Chapter 16
Sadira
We were married on a Tuesday at the Belas Shores courthouse during spring break so that Aleda could travel to stand as my witness.
It also allowed Lorn’s father, Marcus, to return from their migration so he could stand for Lorn.
Mer didn’t have weddings—Lorn said they had a public choosing ceremony where lots of people selected their mates at once—so neither he nor his father knew what to expect.
I explained to him that elvish weddings were usually incredibly lavish affairs, sometimes lasting for days, with large gatherings and equally large costs.
I had taken out a loan to apply to the community college here in town, and Lorn only made so much money selling fish and clams to the workers at the dock, and obviously my parents weren’t going to contribute anything to our wedding, so I took him and our witnesses to the courthouse in a wyvern cart.
“You sign papers? To say you’re mated?” Marcus asked as we stepped out of the carriage onto the cobblestone street.
Lorn’s father was an inch or two taller than him on legs and looked nothing like him.
He had a bulkier frame and a thicker neck, and he had a head full of long, dark quills that held his head-fins instead of hair.
His skin had more grey on it than Lorn’s did, but I wasn’t sure if that was genetics or sun exposure.
But I supposed, when I compared their faces, I could see some similarities in their features.
Marcus had come to dinner twice at our little rental house in the last three months, and I liked him immensely, even if he was as skeptical of cooked food as Lorn was.
He was still clearly baffled by our relationship and Lorn’s decision to leave the sea, but he tried hard to be supportive of what his son wanted anyway, and I loved him for that.
He brought us black clams each time he visited because Lorn had told him I liked them.
Today he carried a wide, flat, paperboard box, that he said was for after the wedding, but he hadn’t explained beyond that.
“Marriaged,” Lorn corrected him, incorrectly, but I left them to it. Aleda and I had tried to explain what marriage was in our culture on the way over, but he just understood it as a permanent bonding. That was fine.
Lorn straightened the lapels of the jacket we had purchased for his father to wear, and I have to say he looked very dapper in it.
Lorn did too, dressed in a tailored linen suit coat and dress trousers.
I’d learned quickly that his clothing had to be super lightweight because he couldn’t sweat or dissipate heat in the air efficiently, and he’d overheat quickly in thicker layers.
He’d had enough practice with walking over the last few months that he only brought a cane to use today, though he still used his wheelchair for many of our outings.
His hair was slick and shiny as it hung down past his shoulders because I’d brushed it extensively early this morning.
My face heated when I thought about the things we did after brushing his hair because of the noises he’d made while I brushed.
The man loved having his hair played with.
I wore my champagne-colored silk dress with a ruched waist that was painted with delicate flowers, and Aleda wore a soft green, long-sleeved mid-length dress that was more modest than anything I’d ever seen her wear.
I didn’t even know she owned a dress that fell below her knees.
“Did you buy that just for today?” I asked her quietly as the realization dawned.
“Obviously,” she said out of the side of her mouth, with a playful expression like I was slow.
“I’m not going to wear one of my mini-skirts to a wedding.
My mother would die. Don’t worry, she gave me the money.
” She flipped her long silver-white hair over her shoulder and stopped with me to wait as Lorn carefully climbed the stone stairs to the courthouse entrance.
He didn’t need help as he chatted with his father while we walked, but I still hovered at his elbow protectively.
Aleda gave him a surreptitious glance from where she stood between the columns of the courthouse portico, her gaze bouncing from his face to his hands, cane, outfit, and hair in the blink of an eye.
“He doesn’t have a brother, does he? Cousin?
Is his dad single? I could be your new mom,” she said with a wink, still out of the side of her mouth, her eyebrows bouncing as she teased me.
I rolled my lips between my teeth to hold in my laughter, not wanting to draw the men’s attention. “Your parents wouldn’t disown you?” I asked her under my breath as Lorn’s father, Marcus, opened the door for us.
Aleda gave a little shrug as we entered, toying with the ends of her hair.
“Hard to say. But the way he looks at you tells me it would be worth it,” she said with a little smirk.
Our footsteps echoed in the cavernous room.
There was paperwork to fill out at a registration desk, and then the magistrate called us into the courtroom.
The magistrate was a lorelai woman, a race related to the mer, and didn’t seem to think it odd that an elven woman was marrying a merman.
The ceremony was perfunctory, with the officiant giving us instructions on where to stand and what to say, and Lorn repeated the vows she gave him perfectly, looking very proud of himself as he did, and my heart swelled with pride for him too.
I did the same, vowing to be his wife for better or for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, for as long as we lived.
It seemed like the words I spoke settled heavily on him as I said them, as if he was taking in what they meant for him, and for us, and his hands began to tremble in mine, his expression so tender and possessive.
“Do you have rings?” the officiant asked when I finished.
I was surprised when he reached into his pocket and pulled out a beautiful antique gold ring set with a small pearl between two smaller diamonds and slid it onto my finger.
It was striking and I was instantly fascinated with it, imagining him pulling it from some long-lost shipwreck.
“Thank you. It’s beautiful,” I told him, before turning to Aleda so she could give me the wedding ring that had belonged to my paternal grandfather when he was alive.
It was a simple gold band with an elvish blessing inscribed inside, wishing for love that lasts and many generations of children to follow the wearer into the afterlife.
“I have the flowers,” Marcus said kindly, stepping up behind us to open his box. Inside were mounds of gorgeous pink, purple, and white flowers, all strung together with bits of coral and seashells in between. “The first one goes on his head,” he told me quietly, holding the box out to me.
I reached inside and gently cradled the blooms in my hands, lifting them out to see that it was a flower crown, perfectly sized for a man’s head.
Lorn lowered his head, and I set it on top, remembering back to the days when we had done this as children and he had giggled at me.
He wasn’t giggling now though. If I’d thought him proud before while saying his vows, that was nothing compared to now.
His gaze was poignant, and a fierce pride shone in his eyes that I knew was making me blush all the way down to my toes.
He reached for the second pile, pulling it out to reveal a much longer loop of flowers that he set carefully around my shoulders so that it sat as a necklace.
“It’s so beautiful,” I breathed, and looked up to see a bigger smile on Lorn’s face than I’d ever seen in our lives.
Marcus looked very proud of himself, too, and it was so endearing I couldn’t help my enormous grin.
“You are pronounced husband and wife,” the magistrate said graciously. “You may kiss your bride,” she told Lorn, and stepped back to give us some semblance of privacy.
“I—we—to lip-press?” Lorn stuttered out, clearly startled, and I nearly snorted.
“Yes, Lorn. Kiss.” I bounced up on my toes, and he anticipated my action, leaning down to meet me.
I caught his lips with mine, giving him a firm kiss to seal our marriage without being overly lascivious in front of the others.
It still got a mixed response though. There was happy clapping from Aleda and the magistrate, but the look on Marcus’ face was horrified.
“Why press lips?” he asked, aghast at the display.
I burst out laughing.
I was still fighting giggles at his father’s expression after the others had left and Lorn was helping me out of my dress. “I know you said your people don’t really kiss, but I hadn’t realized it was considered that strange to them.”
“We kiss,” he disagreed, straightening from picking up my dress from where it had puddled on the floor and brushing a kiss across my cheek.
I covered the place where he’d kissed me with my fingers, holding on to the sensation a little longer.
“Your almost-kiss,” I said with a huff. He’d finally explained that he was able to pick up some of my emotions with his lips, I assumed from hormones and cortisol that might be secreted by our skin.
“I meant lip-press,” I said, losing myself to giggles again at his wording.