Chapter 8
The gatekeeper, drunk in anticipation of dawn and the end of his shift, didn’t ask questions, and Aster clutched her slapping skirts to dampen their sound as she wound her way through the circular, cobbled streets to her family home near the center of the colony.
A tall, narrow house located in one of the best neighborhoods, it was the only proper place for the family of Ilvar Bowen, council lord, to live.
She crept around to the night door and didn’t even have to knock because Mithri already sat on the doorstep, her shoulders hunched over and shaking. Crying in the nightmaid way, silently and without tears.
“What’s wrong? Are you all right?” Aster asked in a low voice, scanning her for any signs of injury. Had she been disciplined for Aster’s disappearance?
Mithri’s head snapped up. “Oh! Oh! It’s you! They said you’d drowned. That you walked into the sea like the Wave Wife, but I didn’t believe it.” She looked down at Aster’s sopping hem and frowned. “You didn’t, did you?”
Aster shook her head, surprised at how difficult it was not to tell her everything. Damir’s name was already on her tongue. “I fell,” she finally said. “But I washed ashore and walked back across the sand during ebb tide.”
The story felt wooden and incomplete, but Mithri accepted it immediately, bustling her into the house and up the back stairs to her bedroom to change into dry clothes, chattering all the while.
“You would not believe the furor in this house. Your mother blamed your father for promising you to Herold. Honestly, we all did, but she was the only one courageous enough to say it aloud. He blamed her for falling asleep over her tea and letting you out of her sight. She screamed at him that she is a mother, not a jailer, and left to stay with her sister. You can imagine the way your father’s been since.
Like a hurricane laying waste. He slept in his study tonight. ”
So her mother had been faulted, not Mithri. Aster’s throat tightened with relief and love. Her mother was so brave. She’d pay for her opposition for moons, if not years.
Mithri tugged a nightdress over her head and then squeezed her in an impulsive hug. “Everyone will be so pleased you’re home. Do you need anything? A powder or tea or…?”
“A bandage for my foot, if you don’t mind. And something to eat if Cook has time.” Aster sank down on the feather bed, suddenly bone-tired, and gave Mithri a grateful smile as the nightmaid hauled the heavy bundle of wet wool out of the room.
She’d intended to stay awake for Mithri’s return, but she woke to the sound of loud voices outside her room, a bandage on her foot, and a plate of cold toast and jam by her side.
“She needs rest!” Mithri’s voice came from the other side of the door.
A thumping in the hall and then her father burst in, his collar unbuttoned and cravat untied. “Where have you been, child?” he demanded, his face reddening beneath a shock of wild and uncombed salt-and-pepper hair. He’d obviously come straight from an armchair where he’d fallen asleep.
“I told you. She fell into the sea and only by the mercy of the Night Mother did she drag herself back out again. Let her sleep, my lord!” Mithri begged before Aster could get any words out.
Lord Ilvar whirled on the nightmaid. “Did you check her ribbons?”
“Tied tight,” Mithri confirmed, her mouth thinning. “Now may she sleep?”
“No. She will first dress and accompany me to give her apology. You had better pray to the twins that Herold accepts it,” he added to Aster, who found herself unable to form words in the face of her father’s bluster. “If he does not, I will march you straight to the nunnery.”
“Yes, Father,” Aster finally got out. She held her breath until he was out and Mithri shut the door behind him.
“I have time to run you a bath and lay out your clothes before daysleep. If I put out the blue dress, will you be able to do the laces on your own?”
Aster nodded numbly. This is how it would be now.
Pandering, pretending, pushing down her own thoughts so they didn’t drown her with their ache.
She had to accept the way things were, the same way Mithri had accepted that she could not keep her baby boy.
She could still smile and laugh, so it must get better.
“I’ll stay with you,” Mithri said, her gentle, sky-blue face full of concern as she returned from the wardrobe with the midnight velvet dress. She knelt in front of Aster and took both her hands. “After you marry, I mean. You won’t be alone, if that is what you’re worried about.”
Aster bit her lip, hesitating only a moment before asking, “Do you miss him? Zoran? Tell me the truth.”
Mithri’s eyes slammed shut like Aster had slapped her, but she recovered quickly. “I dream of him every daysleep, his little cries and coos. And every night, it’s like my heart has gone missing, and my body is a shell that somehow manages to walk around without it. Yes, I miss him.”
Aster squeezed her hands. “Then don’t make me promises. Much will change when the treaty concludes. You’ll be free to rejoin him if you wish, and I won’t ask you to stay.”
Mithri smiled sadly. “He won’t remember me. It’s been a year, and he was just a baby.”
“He does remember. He does. I know it.” She had to bite her tongue before she revealed any more. When Mithri retreated to her sleeping closet, Aster bathed and dressed and braided her hair into two plaits that she wound around her head and pinned tight.
Her father collected her without a word, and she walked with him, a dutiful two steps behind, to the house of her uncle.
Stuffed in an ugly brocade jacket with a collar ruffled so high it concealed part of his chin, Cousin Herold received them in the parlor, where he stood stiffly before the bookcases, his hands clasped behind his back.
Her uncle presided over the fireplace, stout and smug. “Well, well, Ilvar. We have much to discuss. I expect the young people do as well,” he drawled. Aster’s father shot her a meaningful look, and she instantly crossed the room to Herold, curtsying before him.
“Cousin,” she said demurely.
“Take your hair down,” he said, petulant as usual.
“Not even a polite greeting for your future wife?” She was already taking out the pins, conscious of the other men’s eyes on her back.
“I like to tug the ends,” he said. “You’ve made a fool of me, Aster. They said you walked into the sea rather than marry me.”
“That isn’t true.” I didn’t walk, I took a boat. She took a deep breath to fund the next lie. “I’m very sorry, Herold. I didn’t mean to cause any trouble. I was walking along the docks and slipped—”
“Clumsy.”
Pins clutched in one hand, she nodded, and her plaits tumbled down. “I was clumsy and—”
He yanked one of her braids so hard it made her eyes water. “Stupid,” he finished the sentence for her.
“Yes,” she agreed, gaze trained on the pattern in the plush carpet. “Clumsy and stupid. And very, very sorry.” More sorry than you’ll know.
Her uncle clapped twice behind her, jarring her out of her self-pity. “Well, that’s settled, then. We’ll have to rush to squeeze in a betrothal and a wedding before the Revel, but we will manage. Ilvar, can you spare—”
He was interrupted by a commotion from the foyer and, frowning, went to check on it. In his absence, Lord Ilvar gave Aster and Herold, who now stood side-by-side, an approving once-over.
“A good match,” he grunted. “You’ll keep her in line.”
“Yes, sir,” Herold said.
Aster felt it then. His right hand snaked behind her back to pinch the tender skin of her upper arm. Even through her sleeve, it was vicious. She tried to keep her face impassive, but a quiet keen escaped her lungs, and beside her, Herold gave a satisfied hum. Her pain soothed him.
Her uncle returned, ruddy face grayed and sweat beading on his lined forehead. “We may have trouble. That was a bride of Corek. The wench from across the sea has disappeared.”
Aster sucked in a breath. She was gone? How was it possible? And what did that mean for the treaty?
“Disappeared?” Herold scoffed. “Where could she go? She’s only hiding…or tripped and fell into the sea.” He snickered, and Aster deftly dodged another behind-the-back pinch.
“Disappeared from the nunnery, at least,” her uncle amended, with an indulgent look at his only son. “In any case, she must be found.”
“We’ll root her out,” Lord Ilvar agreed. “We’ll send a search party house-to-house. The council ought to assemble and draw up an emergency plan in case she met an unfortunate end. In the meantime, escort Aster home, Herold.”
“We have no chaperone—” she started to protest, but one stern glance from her father shut her up.
“A poor-man’s betrothal would not be the worst happening, given the circumstance,” he remarked. Horror crept up Aster’s spine. He meant for Herold to take her home and untie her ribbons, just like that, no ceremony or kind words exchanged.
She wanted to scream. But she could not, did not, just submitted to Herold’s malicious grip and let herself be led out of the house and down the stone steps to the street.
He dropped her elbow the minute they were out of sight of his house. “You know, I don’t want to marry you, either,” he said with a hard edge to his voice, daring her to agree that he was right, that she didn’t want him as a husband. “I would have picked someone else if I had my choice.”
I loathe you, too. I’m grateful that you will not be the first to untie my ribbons.
Someone far more worthy already ruined me.
I will keep that truth in the darkness of my heart, but it will shine like the stars, glittering and eternal.
The thing that makes a life with you bearable because you can never take it from me, no matter what you do.
Deep breath. “Thank you for your willingness to take me on.”
“You don’t need to be so miserable about it, then,” Herold grumbled. “Be pleasant and happy like the other brides.”
“Yes, cousin.” Pleasant might be a challenge, but happy she could manage.
She would be happy for the nightmaids’ daughters, who would keep their wings.
For their sons, who could stay with their mothers.
She would be happy for Mithri and Zoran, who never forgot each other.
For their king, Damir, who reunited his people.
He would remember her, and she was happy for that, too. So full of happiness, it felt like heartbreak.
“Are you crying now?”
“Yes, cousin. With happiness,” she added hastily.
“Don’t call me that,” he snapped as they reached her home. “I’m to be your husband, not some pesky brat tugging your skirts.”
His lower lip stuck out above his ruffled collar, pink and sulky.
She saw him then, really saw him for what he was.
A man barely out of boyhood, spoiled and coddled by his parents.
He’d had as few choices in life as she had.
The only power he held was over those smaller and weaker than him, and he exercised it in pinches and jabs, taking every scrap he could, even from those who had none to spare.
He would not stop. He would demand more and more until he broke her. She almost looked forward to that day because somehow, Damir would be there, as he’d promised, to help her.
“Why are you smiling?” Herold crabbed. “You’re making me feel foolish again, and I don’t like feeling foolish.”
“I was just thinking—” Aster began, scrambling for yet another lie, but he cut her off.
“Well, don’t.” She couldn’t tell if he meant smiling or thinking.
“Yes, cous—” Before she finished, he had his hand on her throat and slammed her back against her own front door, the rivets in it jamming painfully into her shoulder blades.
“I told you not to call me that,” he spat, his breath against her face humid and smelling of the fish he ate for breakfast.
“Herold?” Her mother’s voice. “Aster? Is it really you?”
Herold abruptly loosened his grip and turned his back to her, and Aster gasped, slumping enough to see her mother’s lace-trimmed parasol and the pink sprigged fabric of her favorite morning dress. She carried a small carpetbag and was clearly just returned from her sister’s.
“Lady Bowen.” Herold bowed.
“My darling. They said you’d come home, but I didn’t believe it until I saw you with my own eyes,” her mother sniffled.
“I’ve been distraught without you; it was really very unkind of you to frighten me like that!
Thank you for delivering her home, nephew.
We’ll send word when it’s time for the betrothal.
” She dismissed him with a polite wave of the lacy handkerchief she gripped and then used it to dab her eyes.
Herold sputtered, but he had no real grounds to argue, so he strode off, cursing the twins under his breath. He was sure to take it out on her later, but still, Aster felt light with relief.
“That boy,” Lady Bowen said, dropping the tearful act as soon as they were inside and the door was firmly latched behind them, “must never be allowed to touch you again.”
Aster flung her arms around her mother after she’d stowed her parasol. “I have to learn how to bear it.”
“No, I don’t think so.” Lady Bowen smoothed Aster’s hair like she had when she was a child.
“You can’t marry him, sweetheart. You simply can’t.
I don’t care about what your saltstained father says.
” Aster gasped, having never heard that kind of language out of her mother’s mouth.
Lady Bowen’s expression was grim as she barreled on.
“I won’t let it happen. It’s one thing to acquiesce to a match that is less than ideal.
A dull man or an ugly man. Manna save us, even a poor one.
It’s another thing to let a monster at your ribbons! ”
A sob tore out of Aster. Oh, to have her monster.
Her mother held her close. “I’m not sure I’ll get you out of a betrothal today, darling. But I will get you out of a wedding. Once the Nightborn king has his bride, you won’t have to go through with it. You’ll be ruined, but I can tell you there are worse fates on Salaan.”
“How, though?”
“It won’t be pretty. I’m afraid you must bleed.”