Chapter 63
The dress swirled around me, a gaudy concoction of tulle, satin, glitter, and lace. The skirt was shredded silver tulle that swept past my knees. The bodice was satin and lace. The entire bridesmaid’s dress was covered in red glitter, which looked like the fine sheen of blood splatter.
I’d once seen Jagger squeeze a being in his fist so tightly it had exploded. The blood had sprayed out in a rainy mist. Everyone within ten feet of him had been covered. This was the same. My dress looked like I’d been caught in blood rain.
I stared into Last’s conjured mirror. “I look like a deranged ballerina.”
“Hmm.” The fabric of Last’s wedding dress rustled as she came to stand behind me. She looked exactly as she’d hoped. Terrifying. Horrifically beautiful. A black widow spider in all her splendor.
We were in a suite the Bard had conjured not far from the wedding hall. I was jittery, my nerves strung tight, a permanent crawling sensation at the back of my neck.
Before I’d left, Jagger had given me orders.
He was moving pieces I wasn’t aware of, sowing hate and shifting loyalties.
“Their end is coming,” he’d said. “I want them alive for the finale. If there’s chaos at the wedding, you protect .
. .”—his flat gray eyes had flickered—“protect the worst of them. The Clark. Primus. Last.”
“Not Luvic?”
Jagger had laughed and sent me away. I’d left loaded with enough explosives, poison darts, and snakes to kill three dozen conjurers. Rou had called them my wedding favors.
The explosives were in a small velvet cinch purse. They looked like white rice. Traditionally, people tossed rice at the bride and groom for good luck, but when this rice was thrown, it exploded in violent bursts.
My darts were strapped to my thigh. They were covered in Smith’s Folly, which would kill any Smith in minutes.
“Just in case,” Rou had said.
Before I’d left, Jagger had tossed me a bag full of his blood snakes. They were the size of worms, but when they hit the ground, they’d erupt into full-size venomous snakes that attacked anything that moved. I’d put the bag in the cinch purse with the rice and added Rou’s Perk Me Up powder.
Last frowned at my bridesmaid’s dress, her mouth pulling down at the corners. “You’re right. It needs something else.”
She twisted her hand, and the dress shifted around me.
Its fabric was scratchy and tight, but at her conjuring, it tightened even more.
I sucked in a sharp breath, and the bones of the corset dug into my ribs.
My breasts spilled higher, starkly white against the dress’s silver and bloodred glitter.
My high heels boosted, sending me two inches higher.
My indistinct brown hair twisted into knotted braids, worked through with slashes of dark red ribbon.
The glitter splatters on the dress spread until they were red capillaries and bloody veins mapping the surface of the gown.
At her final twist, my bare face was covered in makeup.
Smoky silver eyes and deep red lipstick.
Before, it’d been easy for people’s gazes to move over me without stopping. There was nothing unique or interesting about me to hold their interest. Now, they wouldn’t be able to look away.
“That’s better,” Last said with a tight smile. “You’re almost as terrifying as me.”
She patted my arm as I stared at myself. I looked evil. I looked like a nightmare.
“I want champagne.” She nudged me, a small pout on her black-painted lips.
“Now?”
It was less than thirty minutes until the wedding ceremony.
The guests had arrived. I could hear the murmur of their voices and the trickle of orchestral music from the hall.
There was a taut nervousness in the sound, as if the strings had been pulled too tight and the people were speaking too quickly.
Last’s nostrils flared. “Yes, now.” She pinched my arm. “I’m about to marry a Bard, Mari. Have a little sympathy.”
I gave her a flat stare. “You said you wanted to marry him.”
“Don’t be stupid. Of course I want to marry him.
It doesn’t mean I’ll enjoy it. I hate him.
He’s like a songbird. So pretty. So showy.
The whole world loves him. He flutters around—nothing ever bothers him.
Always laughing. Always smiling. Always getting his way.
Look at him. He has a mother who loves him.
A father who’s proud he killed his siblings.
He even loves someone. How dare he love someone? ”
I frowned. What did she mean? Was she talking about Cora? She’d mentioned she’d seen Luvic with a redheaded woman. “What?” I asked. “Who?”
Last blinked. Then she waved her hand, scowling.
“Nothing. No one. The Bards are always claiming to love someone. Humans. Conjurers. Creatures. They don’t though.
It’s a lie. I’ve caught him in it. He seduces someone one minute and then nearly kills them the next.
He’s fickle. Inconstant. Betrayal is in his blood. I’m nervous about my wedding night.”
I coughed. Then hit my chest. Then pulled in a breath. The corset was way too tight. “Well . . .”
If I had my way, there wouldn’t be a wedding night. There wouldn’t be a wedding.
“I’ll get the champagne.”
Last nodded. There was a faraway, daydream look in her eyes. It made me shiver. I hurried from the room and half-jogged down the hallway. There was a bar at the back of the wedding hall stocked with thirty bottles of chilled champagne.
At least one hundred conjurers had been invited, although I wasn’t sure how many had shown up. It wasn’t every day an heir got married, but the last time the conjurers had gathered, a whole host of them had died.
I rounded the corner then grabbed the wall, wobbling to a halt.
Luvic.
He was in a sleek black tuxedo. His hair was slicked back.
He’d shaved, and a citrusy, woodsy cologne stuck to him.
There was a single dark red rose pinned to his chest, and a red silk square in his pocket.
He looked like he hadn’t sleep well. There were fatigue lines on his face and shadows under his eyes. He held himself with a weary tautness.
I stilled, sensing the jackaltooth lurking under his skin, clawing at his bones, aching to tear free and ravage everyone in the wedding hall. He’d locked all his emotion deep inside, but I could hear the chains rattling.
No. Actually, that was the jackaltooth rattle scraping from his throat.
I flinched as his dark gaze flicked over me. Then his lips turned up at the corners, and he smiled.
“This isn’t exactly the wedding I had in mind when I made you that memory.”
I pressed my hand against the cold wall, steadying myself.
During the games, Luvic had created memory knots for me, and one of them was of us at a wedding.
Luvic in a tux; me in a white dress with a flower crown.
He’d kissed me, love in his gaze. That was when he’d thought everything would turn out, and Finn and I would have a wedding, and he’d walk me down the aisle.
This wasn’t anything at all like Luvic’s dream.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said.
His eyes darkened. “Yes. I do.”
I stepped away from the wall, nodding.
Maybe he did. I knew a lot about doing things I didn’t want to.
We stared at each other, neither of us speaking, neither of us moving.
“I invited some . . . old friends of yours.”
He tilted his head, catlike, then his smile widened. He reached out and touched the space between my eyebrows. “What’re you up to?”
“Mischief.”
His smile turned to a grin. “Which old friends?” He tapped his bottom lip, but suddenly, his amusement faded, and he pierced me with a predatory stare. “Which old friends, Mari?”
I took a step back.
“What did you do?” he growled, a rattle working in his throat. “This wedding is a trap for anyone stupid enough to try and interrupt it. Mari—” He reached out, whip-fast, and gripped my arms. “Who did you invite?”
His eyes flared orange, and a jackaltooth snarl slipped from his throat.
My heart thundered. Luvic’s fingers tightened, and goose bumps climbed over my arms.
“Don’t threaten me.” I couldn’t look away. He’d transformed into a predator, and every instinct shouted that if I looked away, he’d tear out my throat.
His chest rose and fell with quick breaths as if he were working to hold a beast inside. He shook his head and let out a string of violent curses.
“Is it Finn?” he asked.
I laughed. “No.”
Luvic swore again. “How did you even find them? I didn’t want them here. I didn’t want them to risk— If they die—”
He was cut off by a loud chirp.
I frowned.
The chirp sounded again.
“What is that?”
Luvic’s cheeks turned pink. The tension in his frame fell away. “A cricket.”
“What?”
He touched the red silk square in his jacket pocket. “A wedding gift from my bride. The stupid thing wouldn’t let me leave without it.”
I peeked at Luvic’s pocket square, and sure enough, there was a little brown cricket tucked into the silk.
Last gave Luvic a cricket? I shivered, remembering the story she’d told me about her little pet. “That is disturbingly odd.”
“Says the woman who looks like an extra in a B-rated slasher movie.”
I scoffed. “B-rated? Excuse me. This is a high-budget affair. I’ll have you know I spent countless hours in hair and makeup.”
Luvic leaned back against the wall, thudding his head against the stone.
Thud. Thud. Thud. “I can’t . . .” He wiped his eyes, holding back a laugh.
“I can’t. You are such a pain in my neck.
We’re all gonna die, Mari. There are certain people you never invite to weddings.
The exes. The estranged. The embalmed. You don’t invite dead people to a wedding.
” He ran his hand through his hair, messing up the slicked-back styling.
The cricket chirped again. “See? Even the cricket agrees, and it’s a cricket. ”
I reached out and tweaked his bow tie. “It was crooked.”
He looked down, his gaze filling with surprise and then a flash of warmth. “Mari?”
I put my hands on his shoulders and brushed a kiss across his warm cheek. The kindness felt like a hundred wasps stinging at once. “It’ll be okay.”
“No,” he whispered, clutching my blood-splatter dress. “It won’t.”
“Take note,” Primus drawled, stopping as he rounded the corner, “the groom and the maid of honor show a lack of respect for my sister.”
I tried to step back, but Luvic grasped my dress.
When I frowned at him, he gave a slight shake to his head.
He bent down and pressed his mouth to my ear, whispering, “Don’t let them die.
” Then he pulled away and turned toward Primus, straightening his tuxedo’s sleeves.
“Primus. Amazing. I was just thinking, ‘I wonder when I’ll see my delightful brother-in-law again. I do hope he pops around the corner and delights us with his wit. Not creepy. Never creepy. Ready? Let’s go in.
I can’t wait to stand under the arch, watch my bride float down the aisle, and get married for an eternity of bliss.
’” He gave his megawatt Bard grin. “I’m overcome with ecstasy. ”
Primus ignored him. Instead, he focused on me. It felt as if he were peeling the layers off my skin and poking me with cold metal instruments. He was dissecting me, and I wanted to squirm under his inspection. I held still and stared back.
His lips curved into a gaunt, tight-skulled smile. “I like you in blood—”
Luvic stiffened.
“—red,” he finished.
I smiled, fluffing my skirt. “It’s crimson.”
Primus’s smile widened. I could hear what he was thinking: Take note, Mari doesn’t know how to address her betters. He twisted his hand, tying a clove hitch knot and forming a black, wilting rose.
“Stunning,” Luvic said dryly, staring at the curling, wilted edges.
Primus stepped forward and pinned the rose to my bodice.
His long, cold fingers drifted over my collarbone.
“It is,” he said, staring at me. “But be very careful. The thorns are poisonous. I find deadly things to be the most enticing.” He stepped back, his cold gaze flat.
“Take note, if you want the Bard heir to live, you’ll not kiss him, you’ll not touch him, you’ll not be intimate with him again.
He is marrying a Clark. We do not share. Understood?”
I thought about the conversation we’d had in the catacombs. How Primus had said he liked the thought of what he and I might do together. I think he was warning me that while Last wouldn’t share Luvic, he also wouldn’t share me.
I leveled my gaze on him. There was no softness there, no humor, just a command and the expectation of obedience.
During the games, Luvic had taken me from the Clarks. Now, Primus was trying to take me back.
Luvic growled. Primus smiled.
“You can try to kill me—”
I held up my hand, cutting Luvic off.
Jagger had ordered me to protect the Clarks. If there was a fight, I’d be on Primus’s side. Luvic wouldn’t stand a chance.
I looked into Primus’s cruel black eyes and gave him what he wanted. “Yes, Heir Clark. I understand.”
Primus’s face filled with grim approval. “Good. Now, go find my sister. It’s time for her to marry. And Mari . . .”
I turned back, already slipping down the hall. “Yes, Heir Clark?”
“You’ll dance with me tonight.”
I hurried away, grabbing a bottle of champagne as I rushed past the wedding hall. I popped the cork and took a swig of my own liquid courage.