Chapter 24 #3
Short sleeves capped her shoulders, stiffened just enough to hold their shape, edged with the same dense goldwork as the bodice.
The veil fell from the back of her head in a single, uninterrupted length of sheer fabric that reached past the train of her gown.
Its edges were embroidered to match the skirt’s hem exactly, the same motifs repeated at the same scale, as though the veil were an extension of the dress rather than an accessory.
When it brushed against the gown, the gold met gold seamlessly.
Her shoes were barely visible, but unmistakably part of the design: pale gold, netted flats, embroidered and decorated to the same obsessive standard as the gown itself.
Her hair beneath the veil had been fashioned to fall loosely down her spine, the dark curls manipulated into glossy waves by the attendants—but that had been an hour ago, now. Already, her curls were fighting to bounce about in their usual, wild way.
Eiko averted her eyes from her reflection, her breath shallow.
Would it help if I told you that you looked beautiful? Hymn asked.
Are you serious? she asked dryly … because there was just one small problem.
Her gaze skirted briefly back to the mirror again, sighing at the presence of mottled bruises. They covered her head-to-toe, including a nasty discolouration along her jawline.
Chasin had been travelling when the flyers began to circulate the city two weeks ago—something Eiko only discovered that afternoon, when she stepped into the greenhouse and encountered a new poison recipe, with a note attached.
Recruit,
I have been called away on vital business—not that it matters, as you don’t appear particularly adept at this craft. I’m sure I will return long before you figure this one out.
Commander Chasin.
It was doubly insulting, as the recipe had only taken her an hour.
When he returned a week later and discovered that she was to be wed to his brother, he ended their sessions, telling her to work twice as long with Cairn until her wedding day.
Standing there before the mirror, she finally understood why.
The King of All and his youngest son were fighting over her again.
She wore both of them on her skin. The exquisite dress was beaded and embroidered to the point of excess, turning her into a walking artwork, a decoration, a castle ornament, screaming that she was soon to be owned by the royal family.
It was stamped over every inch of fabric.
But Chasin had gone a step further and stamped his own brand of ownership directly into her skin.
Queen Noemi suddenly appeared behind her, forcing Eiko to tamp down on her reaction to startle and meet the queen’s eyes in the mirror. Instead, she released her second sight and turned towards the sound of the queen’s hissed inhale.
“How are the bruises even more prominent after she’s been covered up?” Queen Noemi demanded.
“I’m sorry, Your Grace. We tried to powder them—”
“Fetch my son,” she said with a sigh. “Prince Chasin. Hurry now.”
The attendant bobbed into a curtsy that rustled her skirts against the stone and hurried out.
The other attendants, who had moments ago been adjusting Rion’s hem and smoothing the fabric of her veil, had gone very still.
Rion had been dressed the same as Eiko—something they might have giggled and dreamed about when they were little.
Eiko couldn’t remember if they had ever fantasised about their weddings, as they had giggled and dreamed and fantasised about so much.
Once upon a time, before the horrible night she followed Chasin into that cave, she might have even dreamed of this exact wedding, exactly as it was happening.
She and Rion dressed in matching exquisite, gold-trimmed gowns. Both of them walking the aisle together, towards brothers, no less. Towards a future as sisters by law.
Towards golden princes.
The dream sounded utterly foolish now. She didn’t need a wedding to know that Rion was her family.
She didn’t need an exquisite dress—a few scattered gemstones would have been nice, but she didn’t really need those either.
She certainly didn’t need a golden prince, though she supposed the one she was getting wasn’t so bad.
He would have been better if he had bothered to speak to her since their engagement, or if he had allowed her engagement ring to be set with a diamond.
Basically, the adult reality was far more complicated and multifaceted than the childhood fantasy.
There were layers of grief, of hope, of fear, and of disappointment—mostly due to the lack of gemstones.
There was curiosity and intrigue for Ceran, but also guardedness and confusion.
There was a pervading sense of being trapped and also a sense of being stuck on her lack of gemstones.
She waited, her dress seeming to grow heavier by the minute, until she heard footsteps returning to the corridor outside, quick and uneven with nerves. The door opened, and an attendant slipped through.
“Your Grace.” The attendant’s voice was tight. “Prince Chasin requests that … that the bride be brought to him.”
“Of course he does,” Queen Noemi said with a sigh.
The attendant swallowed. “He asked that she be brought immediately. Alone.”
Rion apparently took an involuntary step forward, if the dismay of her fussing attendants was anything to go by. “Alone?”
“The veil still isn’t right,” the queen sighed out, ushering Rion back to the mirror. “Must I do everything myself?”
The attendant shifted her weight, clearly bracing herself. “If—if the bride will follow me,” she whispered, seeming to direct the words at the floor.
Hymn stirred, curling up to her neck. I don’t like this.
It’s Chasin, she replied. What’s to like?
Eiko turned for the door, the skirt of her gown shifting heavily around her legs.
“Mind the hem,” the queen snapped after her. “Do not damage that dress before the ceremony.”
Eiko inclined her head, a perfect, practised motion—the gesture hammered into her with evening after evening after evening of tiresome instruction from the royal attendants. “Of course, Your Grace. I will return abruptly.”
Momentarily, Hymn corrected her.
“Momentarily,” she quickly amended. It seemed that even with the supposed enhanced cognitive abilities given to her by her abnormal Silencing, she was still very slow to learn proper court manners.
Perhaps it was that she was uninterested, or maybe that she continuously fell asleep during the evening sessions.
The attendant opened the door wider and stepped aside. Beyond it, the corridor stretched away, hushed and squeaky beneath her flats, lined with guards who stood rigidly to attention as Eiko emerged.
The attendant led the way at a brisk pace.
Eiko gathered the front of her skirt just enough to walk, gold-threaded fabric sliding over polished stone.
They turned once, then again, moving away from the Crown Spire.
Away from the waiting guests. She had been informed during one of her evening sessions the week before—by the same uppity attendant who first escorted her and Rion into Brightfort—that there was an obelisk constructed at every major intersection in the capital, reaching as tall as the tallest buildings in the street.
He called them the Spires of Goldmoor and said that they had solid granite cores and were layered with polished sheets of quartz and gold, with many different faces to reflect sunlight in every single direction.
The Crown Spire was, of course, the tallest and the grandest, standing front and centre in one of the foremost forecourts of the wider Brightfort grounds.
Finally, the attendant stopped before a closed door, but she seemed to be too scared to knock. Instead, she whispered, barely audible, “He’s inside.”
Then she fled, skirts fluttering, footsteps retreating far too quickly to be polite.
Eiko stood in the corridor, the silence pressing in close, but she wasn’t alone. She could hear the slight shifting, breathing, and muttering of the Kingsguard soldiers that lined the hallway.
Hymn vibrated with tension, curling tighter around her neck. Eiko lifted her chin, squared her shoulders as best she could beneath the weight of silk and gold, and raised her hand to the door.