Chapter 31
Chapter thirty-one
Valenna
One fine sunny morning in Largotia, before Evander left, Valenna had mounted her dragon and soared over a blooming meadow.
It was springtime, the sky bright above her and the grass below flowing like a brook under the wind.
Evander was at her wing’s end, the breeze in his hair.
Their love was so new—untouched by guilt or the shadow of their pasts.
He’d mounted above her and then suddenly guided his dragon into a steep dive.
Somehow, before he reached the ground, he fell.
For a moment, Valenna had sat atop her dragon, staring in disbelief. Evander Trevelyan did not simply tumble from his mount on a cloudless day. He was the best. He never lost his seat.
When she reached him, he was unresponsive, bleeding from his nose.
When the physician delivered the grim prognosis that Evander had a bleeding condition in his head, fatal unless he took wyvern bone powder every day, Valenna knew in her gut that her time with Evander was limited, that there was some doom hanging over them like a cloak sewn to the shoulders of her dress—always flapping at her heels no matter how hard she tried to shrug it off.
Now, standing in the dark street, staring at the closed door of the apothecary, Valenna tried to skirt the growing conviction that doom had finally caught up to them.
Anger wrapped its spidery fingers around her heart. This was her father’s fault. He ruined her childhood, and now he was killing the man she loved as surely as if he’d driven a sword into Evander’s chest.
Yes, Valenna had wielded the magic that broke Evander’s head, but she had done it on her father’s orders. Maybe she held the shotfire, but he pulled the trigger.
She wondered how much of Cadmus was still lurking in the dark corners of her mind, telling her who she was and what she was worth.
Now she was going to sit helpless and watch Evander die; a sick penalty for her father’s sins. And Evander’s death would be the result of his mother’s crime. The children paying their parents’ debts.
As Valenna gazed at Evander in the lamplight, her love for him billowed like smoke. She could not see past it. She wanted to brand him onto her heart, permanent as a scar.
“Evander,” she said solemnly. “I want to do it tonight. I want to marry you tonight.”
At first, he seemed surprised. Then he smiled, and his smile was so radiant, she thought her feet might lift off the ground, and she’d float away.
“This is a magical bond made before the eyes of the Only,” he said. “Only death can break it.”
“Yes,” she said. “Exactly.”
“Alright then.” He took her hands. “If you’re sure. But I warn you, if we do find wyvern bone powder, you could be stuck with me for a very long time.”
“Forever. All my life and into the next.”
He leaned down and kissed her. “Forever, then.”
“We need someone to do it,” Valenna said, trying to order the details in her mind. “A rector, I think. Do you suppose they have one?”
“Witnesses, too,” Evander added. “We’ll need at least one witness.”
“Where do we get a witness around here?”
Evander released her hand and stepped up to the apothecary door. He pounded it with his fist until footsteps echoed inside and the door cracked open. Samara peered out, her forehead creased.
“What now?” she demanded.
“We need you to come and witness our wedding,” Evander said flatly.
Samara blinked at him. “Are you serious?”
“You’re the one person here who doesn’t hate us, and we need someone to come and watch.”
Samara glanced up and down the street. “You can’t just get married this late at night, dressed like that!”
“We’re getting kicked out of the village in two days,” Valenna said, crossing her arms, “so it’s now or never.”
“Please, Samara,” Evander pleaded. “It’ll only take half an hour.”
Samara pinched the bridge of her nose. “If anyone finds out, I’ll be ostracized. Forever.”
“You owe me,” Evander said, “for not sending you home when the dreadnought nearly bit me in half the night of the festival.”
She eyed him dubiously, then looked at Valenna. “You really want to marry him?” she asked. “For the rest of your life?”
Valenna beamed. “More than anything.”
“He’s handsome enough,” Samara said, rubbing her chin. “I guess that counts for something. Is he kind to you? He’s not too harsh?”
“I find he’s only harsh with very petulant children,” Valenna replied.
Samara shook her head. “No. No, I can’t do it.”
A lump sprang into Valenna’s throat.
“Not like this, anyway,” Samara continued.
“Look at the pair of you—filthy clothes, blood all over you. You’re disgusting.
” She sighed. “Trevelyan, you go to the chapel and talk to the rector. He’ll get you some warm water and a rag, at the very least. I’ll take Valenna with me and get her cleaned up, and I’ll send someone along with clothes for you. ”
“We aren’t allowed to buy anything,” Valenna objected, but Samara just waved her hand.
“My mother is the modiste, and lucky for you, I’m one of those spoiled children you’re always going on about. She’ll do it for me.”
She pointed Evander in the right direction, then took Valenna’s hand and led her down the street to the modiste.
The bell over the door chimed as Samara pulled Valenna inside the shop.
Dress forms dotted the room, displaying gowns and frocks in muslin, silk, linen, and calico. Mounted on the wall behind the counter were rolls of fabric organized into a cascade of color. The place blessed every feminine nerve in Valenna’s body.
An old woman sat behind the counter, her hands passing over a bolt of shimmering lilac silk. She murmured to herself, and a pale light gloved her knobby fingers. Valenna’s curiosity sparked; the woman was enchanting the material.
“Hello, Samara, my love,” the old woman said. Her voice reminded Valenna of crinkling paper in an ancient book.
A lovely plump woman with long dark hair stepped out of the back room. “Samara, we’re closing soon.”
“I know, Mama. This is Valenna,” Samara said. “She’s getting married in a few minutes, and I can’t let her do it dressed like this.”
Samara’s mother rounded the counter and hurried over to them. “My love, we aren’t permitted to trade with her.”
“I’m not asking you to. I’m asking you to give me a dress that I will lend to Valenna for an hour.”
“It’s fine,” Valenna stammered. “Evander doesn’t mind … I doubt I’ll be wearing it long anyway …”
“Mama, she’s getting married to the love of her life in trousers covered in dirt and old blood.
Will you be able to sleep tonight knowing you could have dressed this stunning woman, and you refused?
Look at her lines! Imagine one of your dresses on her.
She’ll look like a queen. Turning her away is as bad as a baker turning away a beggar. ”
“I’m sorry, my darling, but I can’t defy Ariadne. She’ll shutter us.”
Valenna had heard enough. She turned, but before she reached the door, the old woman exclaimed, “Valeria?”
Valenna spun around in alarm. How could she have recognized her? It had been five years, and she rarely left her father’s manor house in Sennalaith. None of these women had flown to battle with her, surely.
“Hush, Sybil,” Samara’s mother snapped. “Don’t mind my mother. She’s a bit senile.”
“I’m not one whit senile. That’s Valeria!” Leaning on a cane made from a sprawling antler, the old woman hobbled across the shop. “The Botania of Talwaith!”
This was a new layer of shock. Princess of Sennalaith, yes. Botania of Talwaith? Absolutely not.
“No,” Valenna stammered. “I’m not. My name is Valenna …”
“Don’t tell lies, child. I recall you when you were young. And you look just like your mother! None of Cadmus and his slimy face in you.”
The old woman took one of Valenna’s hands in her withered fingers. “Why have you abandoned us? Why don’t you bring back the spring?”
“Stop that now, Nonna,” Samara scolded. “Talwaith is a wasteland, remember? They call it Scathmore Barrens now.”
“Only because she won’t bring spring,” Sybil retorted, her tone accusatory.
“I can’t bring spring.” Valenna felt like she had blundered halfway into a conversation on a topic she didn’t understand. “I don’t have the right magic.”
“You have your mother’s magic.”
“But that’s not true,” Valenna cried. “I don’t.”
“Are you not listening to me?” Sybil stamped her antler staff against the wooden floor.
It echoed, like a gavel in a courtroom. “Your mother was Tahlia, and she was the Botania of Talwaith, the bringer of spring. I was there when you were born; you had violets sprouting in your hair. Then, when you were small, that wicked Ashkendoric woman gutted your mother like a partridge, and now you are her heir.”
Valenna placed her hand on Sybil’s. It was cold, the skin thin and loose as an oversized garment. “I don’t have my mother’s magic. I’m sorry.”
Samara’s mother rolled her eyes. “I’ll give you a dress if you promise not to tell anyone it came from me.”
But Valenna didn’t hear her. She sat dumbstruck, her weary thoughts circling like a little toy ship caught in an eddy.
“Thank you, Mama,” Samara said, smiling. “And I need you to send something for her betrothed, too. He’s at the chapel, or perhaps still at the apothecary.”
“Heavens, child, are you meaning to put the whole family out of business?”
“I have just the thing.” With a rustle of skirts, Sybil limped into the room behind the counter, her cane clicking on the floor.
Samara’s mother took a lavender dress embroidered with white flowers from the window display and held it out to Valenna.
“Go slip this on,” she said. “Quickly.”
“But it’s too large,” Valenna objected.
“Never you mind that. Go slip it on.”
Skeptical, Valenna took it and followed Samara to the curtained changing closet at the rear of the shop.
Removing her filthy clothes, Valenna slipped the dress over her head.
The instant it touched her skin, the bodice shrank, the skirt shortened, and the arms lengthened until the dress fit like a glove.
At first, the neckline plunged too low, revealing a few inches of cleavage.
“Ha, no,” Valenna said, and the neckline crept upward reluctantly.
Emerging from the closet, Valenna felt human for the first time since she’d left Silvanlight.
“Ravishing,” Samara said dryly. “Now the hair. Mama!”
Samara’s mother attacked Valenna with a pair of scissors and a comb, trimming, fluffing, picking leaves from tangles. When she was finished, Valenna’s waves fell glossy and thick, the edges tidy again. As she braided a few locks into a crown, Sybil returned holding a simple green shirt.
“Not that shirt, Nonna!” Samara cried.
“All the best for our Botania,” the old woman replied with a toothless smile.
“But it was Pappa’s when he went to the old wars.”
“And it brought him home again. Here”—she draped it over the counter—“it is blessed. Your husband may wear it when you return to Talwaith.”
Valenna was growing irritated. “I don’t have spring magic,” she said emphatically.
“You do! You were blessed by the sunbird. I was there. It sang over you as your mother held you in her arms.”
“Well, the sunbird was wrong!” Valenna said.
Sybil chuckled and walked away, shaking her gray head.
Samara’s mother put Valenna’s old clothes and the green shirt into a bag and shoved them into her arms. “You can keep the dress, just don’t come back here. Best of luck!”
Before Valenna could wrap her head around what was happening, she was standing in the street, clutching the bag to her chest and feeling like she’d walked into a stage play in the middle of the second act.