Chapter 13
ILSEVEL
I am dragged from bed well before the appointed time of my nuptials, giving Mother and her ladies ample opportunity to ready me for the blessed event.
It is a long, laborious process of bathing, scenting, combing, preening, trimming and polishing, all in an effort to make me the most perfect version of myself. A worthy gift for my husband.
Nausea churns in my gut, right in that space where the wound throbs. I’ve always known I would be some man’s prize in whatever marriage my father arranged for me. Only, in my imagination, the groom was some stranger, like the Shadow King; a fearful but unknown entity.
I never thought I’d end up joined to a man who so openly hated me. A man whom I despise in turn. All because of a single, foolish letter . . .
I frown slightly, even as one of my mother’s ladies plucks an offending eyebrow hair.
It is strange, is it not, that a letter full of stupidly-expressed passion from so long ago could motivate Artoris to leave his mage’s citadel and travel across worlds.
For what purpose? Pure revenge against me?
This seems out of character. While I don’t doubt Artoris would gladly take whatever revenge was most convenient, I simply don’t believe I mattered to him enough to venture so far out of his way.
Maybe his hatred for me runs deeper than I thought.
Or maybe . . . there’s something else at play. Something I would understand, if only I could remember that night in Lamruil’s temple.
Lyria’s face appears suddenly in the murky glass of the mirror before which I stand.
My heart jumps with surprise. I start turning to her, only for three different waiting ladies to cry out in protest. Lyria smiles over my shoulder and plucks a comb from the lady at my back.
“I’ll take over this,” she says, wriggling her fingers dismissively.
The lady growls with ill grace but removes herself, and Lyria takes over combing with an aggressive vigor.
My mother, becoming aware of Lyria’s arrival, turns an icy gaze from her inspection of my wedding jewels. “Your presence is not needed here,” she says sternly.
Hastily, I grab Lyria’s hand and shoot my mother a pleading gaze. “Let her stay,” I say. “I . . . She knows how I best like to style my hair.”
Queen Mereth looks down a disapproving nose.
She hates Lyria with every fiber of her being, more even than she hates Lady Fyndra, her mother.
But she is far too cool and collected to let such hatred get the best of her.
Without a word, she sweeps from the room and into the adjoining chamber where my wedding gown is being prepared even now.
I listen to her voice giving last-minute instructions about the beadwork on the hem.
Certain my mother’s attention is occupied, I look into Lyria’s eyes in the mirror glass. “Where were you?” I demand in a tight whisper.
“Sorry for abandoning you, Ilsie,” she says, which is hardly an answer. “I’ve been . . . looking for a solution.”
“A solution to what?”
“To our little problem.”
“Which little problem?” There are so many to choose from these days; I’m positively awash in problems, big and small.
Lyria merely grins and taps the top of my head with the comb. “I’ll let you guess at that. But rest assured, I may have found the answer we need.”
I purse my lips, unamused by her obliqueness. “Unless you’re concocting some sort of spell that will transform Artoris into a toad at a handy moment, I’m not sure there’s much else that will help me now.”
She casts a brief glance at the two other ladies, one working on my feet, the other on my hand. Then, inclining her head close to my ear she whispers, “You might be surprised.”
To my bewilderment, she kisses my temple, tosses the comb to a nearby lady, and flits once more from the room, abandoning me to my fate.
I scowl at the door as it shuts behind her, some of my old dislike stirring in my breast. The least she could do is stick around until the vows are stated, the toasts all drunk, and I’m bundled off to the wedding suite for my not-so-gentle ravishing.
But she’s gone. I feel truly abandoned as the ladies, their ministrations complete, lead me to the next room.
There follows the arduous process of donning my wedding gown, with its structured undergarments, its bountiful petticoats, and its many yards of embroidered gold silk, trailing from train and sleeves and shoulders in a rippling waterfall.
It is a glorious creation, intended for the daughter of a king, but feels entirely out of place for such a wedding as this.
I am not, after all, marrying a prince or an emperor.
Just a lowly mage. A death mage at that.
No one seems to care, however, as they clasp jewels around my neck, slip rings on my fingers, and top my head with an ornate gold crown set with rubies.
Is all this pomp and circumstance simply to make a point?
To convince the world this marriage is as the king and queen wills and not a twisting of circumstances beyond their control?
Someone carries the murky glass from the other room and sets it before me as the final laces are tied and clasps hooked in place.
The creature in the mirror is a spectacle to be sure—like something right out of a fairy story, with gold cascading from every limb and bloodred stars glinting at her throat and set in her hair. She doesn’t look like me.
And over all shivers the darkness of an enwrapping necroliphon spell—a thin film which no eyes can see, but which my soul feels with a vividness keener than sight.
This is what you wanted, I remind myself, meeting those dark eyes in the glass. They feel as though they belong to a stranger. When you were trapped in that betrothal to the Shadow King, this is the very escape of which you dreamed.
Turning from the reflection, I face my mother and spread wide my arms to show off her ladies’ handiwork. Her gaze runs over me critically, taking in each detail. “Is it time?” I ask.
As though in answer, the chapel bells begin to ring, sounding out the hour of my doom. The song they peel is one of summoning and cheer, but to my ear, they are a funereal toll.
Many years after this day—should I live that long—I doubt I will recall with any clarity the flowers festooning the chapel or the faces of my father’s courtiers come to celebrate the union of his favored daughter.
I won’t recall the sweet incense rising from the altar or the way the flames seemed to dance in various colors as they reflected off the metallic surfaces of the gods’ statues, which grace this hallowed hall.
I will, however, remember the music. The choir of priests hidden in a gallery above the nave, singing traditional prayersongs, which echo to the vaulted ceiling.
Particularly one voice—one sour voice, ever-so-slightly off key.
It seems to rise above all others, though I suspect no one else in all that assembly can hear it.
That slight dissonance in what is meant to represent a heavenly chorus, sends a creeping shudder down my spine again and again with each swell of praise.
I lean into that feeling, welcome it almost. It's better than the awareness of Artoris’s gaze, fixed upon me with such lust-fueled loathing.
It’s better than the awareness of my father and mother’s watching eyes, both so disconnected from me and my future and all that is about to happen to me when I am wed to this man.
And it is better than the keen awareness of the dark spell enwrapping my limbs and binding me to Artoris more inextricably even than marriage bonds.
He will torture me. I know it as surely as I am breathing.
Tonight, when he strips bare before me, he will first show me the raw welts on his back, evidence of the lashes he took at the pillory.
Then he will make me pay for every cut, every scream.
Over and over again, he will make my existence hell, and he will relish doing it.
I peer up into his eyes and see the promise of my own pain there, even as he speaks the holy vows fed to him by the old priest.
When my turn comes to give an answer, I can barely manage more than a whisper of sound.
Certainly no songful prayer such as the onlookers expect from me, the king’s gods-gifted daughter.
I hear murmurs of disapproval behind me, and it brings a grim smile to my lips.
Let them grumble. Let them fret. It’s not their life on the brink of disaster.
For some reason, the stranger’s face appears in my head—that man from the garden.
The fae, with his perfectly sculpted features and godlike build.
Certainly the sort of man who will haunt a woman’s fantasies for decades to come, but it isn’t his beauty which lingers with me now.
It’s the earnest look in his eye and the strange timbre of his voice when he spoke that foreign word: Zylnala.
I find myself trying to sound out the word myself, right here, kneeling at the altar, in the midst of the final prayer. Only it will not come out right. Instead my lips whisper, “Songbird.”
I frown. Why would I say that? Why am I suddenly convinced this is the meaning of that word he spoke? I cannot possibly know it, and yet . . .