Rebellions of the Detested (the Diviners Series #2)

Prologue

Ezra

Every pink rose petal that fluttered to the ground felt like a physical blow. A personal assault.

Liv did not even like the color. In fact, she detested it. She was more drawn to the night. Deep blues and striking emeralds. To see none of those colors here felt so wrong.

“Please take your seats.” The priest's voice slithered through the rows of chairs and the council members, and the rest of the audience, high and low-born alike, all dressed in their finest, lowered in a wave.

I would have remained standing if I could, protesting this grotesque ceremony.

But my legs were bound to the legs of my chair.

I struggled against the manacles holding my arms against the smooth wood, but they would not budge.

My panic rose as the crowd quieted at the priest's command.

It was beginning. I had to do something.

I reached for my powers, but it was as though they had vanished.

The reach was met with nothing but a hollow emptiness in my very soul.

“Dearly blessed,” the priest began, and my pulse thundered. “We have gathered here today to witness...” A mistake! It was all a mistake! I screamed, but my mouth would not open. The priest continued his speech and formalities, but I could hear nothing over the rushing in my ears.

The quartet began to play, and slivers of the composition broke through the fog.

He turned and faced the onlookers with a sinister smile, and they rose to their feet once more.

They all turned at once and faced the doors behind me.

I craned my neck, desperate for even a glance as the church doors creaked open.

I did not need to see her. Her movement caught the corner of my eye.

Christine glided down the aisle. A white ruffled dress, a crown of pink roses, and a basket full of petals...

Pink again. She dropped them gracefully and nodded at each person she passed, but she did not smile.

Her features were solemn, a stark contrast to the smiles worn by the onlookers.

Each of them wide and showing too many teeth.

The music picked up, but only slightly. A composition that sounded more like a funeral march than a wedding march rang through the church.

I looked up to the ceiling, toward the paintings of the gods blessing the Diviners with magic, and begged them silently to stop this.

Surely if they cared at all, they would not allow this to happen.

But they did not answer my pleas. The gods were not here.

Helena passed slowly, the long pink gown she wore floating around her.

She hated luxurious gowns. Helena preferred to wear simple dresses, sometimes even trousers, yet here she stood, forced into one, forced out of herself.

She was more of a ghost now than the woman I had met in the Holudrums.

When her gaze met mine, all I saw was pity.

Apology. I tried to speak to her with only my eyes, tried to ask her to end this. She did not, because she could not.

I did not need to see her to know she was here.

I could feel her. Smell her. Liv passed by next.

She wore a gown that seemed determined to consume her, burying her beneath lace, pearls, and silk.

The size of it could have been comical, if not for the circumstances.

It was stark white, covered in all manner of embellishments.

Nothing more than a gaudy mockery of the kind of person Liv was.

A sheer veil covered her face, but I could still make out the tears tracking silently down her cheeks that mirrored the ones now falling freely from my own eyes.

My shouting was muffled through lips that would not part, but I knew it could be heard.

I screamed until my lungs burned, and still she would not meet my gaze.

Their procession continued down the remainder of the aisle, and I watched helplessly as each of them took their place in front of him.

I thrashed against my restraints, throwing my body against the chair as he took her hand.

Bile rose in my throat as he pulled her in and placed his hand on the small of her back.

She stood stiff, her body too still, too tight.

It felt as though the air had vanished from the room.

I could not breathe, and for a moment I did not want to.

The promise of the seven hells brought with it the promise that this would finally end.

Helena and Christine stood behind her with vacant, unblinking eyes as the priest read the vows.

“Marriage is a bond unbreakable. Stronger than any other that exists.”

No! Our bond is stronger! We are unbreakable!

We are soul-bound! This time, my mouth opened, my lips moved, I could even feel the words in my throat, but no sound came.

The priest continued his speech, every eye in the crowd fixed on Liv... on him. But no one did anything.

“Do you... Lord Stanhope... take this woman?”

No. No, no, no, no... I had to do something.

I threw my weight forward, desperate to get to her.

The chair toppled, and the little air left in my lungs was knocked free, leaving me gasping.

The commotion afforded me a moment, just a brief pause.

But then the priest cleared his throat and began again.

“Do you... Lord Stanhope... take Lavinia Dawling to be yours? To take her power as your own, to keep and control her, to act as her husband, and her lord from this day forth?”

I was hauled back up in the chair by two high priests who appeared from nowhere.

They placed me in the center of the aisle now, to be sure I had a clear view of it all.

Liv's tears poured now, soaking into the collar of her dress. Helena's hollow stare did not shift even as a sniffle escaped her. That whoreson Stanhope wore a sinister grin and stared directly at me as he said, “Yes, I do.”

A small whimper came from Liv, and I fought once more against my restraints.

I could not allow this. The metal of the cuffs bit at my skin, and blood trickled down the legs of the chair.

But I did not care. I did not stop. I could not.

The pain meant nothing. I would crawl through a bed of salt with a thousand open wounds if it would spare her from her fate.

Liv trembled when the priest turned to her and said, “Do you submit to your Lord? Body and soul?”

She was frozen, eyes wide and glassy. The color had drained from her skin, and she looked like a shell of the woman who had fought through the depths of the Verisepth to bring me back from the darkness. Her mouth opened with a slight nod of her head...

The yell I let out when I shot up in bed could likely be heard across all of Verith.

The sheets I was tangled in were soaked with sweat...

and tears. The evidence of them was still crusted in the corners of my eyes and down my cheeks.

Every single night since she left had been agony.

Restlessness. My worst fears had played out in a different macabre production every time I dared close my eyes. But this nightmare had been the worst.

It was not the mere fact that she had chosen someone else. It was that she had not chosen at all. Forced to submit to a marriage that I know she did not want. My Stellina would never have agreed to it. She needed help. She needed me. And I could not reach her.

They had issued the warrant for Hell and Liv not long after they left.

I wanted to go with her. I would have. But she had been right.

I could help her more from here, even if it meant living daily in my own version of the seven hells.

I steeled my resolve as I swung my legs over the bed and prepared to join the council.

It would be another day of hunts and executions.

But I would do what I must. And I would not find a moment of rest until this was over, until she was safe and beyond Stanhope's reach.