Chapter 20 #2
“Eiko,” he said, and her name sounded strange in his mouth.
Because he was still a stranger to her.
The music softened and slowed, the strings trembling on a single sustained note. The queen hadn’t simply choreographed their outfits, and this moment, she had choreographed it to music. Eiko could feel the eyes of the hall pressing in, pressure rolling over her, as vast and inevitable as the tide.
She glanced instinctively towards Rion. Corvan was mirroring Ceran’s movement, drawing Rion to a halt a few paces away.
Two golden princes, two gold-draped women. It was like they were performers putting on a show. The final notes of the song began to fade, slow and deliberate.
Ceran released her hand.
Her pulse roared in her ears.
Should we run? she asked Hymn. A quick glance back at the entrance to the hall showed Kingsguard soldiers lining the wall.
The music dipped into silence.
Ceran lowered himself to one knee. At the exact same moment, Corvan did too.
The hall erupted into gasps. Eiko felt like she was going to throw up. Rion made a small, startled sound, somehow managing to appear utterly shocked and delighted and overwhelmed all at once. The delicate chains covering Eiko’s face now made perfect sense.
Ceran looked up at Eiko, his expression guarded. “Eiko Menai of Stonesigh, of the sacred Godsguard,” he said, his voice carrying effortlessly through the sudden silence.
Across the hall, Corvan spoke in the same measured cadence, his voice overlapping Ceran’s. “Rion Shulin of Stonesigh, of the sacred Godsguard …”
Ceran’s mouth twitched once, just barely, lost to a private thought he couldn’t fully restrain, before he spoke again. “When I returned to these halls, I expected more of the same. The same comfortable emptiness.”
“When I returned to these halls,” Corvan was also speaking, “I expected to fulfil a duty. To do whatever was expected of me.”
Ceran’s eyes swept her face, those gold-threaded pupils taking in the chains veiling her expression, the rigid line of her jaw. “And then you arrived.”
Corvan’s voice lowered. “And then you arrived.”
A ripple moved through the crowd, gasps and whispers exploding through the echoing space.
They’re seriously buying this shit?
Ceran lifted his chin, letting them hear every syllable. “You wear the mark of service against your skin.” His gaze dropped, briefly, to her hand in his. To her gold lace. “But you are not here to be ornamental. You are here because you are formidable.”
Corvan’s voice was bold and steady. “You are not here to be ornamental. You are here because you are exceptional.”
Who in the damned dark came up with these speeches?
Eiko caught sight of the queen standing at the very edge of the crowd, with the King of All looming over her shoulder.
She was wiping a tear from her eye, her smile tremulous.
Eiko had no idea if it was real or fake.
King Grigori was squeezing her shoulders, comforting her, looking on the verge of tears himself.
Well, she knew that was fake.
Ceran’s voice warmed, just enough to feel like a secret offered just to her, though plenty of the onlookers would still have heard him.
“The people will see you tonight, Eiko. And they won’t see a delicate princess.
They will see a woman worthy of our capital, as she has bled for Goldmoor and will continue to bleed for Goldmoor. ”
Corvan was busy saying basically the same thing until his jaw tightened, then eased with the words: “They will see a woman worthy of standing beside a future king.”
Ceran reached into his jacket and drew out a small velvet box. The hinge creaked, and the sound drew Eiko’s head back to him with a snap.
Gems.
Finally!
“Before Lyra. Before the court. In the light.”
A ring caught the chandelier fire: a glowing, polished gold … with an empty setting in the middle.
An empty fucking setting?
That’s it, Hymn growled. I am so done with this engagement.
“Eiko Menai,” Ceran was talking again, “will you accept my name and my hand and stand by me, at my side, for the rest of our lives?”
Corvan was jabbering on in the same vein, but Eiko wasn’t even listening anymore. This whole thing was beginning to feel like a fever dream, and her mind kept snagging on the same detail over and over. Why did her ring have an empty setting?
Oh. Hymn said.
Oh? Eiko asked. What? What do you know?
Chasin, Hymn answered. This was him. Look. He’s—
Hiding in a corner, I know. She lifted her head from whatever soppy, ceremonial speech Queen Noemi had prepared for her sons and sought out the corner with the most shadow. The corner that was the most depressing and hovel-like—
He’s standing in the middle of the crowd in front of you, Hymn corrected her.
Oops. She darted her eyes back to the centre of the crowd. It wasn’t hard to find him, really—he was half a head taller than everyone else, and distracted as they were, the gathered nobles were all still instinctively giving him a wide berth.
He was watching the spectacle with mild, dark amusement.
He seemed especially pleased by the opening of the ring boxes.
There was a glittering, sinister black mockery in his eyes as they switched from the little box to Eiko’s face—the movement so fast and sudden that Eiko was forced to keep her eyes “wandering” along the sea of faces.
“Will you be my wife?”
What?
Eiko stood frozen, the weight of the room crashing down on her all at once, her heart pounding so hard she thought it might crack her ribs.
Oh, Hymn, she whispered, what do we do?
Eiko’s throat was threatening to close up from the sudden, brutal realisation that every single person in this room could see her answer before she gave it …
because only one answer existed. The silence of the hall wasn’t silence at all.
It was a held inhale, a hundred lungs waiting to exhale into celebration.
And she was standing at the centre of it, wrapped in gold, with an empty ring setting glinting in Ceran’s palm like a joke only one person in the room understood.
Say yes, Hymn hissed, vibrating like a panicked moth against her ribs. Say yes and live through tonight, and we can figure out how to not die tomorrow.
They’re not going to kill me if I say no, she said. Right?
Ceran was still looking up at her, his expression careful.
He didn’t really want to marry her. He didn’t even know her.
Across the hall, Rion’s smile was fixed in place so perfectly it looked like a mask someone had strapped there.
Corvan held his own ring up in offering, his posture squared and noble, his eyes steady.
The court’s attention flicked between Eiko and Rion like they were comparing jewels.
Interestingly, Rion’s own ring appeared to be without a gem.
Queen Noemi stood at the edge of the crowd with her hands clasped at her heart, tearful and glowing.
King Grigori loomed behind her, fingers digging into her shoulders.
He had the appearance of a man losing his patience and trying not to shake his wife into making what he wanted to happen, happen faster.
Eiko pulled the colours of her second sight into her vision, crystallising the hall into a too-bright, too-vivid display, adrenaline spiking through her blood.
Careful, Hymn warned.
Queen Noemi’s smile was painted on with honeyed gold that dripped like it was melting.
Manufactured warmth. Grigori’s eyes didn’t appear gold at all, not in that moment.
They were alive, a hungry, molten spark of bubbling bronze.
His clawed, clutching hands were red-tipped, the vivid red spidering up through his veins. A subtle promise of violence.
Say yes, Hymn begged. Please, Eiko.
Eiko’s mouth opened, but nothing came out.
Ceran’s brows knit, the tiniest flicker of something cutting through his charm, but before she could catch the colour of it, a swirl of pinkish white unravelled from him, stroking up her arm, soothing her.
His voice dropped, pitched for her and her alone, though the hush of the hall made every murmur feel loud.
“Eiko,” he said softly. “Breathe.”
She drew in a single, shuddering breath. Rion glanced back at her, meeting her eyes and holding them, realising that she was using her second sight. Rion’s hazel gaze widened in question.
I’m not doing this without you.
Eiko swallowed and nodded infinitesimally, but only because of the colours of panic that wrapped her best friend like ropes, winding around and around, circling her throat like a collar. Porcelain, foggy blue. Lost. Rion was so lost.
Don’t look, Hymn warned her, a breath before she would have sought out Chasin. Her monster could feel her instinct. He’s watching too carefully, Hymn told her. He’ll know you can see him if you look again.
So she fixed her attention on the man she could hear breathing right in front of her.
And because she couldn’t answer with words, because she didn’t trust her voice not to crack, or her tongue not to betray her, or her panic not to spill out and ruin everything, she did what she always did when she couldn’t bear the weight of a moment.
She grappled for humour.
She swallowed, forcing her hands to unclench from the folds of her gown. The chains over her face chimed, delicate and treacherous.
“Is …” Her voice came out rasped and quiet. “Is this the correct ring? It reminds me of my training staff. Is it a training ring? It seems to be missing a gemstone.”
A couple of nobles made confused little sounds. A laugh tried to burst out of someone’s mouth before it got strangled halfway to death.
Ceran froze, just for a breath, then his lips twitched. He recovered faster than she expected, smooth as silk.
“Later,” he whispered.