7. Chapter 7
Chapter 7
W ith a twin at each side, I make my way down the Tower stairs. Just as we stop in front of the door on the Ground Floor, waiting for the servant to open it for us, Farryn throws me a look.
“Don’t worry,” she whispers, “Mother has decided to only invite the family.”
I give her a smile and follow her outside, into the cold but bright September afternoon. The moment I do, my eyebrows shoot up.
Only the family?
They must all be extremely fertile, I think as my eyes sweep over the enormous crowd blocking the center of the gardens from my view.
Sylmarilla nudges me to keep walking, but before we reach the crowd, I see it part to let the Pied Piper through, a scared-looking male servant at her tail. Fixing her eyes on her daughters, she materializes in front of us, cursing in a language I don’t recognize.
I don’t know what she says, but it seems to be enough to make the twins nervous.
“Is there something wrong?” I lean to ask Farryn.
“Brother isn’t here,” she whispers.
I have to press my lips tight to stop them from curling into a smile.
“I knew it,” the Pied Piper turns to look at me with contempt in her eyes. “She probably let him bed her last night and now he’s lost interest.”
My blood boils, but before I can react, she turns to the servant standing by her side, wringing his hands. “What are you waiting for? Find him ,” she grits out.
It’s just at that moment that I hear this ethereally beautiful music sound from everywhere around me.
It instantly makes all three women around me relax. “Thank the Holy Word,” the Pied Piper breathes out. Then she turns her ice-cold gaze onto me. “Go, girl,” she barks out the order.
I guess the groom has shown up after all.
*
Fighting not to let out a groan, I let the twins lead me to the crowd. Countless pairs of eyes fix on me, making my knees wobbly even before the wall of people in front of me parts to let me through and the twins stop, nudging me to keep going on my own.
I keep standing there, my mind reeling as it struggles to take it all in. There’s a path strewn with white rose petals cutting through the two sides of the crowd, leading to a stone archway adorned with flowers.
There, I see the priest standing with the groom’s mother and sisters, the four of them immersed in a surprisingly relaxed conversation considering the panic from a moment ago. A few steps in front of them, the groom is standing isolated, clad in an immaculate ivory suit, his hands clasped behind his back and those shrewd, intense eyes already fixed on me.
Still, I just keep standing there, feeling the memories of my actual wedding threatening to surface.
I hear a confused murmur starting to rise from the audience and I force myself to get moving. Block it all out, I tell myself. This is not a real wedding. As soon as it’s done, I’ll find Lorcan, I’ll kickstart my powers with the plant and I’ll use my new-found royal status to get back to the Dining Hall.
It’s with unseeing eyes that I come to a stop in front of the groom.
Without taking his eyes off me, he dips his upper body in a subtle but elegant bow. “My lady,” he says in a near whisper.
Not knowing what’s expected of me, I do a subtle curtsy.
Almost instantly, the priest starts chanting in that same foreign language I heard the Pied Piper use a moment ago, the three women having left his side and taken their places in the front row.
It proves to be a real problem, being face to face with the groom and finding a way not to look at him without it all being even weirder than it already is.
Finally, the chanting stops.
For one long moment, there’s only silence.
Then the priest clears his throat, making the prince snap out of it. He produces a ring with one hand and holds the other out for me.
My mind blank, I just keep standing there, glancing between the ring and his face. I see a muscle jump in his jaw.
Just as this murmur starts rising from the audience, he leans to grit out, “Give me your hand.”
I do as he says. The moment he slides the ring on my finger, the audience starts cheering.
But I’m barely registering the sound because I can no longer keep pushing the emotions aside. Looking at my hand, I remember thinking it was the happiest day of my life, when Jericho made me his wife.
And now the priest is saying, “You may kiss the bride,” and as I feel the prince tug at my hand to pull me closer, I can do nothing but stop myself from falling apart.
That , and look up to give him a subtle yet firm shake of my head.
“What is the matter?” he mouths.
I just give another shake of my head.
And he’s very evidently not pleased by this, but he doesn’t push it. He just lifts my hand to his mouth and presses a kiss to it.
It’s a bit more reluctant, but there’s another bout of cheering that I use to pull my hand out of his.
Still disoriented, I let him start leading me into the crowd, where people are waiting to congratulate us individually.
This goes on and on, but it also gives me the chance to subtly keep increasing the distance between myself and the prince. Eventually, I find myself standing with the only two royal ladies who seem to want to speak to me, the rest of the crowd showing a dose of suspicious restraint.
Soon, dusk starts gathering and I become worried. Lorcan and Raven still haven’t shown up with the plant and I really need to slip out while it’s still just the wedding, not the wedding night I need to worry about.
I look around for the prince, spotting him walking away from a group of gentlemen with an expression of extreme boredom on his face.
“Would you excuse me?” I ask the ladies keeping me company, fixing my eyes on him just as he’s about to pass me by. For a second, I hesitate. Your Grace? Lord Grimm? How do I address him? “Orpheus,” I finally call out.
I watch him stop midstep, turning his eyes onto me with this indecipherable look on his face.
“That is entirely too intimate, Your Grace,” one of the two ladies rushes to whisper in my ear with discomfort in her voice. “In society, you address your husband as ‘husband’.”
I have to fight not to roll my eyes.
“Yes, wife?” the prince asks as he approaches me.
“Might I have a word in private?”
“Of course.”
“I need to excuse myself,” I say as soon as we’re out of earshot.
“Excuse yourself?” he echoes.
“Yes.”
Something flashes through his eyes. “No,” he says in a flat, final tone of voice.
“What do you mean, no?” I demand with a frown. “It’s only out of basic courtesy that I’m even letting you know.”
A muscle in his jaw jumps. He leans a little closer. “If it’s basic courtesy you’re trying to show, you’ll stop talking about leaving your own wedding. If I can make myself suffer through all this, so can you.”
With that, he turns on his heel and walks away.
But it’s at that exact moment that Raven comes to land on my shoulder and I spot Lorcan appear among the guests, looking more lost than I’ve ever seen him.
“Finally,” I say as I rush over to him, dragging my eyes down his ridiculously posh outfit.
He lets out a sigh. “These people… Servants, I guess. They practically jumped me the moment I re-entered the castle.”
“Where have you been?”
“I could ask you the same thing. Imagine my surprise when I learned that I’m the prince’s wife’s father.”
“One thing led to another.”
He takes the hint and gets the plant out of his pocket. “This was extremely difficult to find, Miss Novak.”
“ Daughter . Just in case anyone overhears.”
“It was extremely difficult to find, daughter .”
“Thank you, father .”
“What is it for?”
“It’ll allow me to get us back,” I say as I start glancing around for the quickest route to the castle.
I find it and motion to Lorcan to follow.
“I thought you already had everything you needed,” he quietly grits out as he rushes to catch up with me.
I just keep walking, putting a bunch of leaves in my mouth and starting to chew. No one stops us and it takes us less than ten minutes to get to the Dining Hall, where I breathe a sigh of relief when I sense that the portal is still open.
Wasting no time, I take a deep breath and march over to it.
But just like last time, I fail to step inside.
Letting out a dragged-out groan, I start quickly doing the hand gestures with two pairs of eyes burning holes in my back.
Nothing happens.
And there’s only one conclusion that can be drawn from this. Just like Raven went back to her cursed form, I went back to being a fully un actualized Aurora. I’ve lost my powers completely.
Swallowing around a lump in my throat, I turn to Lorcan and Raven and say, “It’s alright, I only need to find a way to get my powers back.”
It’s at that exact moment that I sense the portal close.
Then, to make matters worse, a servant appears out of thin air, saying, “Your Grace, your husband wants me to escort you back.”
*
It makes me nervous, the way the prince keeps glancing at me from across the crowd, as if I’m in for a scolding, but am being left to stew. Lorcan didn’t come back with us. I’ve assured him I’d find a way to fix this and told the servant to arrange accommodations for him for the night, but other than that, I’ve only let myself be taken back to the reception, where I’m now standing in a haze next to a table stacked with dishes, with equally distracted Raven on my shoulder.
It’s a familiar voice gritting out, “You’re confusing the flock,” that snaps me out of it.
The groom’s mother.
“What if I don’t care?” Sylmarilla protests just as my eyes land on her being nudged in my direction. “You will go stand with your brother’s wife, Sylmarilla, and I won’t hear another disobedient word like that come out of your mouth. Do we understand each other?”
“Yes, Mother.”
Perfect, I think as I watch her start walking over to me with this fake smile on her face, a bunch of ladies already flocking after her. “Darling sister-in-law. You look positively radiant.”
“Thank you, sister-in-law,” I say, my voice sounding hollow.
“I imagine you’ve been quite busy, Your Grace,” another lady addresses me, “making the prince’s apartments suitable for a couple.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “I’m perfectly content with them as they are.”
“Well,” she says with a giggle, “at least you’ll have lots of privacy.”
This makes me frown. It’s just then that the kinder, younger of the twins comes to join us. “Farryn,” I lean to ask, “once it’s time to leave, we’ll be heading straight for the Ydril Tower, isn’t that right?”
She tilts her head at me, seemingly confused by my question. “Syl and I will. Mother will be retiring to her apartments in the Grimm Tower. You and brother will be going to Graf Hill.”
What the… “Aren’t all students situated in the Towers?”
“Yes, everyone but brother.”
“He likes his privacy,” I say, trying to get more information out of her without making myself suspicious.
“Well, he does, but…” Something flashes through her eyes. “He hasn’t told you.”
I grit my teeth. “Told me what?”
“I need you to try this, Farryn,” Sylmarilla comes between us with some little cake in her hand.
I spend the next half an hour being blocked from approaching Farryn again.
Then the prince appears. “If you’ll excuse me, ladies, it’s time for my wife and I to bid you all good night.”
The crowd starts dispersing and I grab the opportunity. “Farryn, what was that thing you meant to tell me, about your brother living on Graf Hill?”
Her eyebrows shoot up. “It’s no secret that it suits him perfectly,” she says in a low voice, “but his living arrangements weren’t exactly made on his initiative. The faculty all agreed that the safest thing to do would be to isolate him. You know, after what happened.”
“Ah, yes, how could I have forgotten?”
She puts her hand on my upper arm. “Don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll make the necessary adjustments soon enough. In the meantime…” Her face lights up. “I think it’s romantic that he’ll be carrying you up there.”
I frown. “Why would he carry me?”
“Oh I won't be, don’t worry,” her brother comes to whisper in my ear. “brides who leave their own weddings don’t get such treatment. Good night, busybody,” he raises his voice to tell his sister.
Farryn smiles. “Good night, brother. Sister-in-law.”
The next moment, I find myself walking with the prince in the direction of Graf Hill, growing more confused the more I think about what Farryn just told me.
It’s only once we slow to a stop at the bottom of the hill that I register them. The steps leading up. Hundreds of steps.
I turn to look at him, finding him smirking. “You said you weren’t a complicated woman, my lady, but if you’ve changed your mind, I can get the servants to bring a palanquin and carry you up.”
Defiance makes me grit my teeth. “I will rather leave my bones on those steps, thank you very much.”
His smirk only grows wider. “As you wish,” he says, gives me a subtle bow and disappears.