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A faint wince crossed her face. “Perhaps that was not quite how I meant to put it… what I do mean to say is, your fate was sealed from the moment we entered Argent. There is nowhere to run now. You ca
Wyn reached out and touched one of my limp hands.
“All you must do is follow our cues,” she told me. “I’ve organized this wedding down to the last ancestors’-blessed petal; everything is in place. But remember that you must go through with it, and you may as well do so with dignity. My kind will not allow any other outcome than success.”
I nodded, a strange sort of numbness that I’d never felt before welling up inside me. Even during the worst disappointments of my life—being rejected from becoming a Silver Sister, being rejected as a candidate for the Library—I had never felt anything quite like this.
I understand, I signed, my fingers seeming to work independently of my brain.
Wyn gave me a bracing smile.
“Well, come now!” she chirped. “The ceremony will be held in the Bloodgarden, of course. Fortunately we’ve earned a little extra time, as we didn’t need to paint a more presentable face on you, but these vows must be made before midnight.”
She took the bandage from my hands before I could pull away, and I looked down, seeing that the puncture mark had vanished, leaving smooth pink skin behind.
Is this the work of a bloodwitch? I signed, but expected no answer, and got none, only a slightly bewildered look from Lissa.
Wyn held the door open. “After you, dear. The vampires of the legion would surely like a good ogle at their new Lady before the wedding.”
It occurred to me that she had deliberately shunted me through to the castle in the quickest route to my chambers, where there were only human maids, specifically so I wouldn’t see that I was surrounded by vampires on all sides.
For the first time in my life, I was in a place where humans were the minority. Not only that, but I had very little clear idea of vampire customs. Fraternization with the enemy was forbidden in the Cathedral.
Wyn had been very cavalier in harvesting my blood whenever she pleased. Despite the new laws about vampires requiring direct consent in order to drink from humans, I no longer lived in a world where those human laws could be counted on. Would I be expected to bleed for any vampire who asked?
Or would being Bane’s wife, under his aegis, protect me from such a thing?
I kept my questions to myself, to be put to paper another time, and followed Wyn back into the candlelit halls of the keep.
This time she led me in another direction, down a set of stairs, and the hall abruptly opened onto a wide hall, lit with crystalline chandeliers overhead and gold sconces on the walls. The grandeur was astonishing, when the outside of the castle appeared so defensive and utilitarian, especially after a lifetime of thinking the inside of the Silver Cathedral qualified as grand.
The Cathedral did not hold a candle to this keep, with its black marble floors polished so smooth it appeared we walked on a pool of dark water, or the delicate stonework buttressing the high ceiling. A faint, sweet scent hung in the air, enticing my nose.
And the people… or the vampires, as they really were.
Besides the maids, I picked out only one or two humans. The rest were clearly vampires, with their flawless skin, the slit pupils in faintly-glowing eyes, the incisors hidden behind plush lips.
Every vampire but Wyn was wearing armor, each armed to the teeth, and most of them maintained their posts as we passed. I felt their eyes moving over me, and once or twice saw nostrils flare as they caught my scent.
My skin prickled, especially when one particularly burly vampire, his blond hair pulled back in a horsetail to show off cut cheekbones and a chiseled mouth, licked his lips, his blue eyes glued to my exposed throat.
He was the kind of vampire the books were written about. The handsome knight in armor, eternally perfect. His mouth was formed in undeath to draw the eye, to make one want to melt into his arms and tip the head back just so…
And I wanted nothing to do with it. I couldn’t fathom such a thing.
My husband was something else, something far beyond this.
Something so different that even the vampires themselves considered his existence to be a sacrifice.
Not a vampire… but a monster.
I ran through the wyrd-runes in my head again, my favorite method of maintaining my composure, and followed Wyn up a pair of wide, scrolling stairs, my white dress trailing behind me like a veil.
She brought me to an unassuming door, as thick and well-defended as the rest, and opened it into a loggia surrounding a courtyard. I knew the moment I stepped foot into the Bloodgarden, the scent that had been haunting me all throughout the keep finally blooming.
Roses. All around us, roses by the thousands.
The courtyard was in the middle of the keep, surrounded on all sides by the high, dark walls of Ravenscry, and it was large enough to almost serve as a park.
In the day, it would be a fairy tale. By night, with the crescent moon gleaming overhead, it was a dark shadow whispering of romance and seduction. The roses grew on everything, climbing up the walls of the castle, twining around stone balustrades.
More of Bane’s legions were here, patrolling the edges of the courtyard, keeping watch from balconies high overhead. There was no escape from the sensation of eyes watching me.
“This is a holy place,” Wyn said in a low voice. “The bloodroses and their thorns are sacred to our Mother. You will find no ritual conducted by our kind that doesn’t take her symbols into account, and we treat this garden with great reverence.”
I read between the lines: if I damaged anything in this garden in an attempt to flee, they would find me wanting, and the punishment was unlikely to be pleasant.
The smooth trail of stones underfoot brought us through the Bloodgarden in a winding path, and Wyn finally slowed as we approached a fountain set in the wall.
But it was not just any fountain; where the face of a protective gargoyle or green man might have been carved in a human’s garden, in this one there was a pale bust of a woman, her head tipped back, eyes closed, mouth open to reveal gleaming marble fangs. Her cupped hands formed the bowl of the fountain.
I swallowed hard, staring at that empty bowl and wondering if it was truly meant for water, or something thicker.
“Stand here,” Wyn said quietly, positioning me to the left of the fountain. “This will be a small, quick ceremony. Don’t worry, Cirrien dear; we’ll be with you every step of the way, and by midnight you’ll be wed and the Accords will be met.”
I laced my hands in front of myself, mouth dry, heart pounding a rapid tattoo against my breastbone.
Thus far I had managed to maintain my composure in this marriage.
So long as I didn’t think about what came after the vampires considered us properly married.
For a few brief minutes, it was only Wyn and me by the fountain, and despite the easy quiet around us, my heart beat faster and faster. Several shadows slipped from the darkness on silent feet; vampires, all of them, looking like courtiers in intricate brocade and jewels.
Their thin pupils fixed on me, some skeptical, others reassured as they glanced between me and the bloodwitch. Perhaps they were expecting me to have to be hogtied, but Wyn did not have so much as a finger prepared to grab me.
This is for Veladar, I reminded myself. This keeps the wolf from the door.
I recognized Visca as she stepped into the courtyard, her friendly, crooked smile wide. She still wore her armor, but she held out an arm like a gentleman, ushering an even more massive shadow past herself. I had to crane my head to find the gleam of golden eyes.
Bane. I exhaled, a knot in my chest loosening. Had I really been worried that he wouldn’t arrive when I was terrified of what was to come?
But I hadn’t seen him all day, and our last exchange had been… less than friendly. I felt a faint burn of shame that he had heard me cry, and thought it was because of him.
I did my best to muster up a smile, but the presence of so many vampires was u
Bane stepped closer, on the other side of the fountain, and then I saw him in the light spilling from the castle and almost recoiled.
He had been monstrous when I first laid eyes on him, but this… the primitive lines of his face were even more bestial now, exaggerated into sharp peaks and valley. His lips could not fully close over his fangs; his body had thickened, plates of armor-like cartilage warping the shape of his shirt.
My heart started racing again, and I reminded myself that he had left me paper and a book. He had done it from the kindness of his heart; there was more to be seen in him than met the eye.
Took you long enough, I signed, trying for a hint of playfulness, to show that I wasn’t afraid of him. Were you having second thoughts?
He did not meet my gaze. I lowered my hands, reknotting them in front of myself. He didn’t understand; that was fine. Everything would be fine.
The fiend moved closer, slowly; there was something in his posture that spoke of nervousness, his shoulders held higher as though in defense.
He raised his hands, displaying dark claws that had been hastily cut down and filed to bluntness, and I just managed to not flinch.
And then he made words, his large, powerful hands clumsy in forming them, but still legible to me.
Not fear. Not hurt… you. Marry me.
The last one might have been ‘cats’, his thumb crooked a little too low, the gesture performed awkwardly, but I was sure he meant ‘marry’.
He had spoken to me.
In my own language.
I took a deep breath, wanting to say ‘yes’ to him, to say the most important word of my life out loud for once. To feel the weight of it in the air.
But it wouldn’t come.
Instead, I stared at those brutal hands, still hovering hesitantly in the air, shaping words he had learned solely to speak to me. He had learned it… for me.
He was the first person in my life to ever try to hear my words, to return them in kind.
Without warning, tears spilled over.