Chapter 3
The great hall is carved from the interior of the volcano itself.
Bryn knows this because Counselor Verath told him on the walk over, moving briskly ahead while he tried to keep pace on legs that had gone numb somewhere between the suite and the third corridor.
She explained that the chamber was hollowed out over centuries, that the original formation was natural and the Drekians shaped it the way a sculptor shapes stone, with patience and fire and the understanding that some things are worth the time they take.
Bryn thought that was a lovely sentiment.
He was still thinking about it when the doors opened and he stopped thinking entirely.
The hall is massive in a way that makes the word massive feel inadequate.
The ceiling vaults so high above him that the carved stone disappears into shadow, and the walls curve inward with the natural shape of the volcanic chamber, dark rock shot through with veins of glowing amber and deep violet crystal that pulse with a faint, living light.
Columns of obsidian line the central aisle, each one carved with dragons in various stages of flight, their wings spread and their mouths open and their eyes inlaid with gemstones that catch the light and throw it back in fractured color across the polished floor.
The floor itself is basalt, heated from below, and Bryn can feel the warmth of it through his boots, through the thin soles that were made for Everen's cold stone corridors and not for a hall that breathes heat from its foundations.
And the court. Gods, the court.
Hundreds of Drekians fill the hall, standing in tiered galleries along the curved walls and gathered in clusters on the main floor.
Some are in fully human form, tall and striking, dressed in dark silks and leathers and metals that catch the amber glow and make them look as if they've been dipped in firelight.
Some are partially shifted, and this is where Bryn's composure nearly cracks, because he has never seen anything so unsettling and so beautiful in his life and he wasn't prepared for both at once.
A woman with human features and scales cascading down her bare arms in patterns of copper and gold, each one catching the light independently so that she shimmers when she moves.
A man whose eyes are slitted and reflective, catching the light and throwing it back green.
Another with horns curving from his temples, small and elegant, polished to a dark shine that matches the obsidian columns.
Wings folded against backs. Tails curling around ankles.
Claws tipping elegant fingers that hold goblets and gesture in conversation as though none of this is remarkable, because to them it isn't.
The heat of hundreds of bodies presses against him from every direction.
The weight of ancient magic sits in the stone and hums against the soles of his feet, a low vibration that he can feel in his teeth.
The air smells of sulfur and cedar and something else, something alive and electric that he doesn't have a name for, and every instinct he possesses is telling him to turn around and run back down the aisle and out the doors and keep running until he reaches Everen or the sea or wherever it is that people go when they've made catastrophically poor decisions.
He doesn't run. He's never had that luxury. Running has always been Everen's specialty, and someone has to stand still.
Counselor Verath announces him. Her voice carries through the hall with a clarity that silences the murmuring crowd, and Bryn feels every eye in the room shift to him at once, hundreds of gazes landing on his skin with a weight that is nearly physical.
"Princess Mithri of Everen, presented to the Court of the Drekian Sovereignty in accordance with the Treaty of Ash and Ember, for formal betrothal to His Royal Highness Prince Ithyris, Crown Heir to the Drekian Throne."
The silence that follows is enormous. Bryn stands at the far end of the central aisle with the full length of the hall stretching out before him, every inch of it polished and lit and filled with creatures who could end him without effort, and he has never felt smaller in his life.
He is a lie wrapped in linen and wilting flowers, standing in the most magnificent room he has ever seen, and the distance between who he is and who they think he is has never been wider.
He lifts his chin and walks.
The aisle is long. Every step echoes against the basalt in the silence and the sound bounces off the vaulted ceiling and comes back to him, amplified, so that his own footsteps sound louder than they should.
He keeps his gaze fixed forward and his hands folded and his spine straight, and he does not look at the faces turning to watch him pass because if he sees their expressions he will lose whatever fragile hold he still has on his composure.
He is Mithri. He is a princess. He is walking to meet the prince who will be his husband and he is not afraid.
He is so afraid he can taste copper in his mouth, hot and metallic, and his jaw aches from clenching it.
The dais rises at the far end of the hall, three broad steps of polished obsidian leading to two thrones carved from the same dark stone.
The thrones are enormous, scaled for beings who are larger than human even in their smaller forms, and the sheer size of them makes Bryn feel as though he's approaching an altar rather than a seat of governance. The throne on the left holds the king.
King Thalryn is old in the way mountains are old, the way the volcanic stone of this hall is old, the way things are old when they have been shaped by forces that operate on a timescale humans can barely comprehend.
His hair is silver-white and his face is lined and hard, and even seated he radiates a density of presence that makes the air around him feel heavier, denser, as though the space he occupies has more gravity than the rest of the room.
His eyes are dark, nearly black, and they track Bryn's approach with the flat, patient attention of something that has seen centuries pass and found most of them wanting.
He wears no crown. He doesn't need one. Everything about him communicates authority so completely that a crown would be redundant.
And beside him, on the right throne, is the prince.
Bryn forgets how to walk.
It's only a stutter, half a step lost and recovered, barely noticeable to anyone who isn't looking for it.
But something happens in his chest when he looks at Prince Ithyris, some violent rearrangement of his internal organs that he was wholly unprepared for and that no amount of strategic planning could have accounted for.
He is tall. Even seated, Bryn can tell he's tall, with broad shoulders and a lean, powerful build that speaks of a body made for both elegance and violence in equal measure.
His skin is tanned and warm, and along his throat and temples there are faint violet scale patterns that trace the lines of his bones, delicate and iridescent, catching the amber light of the hall and refracting it in soft purple so that he seems to glow faintly from within.
His hair is dark, nearly black, cut short at the sides and longer on top, and it falls across his forehead in a way that would look careless on anyone less devastating.
On him it looks deliberate. Everything about him looks deliberate.
His eyes are amethyst. Not violet, not purple, but the deep, fractured color of the gemstone itself, luminous and layered with depth, and they are fixed on Bryn with an intensity that makes his skin prickle from twenty feet away.
There is something in that gaze that Bryn can't identify, something that goes beyond curiosity or scrutiny, something that feels almost physical in its weight.
His mouth. Bryn shouldn't be looking at his mouth. But he is, because it's the kind of mouth that could deliver a death sentence or a kindness with equal ease, full-lipped and expressive, and right now it's set in a firm line that gives nothing away.
Prince Ithyris is the most breathtakingly handsome person Bryn has ever seen, and Bryn is suddenly, acutely, painfully aware that he is wearing his sister's worst dress and he hasn't slept in two days and there are wilted flowers in his hair and he is about to deceive this creature and his entire court and almost certainly die for it.
It's not the dying that bothers him in this moment, which is unexpected.
It's the idea that this prince is going to look at him and see the deception and the disappointment and not whatever it was that just passed across his face, that focused, startling intensity that Bryn felt in his sternum.
He reaches the base of the dais. He curtsies the way Mithri would, bending his knees and lowering his eyes and holding the pose for a count of three while his thighs tremble and his heart pounds so hard he's certain the entire hall can hear it.
When he rises, he lifts his gaze to the king first, because that is protocol, and inclines his head.
Then he looks at the prince.
Something is wrong.
Ithyris has gone still. Not the composed stillness of a prince at court, but the rigid, locked stillness of a predator who has caught a scent he wasn't expecting, and the difference is unmistakable.
His nostrils flare. His pupils blow so wide the amethyst nearly disappears, swallowed by black, and the effect is startling and animal and deeply, inexplicably intimate in a way that makes Bryn's breath catch.
His hands grip the arms of the throne and Bryn can see his knuckles going white from here, can see the faint protrusion of claws pressing out from beneath his fingernails, and his whole body has gone taut with something Bryn cannot name and is not entirely sure he wants to.