CHAPTER THIRTY
“He sent them home? The king and the queen? Without alerting anyone? Without a single warning to the princess?” Brennan asked, his voice shaking with anger. “And he’s moved our wedding? To tonight? To here? Rowan, are you serious?” He started to pace back and forth.
“I wish I wasn’t. But it’s true. Arrangements are being made as we speak. They started at dawn. Already carriages have been sent back to the castle for Finlay and his crew, as well as additional witnesses for the … the bedding ceremony. The temple priest is even on his way to officiate.”
“Fuck.” Brennan pushed his fingers through his hair.
His green eyes were clouded and distant, his jaw muscles flexing until he exhaled sharply.
“Olivay—” He froze, staring wide-eyed at me.
It was the name. He no longer knew if he should call me that, or what to call me.
Samara. Something else entirely. He’d seen me as Shamhira in his dreams, but he didn’t know that name.
Didn’t know that her mother called her Samara, and that just like him, I’d chosen my name.
Shaking his head, Brennan said, “I can’t believe my father did this—that it’s happening this way. I can’t allow it. I need to speak to him at once.”
My heart sank, but I nodded. He had to cancel the wedding.
Uninvite the witnesses, the priest. Find a way out of his betrothal to me.
What other choice did he have? I was an unknown threat to him, to his kingdom.
And whatever Brennan might have felt for me, as Olivay and as Samara, however much he wanted to help me, his duty was always going to be to his people.
I needed to find the fucking Hermit. I needed to know what to do next.
He promised he’d be back by dawn. But it had only just stopped raining, and after the storm we’d had, even for a witch as powerful as he was, likely he was still at the cave, still with Olivay.
Though no doubt scheming the next phase of his plot.
I could only imagine the look on his face when he learned what had happened. What a fool I’d been. Something told me that even this turn of events wasn’t going to deter him.
Not easily. After all, his prophecies always came true. There would be an end to House Lafir’s reign. To Brennan. And there would be a child.
My stomach turned.
I didn’t even have it in me to say goodbye as I crossed the bedroom to his door. It was over for Brennan and me—it had been over for hours. So I turned the knob silently.
“Wait,” Brennan said. “Olivay—Princess.” I heard his bare footsteps padding across the room, felt his body heat radiating off of him from behind me. He reached for my arm, his fingers wrapping around my wrist. “Wait,” he pleaded.
“Brennan.” My voice shook as I turned around to face him. “Am I a prisoner again in my room?” I asked, my voice too low for Rowan to hear.
Brennan’s eyes widened, searching my face back and forth, scanning me, but for what I couldn’t tell.
His emotions had become so powerful, and so jumbled, even I couldn’t read them.
His jaw clenched, but he still held my arm, his grip firm.
“You need to get ready for tonight, as do I. What you wanted to speak to me about has to wait, but we will talk. And I want to talk to you about last night, too. I want to talk to you about everything,” he said, his green eyes blazing. “Soon. Okay?”
His hand was so warm against my skin. So natural. The sinking feeling burrowing inside of me fell even lower. I pulled away from his touch, not wanting to linger, not wanting to feel the anger he had toward me. The accusation that I was a liar. That I was a monster. He let go at once.
“I heard your ambassador took a trip, princess? He’s not here?” Rowan asked.
I nodded. “He left last night,” I said. “Before …” I swallowed roughly.
“Before everything happened.” Before I ruined everything.
I squeezed my eyes shut. So much had happened, but I could still fear the fear and nausea that roiled through me when I’d realized when Brennan was in trouble.
And the disgust I still felt from the hands of my attackers when they touched me. When I swallowed their hatred and ire.
“Hopefully he returns soon to be at your side, princess, but in the meantime,” Brennan eyed Rowan, “how’s Kienan faring this morning?”
“Much better from last night. I was just in to see him. He’s bandaged up. The chimera came close. Our boy is bruised, but healing. He’s strong.”
“He is.” Brennan bit lip and nodded. “But I don’t want to push him. Can he get out of bed? He’s up to it?”
“Yes.”
“Send him to be with Princess Olivay today so she has some family with her,” Brennan ordered.
I paled. Why? For further proof of my deception?
As a way to out me without having to act on what he knew himself?
Or was he simply waiting to make his move later in the day?
Was he still trying to push his feelings for me away?
To ambush me before the ceremony To box me?
If it meant protecting his people, I suspected he would.
He’d do anything for them. Like I was trying to do for Azeal.
Rowan nodded at his prince’s order.
“Kienan will walk you down the aisle if you want him to,” Brennan said to me.
If it got that far. If he couldn’t convince his father to stop the wedding.
But I already knew he wouldn’t succeed. Brennan had already told me at the engagement ball that this wedding had to happen.
Or there would be war. Olivay’s parents hadn’t been sent away for their safety after last night.
They’d been sent away so there could be no breaking of the contract, no postponement of the wedding.
If they were already gone, then they would be unable to agree to negotiations.
“Oli—,” Brennan stopped. “Princess,” he said. “If you need anything, anything at all, please send word to me, and I’ll make sure you have it. Whatever it is. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said, my chest tight.
“I know this isn’t what was planned, and everything is different now.” His hands clenched into fists. “Everything. But know this. No matter what happens, I will find a way to keep you safe.”
Gods. He was still trying to be honorable, even as he was searching for a way to let me go. To rid himself of me.
Rowan opened the door. I headed out, walking back to my room in a daze. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what else to say to Brennan, or how to say it. He didn’t just know the truth—he’d seen it. He’d forced it out of me.
When I walked back inside my room, I froze. Abigail was standing over my bed, dangerously close to the pillow where I’d hidden the parchment and my mother’s necklace. The kind of trinket that could only ever be found in Azeal.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
Abigail curtseyed, her face flushed. “I’m sorry to come in unannounced. We’re to prepare for your wedding tonight,” she said. “We don’t have much time. The king’s orders.”
“And that required you to be at my bedside?” I gestured to the wardrobe and the trunks of my clothing lying on the opposite end of the room.
“N-no,” Abigail said. “I was just going to strip the sheets since you won’t be sleeping in them tonight.”
“Because I’ll be in my marriage bed,” I said, still feeling numb. Fuck. Was everything still in play? The prophecy? The child? Brennan knew what I was, but he didn’t know who I was—not truly. He didn’t know who’d sent me. Or what was going to happen.
He will die.
“Yes,” Abigail said. “It’s in a separate building from the hunting lodge—a small cabin you must walk outside to reach that will be well guarded. So you and the prince may have privacy.”
“Privacy,” I laughed. “What about the bedding ceremony?”
“Well … the privacy comes after that,” she said, looking down.
“Once the first time is … done.” She looked back up at me.
“Unfortunately, none of the items we’d ordered for your wedding were completed in time.
We thought we had a few more days for the seamstress to work.
So I’ll have to work with what we already brought. ”
I eyed the trunks, knowing there were more than likely three wedding dresses with everything combined. But what I wore at this point mattered little.
“Very well,” I said. A guard called out, opening my door.
Two more servants were announced and permitted to enter, girls who looked to be Abigail’s age.
One carried a tray of breakfast foods and the other a basket of brushes, oils, and soaps.
Thunder boomed, and a fresh wave of rain began to pelt against the glass of the window.
Fuck. That was going to stop the Hermit from his travels. It was going to be a long day.
“I’ll eat first,” I said, feeling resigned. I was going to have to keep up my strength and be ready for whatever came next. Because I was going to be married tonight, whether I wanted to be or not. And so was the groom.
Hours passed as if in minutes, and the morning and afternoon of my wedding day quickly turned to early evening.
I’d thought the process of getting bathed, dressed, and made up as a princess at Lafir Castle had been absurdly long and complicated.
Hours had been spent dressing me for the tourneys, the ball, and the meals.
But that had been nothing compared to what Abigail had in store for me.
I was bathed twice as long as usual, my hair washed and oiled multiple times as Abigail sent the girls out to bring more hot water for the tub.