3. Chapter 3
They came for him at dawn.
Lorne was already awake. He had been awake most of the night, lying in the enormous silk-draped bed that smelled of nothing and no one, staring at the canopy and thinking about honey and woodsmoke and the way a voice like rough stone had said beautiful, and not sleeping, and not sleeping, and not sleeping.
The knock came at first light. Hanne entered with the younger attendant, Miri, her name was Miri, Lorne had asked, and behind them a procession of servants carrying more equipment than Lorne had ever seen deployed in the service of one human body.
Basins of scented water. Oils in glass bottles, amber and rose gold.
Towels so soft they seemed apologetic about their own existence.
A tray of small pastries that Lorne looked at and could not imagine eating, because his stomach was a closed fist.
"Good morning, Your Highness." Hanne had a schedule and every intention of keeping it. "The ceremony is at tenth bell. We'll begin with the bath."
"Good morning, Hanne. Good morning, Miri." Lorne sat up and smiled at them both, and the smile was perfect and practiced and cost him more than either of them would ever know. "I hope you both slept well."
Hanne paused, very slightly, in the act of laying out the bath linens. The pause of a woman who had expected I'm ready and received something else instead. Then she continued, smooth and professional.
"Very well, Your Highness. Thank you."
"Lorne."
"Very well, Lorne."
They bathed him. They were thorough and gentle and efficient, and Lorne submitted to it, because if his body was going to be prepared for a ceremony he had no control over, the least he could do was make the process pleasant for the people doing the preparing.
The water was warm and scented with rosewater and something floral and expensive.
They washed his hair with a soap that smelled of almonds and combed it until it shone, and he sat very still and breathed and thought about the lily in the corner of the garden and whether anyone would water it today.
He thought about the garden.
He did not think about the garden. He thought about the man in the garden, which he had been trying not to do since roughly two seconds after he'd fled it, which was to say he had thought about nothing else all night.
Mate.
The word sat in his chest like a stone dropped in still water. Heavy. Undeniable. Sending rings out through everything it touched.
He had felt it. That was the part he could not reason away, could not fold into a shape that fit the life he was supposed to be living.
He had felt it. The pull, the recognition, the way his body had opened toward a stranger with a certainty that bypassed every conscious thought he'd ever had about duty and treaty and the good of the realm.
His scent had shifted without his permission.
His skin had flushed. His body had responded, wet and wanting, in a way it had never once responded to anyone, and the omega instincts that had always been so quiet and well-mannered had surged up and screamed yes, him, this one, finally.
And he had run.
He had run because he was promised. Because his father had made a vow and his family's safety hung on that vow and the borders of Aelholm would hold exactly as long as this marriage did, and Lorne did not break promises, not even promises he had not personally made, not even when keeping them meant walking away from the only thing his body had ever wanted.
The running had felt like pulling a root out of the ground. Something vital tearing. He had made it back to his chambers and shut the door and pressed his back against it and slid to the floor and shaken.
He had not cried.
He had wanted to. But crying was an indulgence that would leave his eyes swollen and his scent soured and his attendants worried, and he could afford none of those things on the morning of his wedding, so he had pressed his palms against his eyes until the pressure became its own kind of comfort, and breathed until the shaking stopped, and gotten into bed, and stared at the ceiling, and not slept, and not thought about the way that broad hand had felt at the small of his back, warm and impossibly gentle for its size.
He did not even know the man's name.
That was the detail that kept surfacing, absurd and unbearable. He had opened his mouth under a stranger and gotten slick in a garden for a stranger and been called mate by a stranger, and he could not have written the man's name on a page if his life depended on it.
He was being dried now. Miri patted his shoulders with a towel and Hanne worked oil into his skin, and Lorne watched his own hands in his lap and thought: in four hours I will belong to someone else.
In four hours my throat will be bared for a stranger's teeth and the bond will seal and last night will become a thing I carry in the marrow of my bones and never speak of.
"The gown, Your Highness. Lorne."
He looked up. Hanne was holding something that was less a garment than a statement of intent.
Ivory silk, heavy and lustrous, embroidered in silver thread with a pattern of climbing vines.
Someone had chosen well, or chosen by accident, because the vines were lovely and Lorne's chest ached at the sight of them.
The collar was high and structured, built to frame the throat and present the unmarked skin where a bond bite would go.
The sleeves were long and fitted. The whole thing had been designed to display an omega at the moment of his claiming, unblemished and ready.
Lorne stood and let them dress him.
The silk was cool against his skin and settled over him with a weight that felt ceremonial, which of course it was.
Everything about the day was ceremony. They fastened the buttons at his back with careful fingers.
They adjusted the collar, smoothed the fabric over his hips and shoulders, and stepped back to look at him, and Miri made a small sound that was either admiration or sympathy.
Lorne chose to hear admiration, because the alternative was unbearable.
His hair came next. They braided it slowly and intricately, winding the silver strands around his head in a pattern he recognized from the old texts.
The omega's coronet. The traditional style for a bonding, the braid that would be unwound by the alpha's hands on the wedding night.
Each loop and pin was deliberate. Each section was smoothed and placed with a precision that was almost meditative, and Lorne sat at the dressing table and watched himself being assembled in the mirror and thought about a low voice saying I've never seen anything more beautiful in my life.
The voice had not been talking about silk or silver thread or braids. The voice had been talking about the dirt on his face and his bare feet and his too-big shirt and his loose, unbrushed hair, and Lorne pressed his nails into his palms beneath the table where nobody could see.
"You look lovely," Hanne said. There was warmth in it that went past professional obligation.
"Thank you, Hanne." Lorne met her eyes in the mirror. "You've performed a miracle. I look almost civilized."
"You look like a prince."
"That's very generous, given what you started with."
Hanne's mouth twitched. Miri giggled and then clapped a hand over it.
They added the last of it. A thin silver circlet, jeweled pins at his temples, soft-soled slippers finer than any shoes he had ever owned, which made him miss his bare feet with a ferocity that startled him. Then they stepped back, and he stood, and looked at himself in the full-length mirror.
He looked like a prince.
He looked like somebody else's idea of a prince. Polished and gleaming and arranged for display, and beneath the ivory silk his heart was going too fast and his scent was locked down tight, a smooth neutral sweetness that gave away nothing.
He had taken his suppressant at first light, with a cup of tea he hadn't drunk. It was working. It held him level and folded the worst of him away where nobody could smell it, and it was the reason his scent was reading as a smooth pleasant nothing instead of the truth.
The tin was where it had been since Aelholm. Wrapped in a handkerchief, pushed into the corner of his own traveling case beneath the spare shirt, in the room they had just walked him out of. He had counted the tablets twice in the dark last night. Four months, near enough, if he was careful.
It was the only thing in Thessmere that was still his. He had not mentioned it to one single person in this castle, and he did not intend to.
"It's time, Your Highness." Maddox stood in the doorway in his formal blacks, ledger replaced by a ceremonial staff, his expression correct and composed and entirely Maddox. "The processional will begin shortly. If you'll follow me."
Lorne followed him.
The corridors of Thessmere had been transformed.
Garlands of white flowers hung from the sconces, lilies, of all things, though not the naked variety, and the torches had been swapped for white candles that threw a soft light and made the stone look almost gentle.
Servants lined the hallways in their best clothes, pressed back against the walls, and every one of them turned to watch him pass.
He smiled at all of them. The smiles he got in return were tentative and wondering, and a few of the younger maids clasped their hands and sighed, and Lorne thought: they believe this is a love story.