Chapter Thirty-One #3
Larus reaches for him, preparing to shove him out the door.
“—Mother and Father were wrong about a lot of things.”
I cross the room and take Seth’s hands, which shocks him.
“You could have left. When we escaped Faros, you could have left us. If all you cared about was your own survival, you could have gotten on a boat and gone across the sea. It would have been safer. Or you could have given us up to Adria in exchange for your freedom.”
Seth opens his mouth to protest, but I squeeze his hands hard to silence him.
“Ow—”
“You can pretend all you want that you don’t care about this family we’ve made, but I know the truth.
My gift to you today, on my wedding day, is that this is the last time I’ll mention it.
I’ll go on acting like I believe you when you hem and haw and pick fights and insult Ronan, but deep down, I know the truth is that you love me and want to see me happy.
And I love you too, brother. I hope you find happiness of your own.
” I glance meaningfully to where Taran waits in the other cottage.
“Just do me a favor and don’t tell me about it if you do. ”
Seth’s face turns red, and he looks for half a moment like he’s considering hugging me, but he shakes my hands instead. “Yes, well, like I said. You’ve lost your mind, but you do look lovely.” He pauses, and when he speaks again, his voice chokes for the briefest of moments. “You look like Mother.”
“You do too,” I whisper.
“I should be going,” says Quinn, clearing her throat. “I’m on the groom’s side for all of this, technically.” She pulls me into a tight hug. “But really, I’m on both of your sides.”
“I know,” I say. “Thank you.”
With Quinn gone, there’s little left for us to do other than proceed to the woods.
Selara and Nithyria share wedding traditions.
Seth, as my oldest relative present for the event, carries a torch from my home as the rest of the family follows behind him.
If we were getting married in the village of Pyka, the other villagers would come out and throw flowers and hazelnuts at us for good luck, but since we’re marrying in the woods in secret, we walk directly to the marriage altar on our own.
The torch Seth carries is the torch, Vayla’s torch, and it does not love my brother. It flashes dangerously in his hands when he takes it from the hearth, nearly burning him. “Can’t we just use a normal one?” he asks.
“No,” I say. “It won’t hurt you as long as you’re nice to it.”
“Nice to it? It’s a bloody torch…”
It flashes again, singeing his wrist with its strange bluish flame. “Ow!”
“Come here.” I heal Seth’s wound, and the torch glimmers as I use Ronan’s magic, responding with excitement and something like gratitude.
“You did that on purpose,” I say to the torch, and it flashes a denial, but I know its games.
“Like I said, you’ve lost your mind.”
I shove the torch back into Seth’s hands, and we follow him from the cottage.
Octavia holds up my dress as we walk so it doesn’t get soaked by the puddles and damp leaves on the forest floor. It isn’t a long walk to the little hollow where we had our proposal, at least. Kira’s meadow is empty when we walk through it—she and Bitey are already there with the others.
When we enter the woods once more, my heart begins to race. I’m really doing this. After today, I’ll be Ronan’s wife. I’ll be tied to him forever.
But my heart isn’t racing from fear. Maybe I should be worried or frightened, but I’m not. At all.
I’m just so excited to be his. Now and forever.
It’s quiet in the woods as we approach the clearing.
The birds are just beginning to come back out after the rain, their songs distant and infrequent.
Our steps are near silenced by the damp; our procession, which had proceeded with some nervous chatter, comes to a soundless halt as the woods open up.
It’s as lovely as it was a week ago; lovelier, even, with the bluebells nodding under the weight of the rain.
And it’s made all the more beautiful with the altar at the back of the clearing: an arch constructed from a winding wood covered in wisteria, which has been coaxed down from the trees by the priestess of Kerensa, a nature-born with an affinity for florals.
But the sight that takes my breath away is Ronan himself. He’s standing there to the right of the priestess, with Quinn, Taran, and Typhon at his side, looking as beautiful as I’ve ever seen him.
His hair has been labored over, likely with the help of the wind-born Typhon, and he has shaved and maybe even plucked his eyebrows, probably with Quinn’s help, or at least at her insistence.
I smile at the thought of her teasing him until he relented.
He’s wearing a doublet much like Seth’s in a dark blue trimmed with gold, and though it fits well and accentuates his broad shoulders, it isn’t what I can’t stop staring at.
It’s his eyes that captivate me, and his expression.
It’s so nice to see his true face out in the daylight with others around.
From across the clearing, his look shifts from the happy nervousness of the wait into sudden awe when he sees me.
His eyes go soft as his lips part, his sharp intake of breath visible even from a distance.
His hands clutch at his hips. His body tenses with the effort not to cry.
The torch flares, its reflection of Ronan’s feelings completely overwhelmed with love.
Seth leads us to the altar, but my eyes never leave Ronan. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Seth place the torch into a waist-high receptacle near the priestess, but I just can’t stop looking at Ronan. I don’t want to miss a second of the way that he looks right now, the way that he feels.
Octavia takes her place to the left of the priestess as Larus and Seth present me to him. They each take one of my hands—the job my parents would have done if they were here—and they place them into Ronan’s hands, which are held by Taran and Quinn doing the same thing.
The light in the clearing flashes and changes when our hands meet. I can’t tell if it’s the torch or just us, but the altar dims, the light softening around us into a golden hour glow.
“Welcome, friends and loved ones,” says the priestess.
She’s an older Orsan woman, her grey-streaked blonde hair blending into the golden robe of her order, her face softly rounded and lined with wrinkles.
Her grasp of Selaran is wonderful. “Today we gather in the light of Kerensa’s infinite love and beauty to join these two souls for all eternity. ”
Ronan squeezes my hands and leans forward to kiss me on the cheek, but the priestess stops him. “Not yet,” she whispers.
“Sorry,” says Ronan, his shy smile lighting up his face. “I’m not used to not being able to kiss her.”
“The good news for you, your majesty, is that the Selaran wedding ceremony is short. The Orsan version of this lasts for three days and involves several sacrifices.”
My eyes flash to Taran, who definitely looks over my shoulder for a moment at Seth before looking at me. Good luck with that, I think, raising my eyebrows at him before turning back to Ronan.
“Please. Proceed,” he says.
“In Selara, the betrothed repeat just a single vow to affirm their commitment. Your majesty—”
“Ronan,” he corrects.
“Ronan, repeat after me. ‘Wherever you go, there I am.’”
Ronan looks down at our hands, then he takes a deep breath, smiling and looking into my eyes. “Wherever you go, there I am.” He tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear, his fingers lightly brushing my freckles as he pulls away.
“Sylvie, repeat after me. ‘Wherever you go, there I am.’”
My pulse pounds in my ears. After I say this, nothing will ever separate us again. I pull his hands to me, holding them to my chest. “Wherever you go, there I am.”
“May the goddess Kerensa bind you and bless this union. May this torch light your path and guide you to your home and to each other, always.” She looks at Ronan meaningfully, a smile on her face. “You may now seal your oath with a kiss.”
Quinn chuckles as Ronan takes me in his arms, pulling me to him and kissing me softly and eagerly, his lips pulling gently as his hands caress my cheeks and sink into my hair.
I kiss him back, the elation and sheer joy of the moment overwhelming me, leading me to stand on my tiptoes and press myself to him shamelessly, wrapping my arms around him and pulling him to me by his neck.
Kira screeches in joy, which causes us to break the kiss for a moment, but then Ronan pulls me back to him and kisses me again, ending with a few quick, soft kisses, the appropriate kind of kisses for a public display of affection.
No one says anything about the other kiss. I can’t imagine, after months with us, that anyone was particularly surprised.
“To Ronan and Sylvie!” says the priestess, holding up the torch.
“Ronan and Sylvie!” the others shout in response.
Ronan takes my hand to lead me from the altar, and the moment our hands meet again, the world shifts out from underneath us once more.
We’re back in the temple, but this time, there is no temple around us. It’s the empty hilltop of Avaris where the temple once stood, except now the white stone altar is visible, the dirt around it cracked as if it just broke through the earth.
Ronan leads me to the altar by the hand he’s still holding.
From the back of my gown, I pull the sickle.
I don’t know how I know to do it. I don’t know what I’m doing at all, really, even though I’m in my body doing it.
It’s like I’m acting on some sort of intuition, some kind of instruction that comes from a place I can’t comprehend.
I raise the sickle and press its sharp point into my fingertip. Then Ronan gives me his hand, and I do the same to him. Our blood drips onto the altar, and the torch behind it flashes and then turns red.
The ground shakes beneath us.
Ronan lifts me by my waist, and I wrap my legs around him. He lowers me down onto the stone, which has changed from stark white to the red of our blood.