Chapter Three #3
“How dare you say can’t to me,” I snapped, so easily adopting the tone the true princess used on nearly everyone she met. “It is your job to escort me to the ballroom. Do so, and keep your opinions to yourself, servant.”
Fiona’s eyes darted around, chest heaving. I could tell she was looking for the guards to step in and help her.
Swallowing hard, she faced me. “Princess, if I may, please return inside so that I may help you finish preparing for your wedding. I know it is your desire as well as all of Lyrica’s that your wedding ceremony is a beautiful, pleasant affair.”
“Why wouldn’t the ceremony be beautiful and pleasant?
” I asked. “Am I not the famed beauty of the east? Is not my mere presence pleasurable? My betrothed will swoon at the sight of me, and all watching will sing of the wonder and majesty of this day, and the woman who became a bride at the end of it.” I stared her down. “Or will you dare to say otherwise?”
Her jaw worked, skin paling. “Please,” she whispered. “I beg of you, Your Majesty.”
I turned my back on her, marching away. “You begged me not to be late, and now you’re wasting time. Let’s go. My king awaits.”
It was a deathly tense and silent group that followed me through halls I shouldn’t know, but that my feet remembered with ease. Assuredly, the king sent all ten of these guards to pen me in like cattle, making sure I had no escape.
Instead, they all walked at least a pace away from me, looking like they’d get farther if they could.
Fiona muttered and fussed on my heels, hissing pleas for me to return to my room, stop this, let her help me—the begging went on.
I’m sorry, Fiona. Rounding a corner, the door to the throne room came into view. I swear, I will not let you be punished for what I’ve done, but I must do this. Anything to get back to my faywens.
I may be a liar, but I never break a promise.
Two of the guards drew ahead and swept open my doors. “Good luck to you, Princess.”
“Thank you,” I said, and stepped out onto the dais.
King Salman, ruler of Lyrica, champion of the battle of Ryen, and grand sorcerer of the Meya order, took one look at me and choked on his wine.
Hacking and wheezing, he doubled over—clutching his collar and straining as two attendants rushed to help him up and pound his back.
I couldn’t blame him for the undignified reaction. For a man who saw his daughter very little, it would still surprise him to see her like this.
Emiana’s radiant, fire-kissed hair was gone.
Well, not so much gone as hacked and cut like a blindfolded madwoman went at it with a pair of scissors.
Some patches of hair were as long as my middle finger, some were barely longer than the tip.
I left myself a few braids to hang over my face and behind my ears, but the rest were on my dressing room floor.
After making short work of her hair, the scissors transformed the wedding dress.
I sliced through the bodice, ripped the hem, cut off the sleeves, and scattered the diamonds.
I attacked the vanity with equal vigor, snatching up the rouge and face paints, and smearing them all over my ivory gown and ivory cheeks.
It was to compliment me to say I looked like the wild street jesters who danced and jumped around in dirty rags for any coin thrown at them.
My audience went deathly silent at the sight of me, and I went silent at the sight of them.
“Faeriken,” I rasped.
An army of guards stood between them, the nobles, and the altar as promised, but they were paper before a flood.
Feathers, fangs, horns, tusks, claws, beaks, whiskers, eyes of every type and color—latched on to me. Seeing straight through me. These people weren’t fae. They’d left behind their faemanity a long time ago, giving way to the beast within.
Women with feathers for hair and claws for hands.
Men with leathery rhino skin and horns growing out of their foreheads to match.
Cat eyes peering above small, wet noses and twitching whiskers.
One man hunched over, bent at the waist. The oversize tortoise shell growing out of his back was clearly too heavy to bear.
These were the faeriken, and if I didn’t stop this.
If I didn’t get free, I’d be sent away to live with them—to become one of them—forever.
I forced myself to look away and ahead, and our eyes met.
Stories of Alisdair Shadowsoul had been told across the land for generations, and grew more terrifying and frightening with each mass slaughter and unbelievable defeat he won on the battlefield.
Mama would croon his story late at night while Meli and I clung to each other under the covers, afraid he’d burst in right then.
Everything Mama said was so horrifically right... and wrong.
Curling, raven locks swept back from his forehead and were tightly bound, revealing the ivory horns poking from his scalp.
His pointed fae ears were slightly too pointed, giving away that he wasn’t quite the same as us—if the unnaturally long, lethal nails at the tip of strong, powerful hands didn’t do a perfect job saying the same.
Mama was right. He was half faeman, half beast.
He was also shockingly, heart-stoppingly, breathtakingly gorgeous.
Full, dusky lips set in a small frown, carried by a strong, sculpted jaw. He had a long, regal nose that had never known a pimple or blemish. I didn’t know how I knew, but I did. This face had never known an imperfection.
I drew closer to him—captured in his glittering, amber eyes like a bird caught in a sticky, molasses trap. I could go nowhere. I could do nothing... but go to him.
And with every step that brought me closer, his thick brows climbed higher and higher.
King Salman couldn’t speak. He’d have to haul his jaw off the floor for that.
“I—I—I have no words to explain this display,” Emiana’s father wheezed.
“Believe me, Lord Alisdair, this is a bewildering mistake.” Salman shot in front of me, bringing his half a dozen guards with him.
They all got between me and Shadowsoul. “We want nothing more than to see this union through. She will go back and change immediately.”
“There is no need.”
I blinked, confused for a moment. That deep, smooth, honeyed voice could not have come from the monster who haunted my dreams for the last week, and yet it was his lips moving.
Shadowsoul waved his hand, making the guards grab at their crystals. I gasped, eyes bugging.
Mangled, hacked locks flowed whole and new from my scalp. The face paints vanished from my gown, leaving nothing but delicate, gossamer white. Diamonds reappeared at the hem, and the thick, heavy weight of all the goop slapped on my face disappeared.
I was the shining beauty of Lyrica once again, and I could’ve screamed.
“Let us proceed,” Alisdair drawled. He turned on the officiant, who I swear shrunk under his gaze. “Begin.”
His command set up a flurry of movement. Salman pounced on me, dragging me none-too-gently the rest of the way down the aisle, and forcing his guards to squeeze and trip over themselves to remain surrounding him. Meya forbid they give the faeriken a clear shot.
“A valiant attempt, girl, but nothing, nothing, will prevent what will happen here today,” he hissed in my ear. “You think yourself worthy enough to rule? These pathetic antics reveal you. A true monarch knows that to rule is to sacrifice.”
My lips parted. I’m not your daughter. I’m not Emiana! She cursed me. Let me go, please!
Nothing came out.
“You embarrass me.”
My heart panged. Emiana’s memories had yet to crowd out mine, but those words I knew. I couldn’t recall when, why, or what happened, but King Salman had said those words to his only child many times. For as long as she had memory.
“I don’t want to do this,” I got out—a truth that was both Emiana’s and mine. “I won’t marry him.”
“You will do as you’re told,” he snapped, planting me in front of him, and leaving his guards behind. They surrounded me on all sides—boxing me in. Cutting off all chance at escape.
For all the hatred, blood, and tears between our two people, the king honored this joining of our nations and the end to the war with a ceremony beyond compare.
A golden dais rose as high as the arched windows, catching the streaming sunlight in its opulent reflection, and making the entire altar glitter. Rare, red dahlia roses tickled my gown, spreading their sweet, calming scent into the air.
I breathed it in hard, wishing for that calm as I looked anywhere but at Shadowsoul. To be near him was to stand humbled before a mountain, and know that for all your screaming, pounding, and fighting, you would never beat him.
Power radiated off him like heat off the sun—more confusing for the fact that there wasn’t a single coudarian crystal on him. What did it mean that this man didn’t need to store power, or worry about accessing it quickly.
He towered over me, rising at least a foot taller, and as wide as two of me put together. I could run through him, and break my neck in the attempt.
But you must attempt. You have to do something, my inner voice cried, eyes darting around.
Kirwan told the steward that your fictitious debt would pass to Meliora, forcing her to become a war wife in your place.
Emiana will not take care of my family. It’ll look like I simply disappeared, and Meliora would be left to the horror I tried to save her from.
The officiant cleared his throat. A short, stooped man with thick, broken veins in his nose, and hands that shook too much.
He somehow looked even more uncomfortable than me.
“Let us begin,” he said, opening his tome.
“One and all, we are gathered here in these hallowed halls to witness the joining of Princess Emiana Graycloud and Lord Alisdair Shadowsoul.”