CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Shadow
The next day, I run several messages to Faerie while the door dries between applications of sealant.
So it’s evening by the time I finish brushing the last coat of sealant onto the door and straighten.
Pride fills me as I look at the wood, gleaming a rich brown under the golden sunlight. “I did that.”
This project’s been good for me. I hold up my hands and flex each finger, enjoying the increased dexterity woodworking has given me.
I also can’t forget my other purpose. Spinning, I find Kayla watching me from her office window, giving me one last chance to put all my newfound thirst-trap knowledge to good use.
Already shirtless, because of course I am, I make sure I’m perfectly framed by the window, then tip my head back and pour water all over my chest. I groan as the cool liquid hits my heated skin, and her excited inhale makes it clear she heard.
Leaving the door to dry, I amble back into the kitchen and grab another cold water from the refrigerator. It’s amazing how humans created technology to live in a world without magic. If you can’t buy a long-term cooling crystal bespelled by an ice dragon, you build a box that does the same thing.
A cupboard door bangs behind me, and I spin to find words already written on the kitchen parchment. “You have to help me.”
“What do you need?”
“Wedding things from the attic,” Victoria writes. “Kayla won’t do it.”
“Kayla’s working on her game.” The trip to Faerie did exactly what I hoped. She’s been writing nonstop all day. The witch also expects tomorrow’s wedding ceremony to be as horrible as the date Victoria arranged, so I can’t blame her for not wanting to help.
A feeling of sulkiness surrounds me. Next thing you know, the house will start slamming doors, which will interrupt Kayla. The only thing that should interrupt my wife is me, shirtless. Now that I’ve completed my project, I’ll have to find new thirst-trap opportunities.
“Don’t worry.” I pull a T-shirt over my head and climb the stairs. “I’ll help.”
Piles of old furniture and trunks fill the cavernous attic, surrounding the column of the brick chimney rising through the center of the room.
The various gables of the roof create an interesting ceiling full of sloping angles of girdered wood.
Evening sun slants through the windows, and a string of bare bulbs dangles over the middle of the room, casting additional light.
I turn to the parchment tacked up beside the door. “What do you want me to do?”
“Start with the clothes.”
Victoria directs me to several of the trunks. It doesn’t take long to find a tuxedo that fits me, but when I hold up the wedding dress the house has in mind, I eye it dubiously. “The clothes you picked for the date made Kayla very uncomfortable. This dress seems to be cut the same.”
“It’s a classic hourglass style,” Victoria writes. “It’s formal and beautiful.”
“Kayla’s beautiful, and she’s not an hourglass. You shouldn’t try to force her to be one.”
“It’s the dress I want, and this is my dream wedding.” The words clear to be replaced by: “Plus, I think it’s the only one that will fit. She’s taller than a lot of women.”
“I love how tall she is.” At six-and-a-half feet in my fae form, I find my wife’s height perfect, just like the rest of her.
Opening trunk after trunk, I search for alternatives. Even though I know little about the history of human fashion, I can tell the clothes are of varying styles. The staleness of the scents indicates some of them are almost a good century old.
Yet no matter how hard I look, Victoria, unfortunately, turns out to be right. I get when I find a dress the correct size, but it falls apart the moment I pull it free, the ancient fabric sighing as it shreds under its own weight.
“Told you.” Gloating fills the air.
I wrangle the original wedding dress into my arms, the multiple layers of stiff mesh poking out of the skirt as if trying to escape.
Kayla’s not going to like this.
The next morning dawns muted and overcast, with the sounds of soft rain pattering all around. Victoria wanted today’s wedding ceremony to take place in the backyard in front of the wisteria-covered arbor, but that’s now a no-go.
I shoo Kayla into her office, knowing she longs to keep working, and spend my morning turning the living room into a wedding chapel.
“It’s too bad there’s so much other furniture in here now,” Victoria writes as I shove the couch up against the wall.
“This wasn’t always the living room?”
“No, that was in what’s now Kayla’s office.”
“Interesting.” This room is about twice the size of the office. I suppose that made sense when the family made their living from doing weddings, but I agree with Kayla’s decision to use this larger space as a living room.
Once I bring down everything Victoria wants from the attic, I do what the house tells me.
I stop trying to persuade her it’s pointless to set up rows and rows of chairs when we aren’t going to have any guests.
I can usually charm my way into winning most arguments, but the house proves incredibly stubborn.
As alpha of my pack, my mother always used to say, “Pick your battles.” I now know what she means.
A few chairs aren’t worth fighting over.
I spend the next few hours trying to meet the house’s exacting standards. When Victoria finally approves of all the decorations, kitchen-cupboard applause echoes down the hallway, and every piece of parchment I pass says: “It’s time! Get ready for the wedding!”
Kayla walks slowly from her office, Dewdrop flying right behind. The witch’s lips twist. “I guess we’re really doing this, huh?”
“You agreed to it,” Victoria writes.
“Because you hid it in the fine print,” Kayla snaps.
I agree with Kayla—we were tricked into this—but I can’t match her indignation, no matter how much I understand it, because Victoria’s goal aligns with mine.
“I hung your dress on your closet door,” I say.
“Thanks.” As Kayla climbs the stairs, Dewdrop chirps in what sounds like an attempt to cheer her up. Her soft laugh drifts back to me, and I smile.
No matter what, this will all work out. I’ll do whatever’s needed to make it so.
“I do look exceedingly handsome in a tuxedo.” I spin in front of the mirror in my bedroom, admiring the way the cut of the jacket emphasizes my shoulders. “But then, I make everything look good.”
“Yes, yes, you’re very pretty,” Victoria writes.
“What’s got you in such a tizzy?”
“Kayla isn’t ready yet! She’s not even trying to get ready! She’s just sitting on the bed with the dress only half on.” A door slams downstairs.
“I told you the dress was a problem.” I walk over to the newly hung door that connects our bedrooms. I’m proud of my craftsmanship but miss the opening and Kayla’s muffled gasps every time she caught a glimpse of me naked.
I knock and call out, “Can I help?”
“No.” Her voice sounds flat and miserable, but the door clicks open. “No one can help.”
I push on it, meeting resistance. With a firmer shove, the scratchy rustle of fabric fills the air as the door finally makes it past the skirt exploding all around Kayla’s legs.
She stands in front of me, clutching the bodice to her chest to keep it from falling. Her purple hair’s swept up in a pretty up-do, and she has on just enough makeup to emphasize the beauty of her brown eyes, but my wife looks utterly miserable. “I can’t button up the back.”
The dragonet flaps around her, chittering and sounding worried.
“Dewdrop tried to help.”
“I’m sure he did.” I step forward. “Now turn around.”
“I already have on the Girdle of Doom.” Kayla tries to spin, but the skirt tangles around her legs. “The dress should fit, but…” Her shoulders jerk in an awkward shrug, which makes the huge puffy sleeves billow outward from her upper arms. “It’s just so embarrassing.”
“You hold still. I’ll be the one to move.” I’m barely near enough to touch her, but I have to step backwards to get away from the skirt. “What is this horrible, scratchy fabric called, anyway?”
“It’s crinoline. It’s the Fabric of Destruction. I look like a mountain of lace with a head poking out the top.” She shakes the skirt with one hand. “This thing is so massive I bet it has its own gravity well.”
The skirt poofs out so much I have to kick my way forward to get close enough to reach the row of tiny buttons running up her back. I tug the two sides of the fabric together, fighting to hold them close enough to start buttoning. “No wonder you couldn’t get into this yourself. No one could.”
“Yeah, I’m probably supposed to be surrounded by a bunch of bridesmaids and my mother, all helping me into this thing.”
She never speaks of her parents, so it might be a touchy subject. Since things are already going poorly, I focus on the idea of bridesmaids. “Yet you didn’t ask any of your friends?”
“Ask them what? Please help me into a dress I don’t like for a fake wedding I don’t want to do?” She glances over her shoulder at me. “No, thank you. The fewer people who see this, the better.”
A feeling of sadness permeates the air, and words appear on the room’s magical parchment. “My wedding ceremony hasn’t even happened, and you’re ruining it!”
“I’m sorry. These clothes make me really uncomfortable, but you’re right,” Kayla says. “I agreed to do this, so I’ll do my best to make your ceremony nice.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Dewdrop adds several chirps of his own as if to back up his witch’s words.
The atmosphere lightens, and I start buttoning again. The backs of my fingers skim over the thick white satin of the girdle as I slowly work my way upward, and I can feel Kayla’s warmth through the fabric like a tease.
“You know,” I say, “whenever I pictured something like this, I always thought I’d be unbuttoning you.”
“Don’t worry.” She huffs with amusement. “You’re going to get to do that too, because there’s no flipping way I can get out of this dress without your help.”
I lean closer and drop my voice to a murmur. “I look forward to it, my wife.”
She shivers, then trembles again as I fasten the top button, my fingers brushing her skin.
The bedroom door swings wide open, and the parchment reads: “Finally! Shadow, go downstairs and wait by the podium so I can play the “Wedding March” as Kayla enters.”
As I start to move past her, Kayla reaches toward me. “No, wait! You have to help me down the stairs. I’ll never make it by myself.” She gives a little kick of her leg, setting the mass of crinoline jiggling.
I turn, finally seeing her from the front with the dress fully on.
My eyes latch onto her chest, the tops of her breasts rising from the sea of white lace as if they long to escape the dress as much as she does.
They’re pure rounded temptation, looking so soft they make my hands itch. What will they feel like?
The bedroom door bangs shut, returning my attention to the situation at hand.
“That isn’t the way it’s done,” Victoria writes. “The groom isn’t supposed to see you before the ceremony. He’s especially not supposed to walk you down the aisle.”
“No, that’s not the way it used to be done,” Kayla says. “Lots of couples walk together down the aisle these days.”
“It’s not tradition, and I want tradition.”
“I have a solution.” Shoving through the heavy mass of the skirt, I wrap an arm around Kayla and step sideways onto the shadow roads. In a blink, we step back out into the entryway, directly outside the living room.
“You never told me you could do that!” She turns wide eyes on me.
I grin. “I have many talents you have yet to discover.”
Dewdrop flies down the stairs, chirping the whole way.
“Sorry! We took a shortcut.” Kayla listens to him for a moment, then says, “Of course you get to be there. You’re part of the family.”
I reach into the living room to snag the bouquet I left by the door. It’s silk flowers, like all of the other decorations I put up, and I vow that if I ever get to marry my witch for real, I want her to have fresh flowers instead, ones that smell like her.
“See, Victoria. We can still do it the way you want.” I glance at the foyer’s parchment. “I’ll go in and wait at the front, and you can play the music as Kayla walks down the aisle.”
“Yes!” The air prickles with a feeling of excitement.
“Dewdrop, do you want to come with me?” I hold out my arm. “I’ll make sure you get the best seat in the house.”
With a happy trill, the dragonet flies over to land on my forearm, and I walk into the living room.
Rows of folding wooden chairs line a wide aisle that runs down the center of the room to a small podium. Swathes of gauzy fabric loop along each wall, decorated with clusters of flowers. A small arch covered in flowers frames the podium. It looks good, if I do say so myself.
I set Dewdrop down on the first seat of the front row and take my spot.
Kayla stands in the open doorway, her face soft with shock as she whispers, “It’s just like when I was little.”
Music begins to play over the speakers hidden in the corners of the room in a swell of strings that Victoria called the “Wedding March.”
My witch walks toward me, each step slow and careful. The dress moves and sways, the poofed-out skirt like a giant bell swinging around her legs, which act as the clapper.
It doesn’t matter how ridiculous the dress is.
It doesn’t matter that the flowers aren’t real.
It doesn’t even matter—much—that this ceremony is fake.
Kayla’s the most beautiful woman in all the realms, and she’s walking toward me.