at me.”
Rion’s eyes were open, but they were lost somewhere else. She shook her head, the motion tiny and frantic, and pressed a fist to her mouth as though she could force her lungs to behave.
“I can’t,” Rion whispered in horrified realisation. “I can’t do this. I don’t even know the prince, and that family … they’re so awful … My father … he said if I wanted to go home, he would appeal to the king …”
Eiko’s hands hovered, useless.
It had always been Rion who knew what to do when people were falling apart. She was always the voice of reason, the calm in the middle of the storm—the quiet, unassuming backbone of their entire group.
Eiko was the one who caused the trouble, not the one who solved it.
Rion had stepped onto the Kingsweep without shedding a tear. She had endured the Quiet. She had Silenced a monster. She had survived the psychotic initiation into the Godsguard.
But apparently, this wedding felt so wrong to her on such an intrinsic level that she was falling apart at the seams when cornered into the final moment.
“Breathe with me,” Eiko begged, because it was the only thing she knew to say. “In. Now out. Slow. Slow, Rion.”
Rion’s breath came in a harsh, broken gasp that made her whole body tremble.
One of the attendants backed away as though the panic were contagious. Her eyes darted to the door. “I’ll get—” she started, before cutting herself off. She curtsied so abruptly she nearly stumbled, then hurried out.
The remaining attendants stood frozen, their eyes lowered, their faces tight with helplessness and fear.
Rion curled onto her side and pressed her forehead to the stone. Eiko shifted behind her, pulling Rion’s head into her lap instead. “I’m right here.” She soothed the hair back from Rion’s forehead, which had grown clammy with sweat.
Rion was like Eiko in a lot of ways. They both preferred to ignore an impossible issue, choosing to focus on more practical things when there was no feasible escape from their situation.
Neither of them liked to dwell, but it appeared that Eiko was a touch more stubborn when it came to her bull-headed determination to grit her teeth and prevail, no matter what.
Rion had more of a conscience.
Rion made another strangled sound and clutched at the front of Eiko’s gown, her fingers fisting in the silk as though it could keep her anchored to the world. “Don’t leave me,” she rasped.
Eiko’s throat tightened. “I’m never leaving you,” she promised. “Not now and not ever. Just keep breathing. We’ll get through this.”
And find a way to go through with it. She didn’t add that part out loud, but she knew there would be no escape from the wedding.
The King of All had made that clear by sending for Rion’s family and holding them hostage in court.
If he had simply wanted to send a message, he would have allowed them to travel back to Stonesigh.
But they weren’t there simply to flex his influence—they were there to ensure this happened exactly the way he wanted.
When Rion’s fit didn’t immediately ease, Eiko also began to panic. It wasn’t slowing or burning out. Instead, it was spiralling, digging deeper until Rion was shaking.
The door opened, and the attendant returned in a rush.
Eiko barely spared her a glance until the room filled with the unmistakable press of power.
She clutched Rion tighter and glanced up to see that every attendant in the room had gone still, their eyes wide like someone was holding blades to all of their throats.
The King of All strode into the dressing room. He wore dark formal cloth in a deep, rich shade of navy that drank in the light, the cut impeccable. His crown gleamed atop golden strands, cold and absolute. His gaze, also gold, also gleaming, was even colder.
He smiled stiffly down at Rion and Eiko, his expression one of a man who knew no one in the room could stop him from getting anything he wanted.
Behind him, led by a man of the Kingsguard, shuffled Rion’s family: Mei, with her hands clasped tight enough to whiten her knuckles, Hayu, his jaw rigid, and Rion’s two younger siblings.
Depositing them into the room, the Kingsguard soldier then immediately backed out and closed the door.
The attendant who had fetched them looked sick.
Eiko’s breath was now coming too fast, her body threatening to tumble into panic right alongside her best friend.
This wasn’t going to end well if she couldn’t get Rion to compose herself.
The King’s gaze swept the room—over the veils, the gowns, the attendants, the trembling woman on the floor—before landing on Eiko’s throat. On the … collar. His eyes narrowed, but he dismissed it quickly, returning his attention to Rion.
“Rise,” he said, and his voice was gentle. It was terrifying.
Rion flinched. Eiko tried to help her upright, but Rion folded again, her hands slipping on the polished stone, her breath still jagged, eyes wide with terror now as much as panic.
Eiko moved, instinct overriding sense. She jumped to her feet and moved to shield Rion, just enough to put her own body between the king and the woman on the floor.
King Grigori’s gaze settled on Eiko, now that she was commanding his attention, his smile sharpening. “How sweet,” he murmured. “There’s that Stonesigh stone-headedness I’ve been told about.” He glanced over his shoulder at the attendants. “Leave.”
They appeared to be too afraid to move. The king’s eyes narrowed by a fraction, and the air in the room seemed to thin, to grow colder.
“I said,” he repeated, voice still soft, “leave.”
The attendants bowed so fast, they nearly collided with one another. Skirts rustled. Pins and combs were abandoned. They fled in a terrified stream through the doorway, heads lowered and hands shaking, closing the door behind them with a panicked snap.
The king turned his gaze to Rion’s family. “Come closer,” he said.
Rion’s mother took a step forward, her face pale.
“Your Grace,” she began, her voice wavering, “please, she’s overwhelmed. She’s—”
“Overwhelmed,” the King echoed, tasting the word like it was something quaint. He had shrugged off that booming, jovial personality he sometimes donned, shedding it completely. “I asked for a warrior princess, not a quivering mouse.”
The king looked past Eiko, peering down at Rion in mild disgust.
“Do you know what I find most fascinating?” he asked, conversationally. “It isn’t that you cry over your future. It’s that you imagine your tears matter in the slightest.”
Rion’s eyes squeezed shut, unable to look at him. “I’m sorry, Your Grace,” she whispered, her voice shredded. “I can’t—”
“Oh,” he murmured. “But you can, and you will.”
He stood again, turning, letting his gaze sweep the room one more time, as though he were checking that every corner had been emptied properly.
“Captain,” he called. There was a shift outside, one of the Kingsguard shifting close to the door. “Yes, Your Grace?”
“I’m not to be disturbed,” King Grigori ordered. “Clear the hallway.”
There was a pause, and then: “Yes, Your Grace,” muffled back to them through the wood.
King Grigori’s attention crawled back to them. “Now,” he said, “we can speak as family.”
Rion’s father swallowed hard. “Your Grace, please allow us to send our daughter back to Stonesigh. I will trade places with her. I will join the Kingsweep.”
“We both will,” Rion’s mother added desperately. “Take us both, just release our daughter and send her home, please.”