by Bree Barton
“Do you agree with my sister?” he said. “About magic?”
Her internal organs were listing again, a fleet of ships canting against her bones. Even if she had agreed with Karri—which she didn’t—she would never confess it to Quin. To disagree with King Ronan was tantamount to treason.
“Your father understands the import of the Hunters,” she said. “For that I am very grateful.”
It was difficult to see in the moonlight, but she thought she detected disappointment on Quin’s face. He stiffened.
“I know you want nothing to do with me. You’d rather join your father’s merry band of assassins and go hunt Gwyrach for sport.”
“You think we hunt for sport?”
“You should know I’m not pleased about this marriage, either. Not that my father cares one whit about what I want. Not that he’d ever take my personal desires into account. Our union is an alliance between powerful houses. If magic roils and bubbles under the meniscus of assent, your father will find it and choke it out. You offer a constant reminder that, for a Gwyrach, death is never far behind.”
She’d never heard the prince speak so many consecutive words. Meniscus of assent. Who talked like that outside of books?
Pretentious coddled princes, that was who.
Her anger was a soft tapping from a distant room. So the prince would never love her. Fine. She would never love the prince. Love was a gambit, and a bad one at that. The only love she trusted was her love for Angelyne. For her sister, she would die a thousand deaths. To save her sister, she was about to.
“On this we are agreed,” she said. “Our union is purely transactional. An unfortunate symptom of our parentage, nothing more.” She marched briskly to the piano and extended her gloved hand. “Are we of accord?”
For a moment, Quin paused. Then he reached out and shook her hand.
Heat poured over her like honey. Steamy, sticky warmth, spilling across the soft skin of her arms and shoulders. Her fingers were ten bars of chocolate, slowly melting into paste. Good enough to eat.
“Mia?” The prince’s voice was soft, curious. He wasn’t where she remembered. When had he stepped behind her? She could feel his breath against the nape of her neck. Slowly he reached forward and drew his thumb across her collarbone, gooseflesh rising up to meet him. Then he took her gently by the shoulders and turned her around to face him. His eyes bore a distant, golden glaze. He brushed a curl from her cheek and her zygomatic bones thrummed in their sockets.
“Your Grace.” Her breath was a knotted ribbon in her throat. “This is most irregular.”
He froze. His hand was suspended in midair, curved sweetly, as if he’d been about to cup her chin in his palm. A bead of sweat glistened on his brow, and his breathing was choppy, a staccato rhythm pulsing through his chest.
And then the moment dissolved. She watched as Quin’s face slipped back into its familiar furrows of disdain. He whistled for his dogs.
Mia’s mind was in tatters. She didn’t understand what had just transpired between them, or why her body was still swathed in tender heat. The prince was no longer rime and hoarfrost: he was fire and ember. He was not what she’d assumed.
And something was wrong. Very wrong.
“We meet on the morrow, Lady Mia,” he said brusquely.
“On the morrow,” she echoed numbly as he strode past, the dogs nipping at his heels.
All night, as the castle creaked and slumbered, she traced the trail of goose bumps across her smoldering flesh.
Chapter 8
Blackmail
MIA WOKE WITH A start. She lay in her bedchambers amidst scarlet satin pillows wreathed in black lace. Had the royals intentionally draped the canopy bed in the colors of Clan Rose? It seemed a trifle overeager.
She’d been dreaming of Quin’s eyes. His irises were concentric circles, one pale green, one a deeper viridescent. How had she never noticed that before? She saw soft light pooling in them the moment he’d reached out to touch her, and she saw it leaking out just as quickly.
Why did he hate her? She didn’t want to marry him, either, but she didn’t blame him for the arrangement. From the sounds of it, he was just another pawn in his father’s master plan.
The minutes inched by, then an hour, then more. Perhaps a book would lull her back to sleep. She dug out from under her barricade of lacy pillows, put on silk slippers, threw a sable shawl over her nightgown, and stole through the shadowy castle corridors.
Mia was halfway to the library when she heard voices seeping out of the north wing. Angry voices. If she wasn’t mistaken, the prince’s chambers were in the northern section of the Kaer, just beyond the drawing room.
She changed directions, slipping quietly down a different passageway and dodging two guards along the way. In her black shawl she blended in beautifully with the onyx walls. She tiptoed into the northern wing as far as she dared and made it to the prince’s drawing room, complete with a golden clavichord, a smattering of sculptures, and a small wooden stage framed by thick brocaded curtains. She had just tucked herself behind the green velvet when she heard Quin’s indignant voice.
“. . . could have thought to warn me?”
“It behooves us to keep her close.” Mia recognized King Ronan’s signature growl. “Despite your utter lack of statesmanship, surely you understand that.”
Queen Rowena’s cool voice cut through the quiet. “You will be perfectly safe, my love. We don’t intend to let any harm come to you.”
“But she is dangerous. You won’t deny it.”
“The Circle is not what it once was,” said Ronan. “We suspect her father’s allegiances may have shifted. As long as she is in the Kaer, we can exert a certain . . . leverage.”
The words wrapped around Mia’s throat. They were talking about her.
Quin said, “I know what this is really about. You’ll never stop punishing me. This is simply the latest in my ongoing penance.”
“Be grateful,” the king spat. “I have been far more munificent than you deserve.”
Silence. Then the queen said smoothly, “Sleep long, sleep sweet, my darling.”
Mia’s heartbeat thrummed in her ears. The quarrel was over, and now Ronan and Rowena were leaving. In moments they would find her eavesdropping from the drawing room, slippered feet poking out from beneath the velvet curtain.
She willed her legs to move. Swiftly she slid away from the prince’s chambers and back down the corridor, but not before she heard Quin’s voice, cold and flat.
“Ah, yes. Thank you, Father. Thank you so very much for my blackmail bride.”
Chapter 9
Love Is a Lodestone
ANGELYNE HAD A GIFT for embellishment. While Mia had spent the last three years drawing anatomically correct sketches of the pleurae binding the mediastinal membranes, Angie had been working in far prettier mediums.
She stood behind Mia at the cherrywood dresser, applying one tincture after another. “Rosewort for your cheeks. Crushed lullablu petals for your eyes. Tansy and snow plum paste for your lips. Oh, and I know you hate skin greases, but can I daub on just a dash? It really will make you glow.”
“Daub as much as you like,” Mia said. What better way to herald the complete dissolution of her life than by daubing an animal’s entrails on her face?
She hadn’t slept a wink after her late-night wander. Over and over, she heard Quin’s voice intermingling with his parents’. What did they mean, her father’s allegiances had shifted? Griffin had never been anything but loyal to Clan Killian.
She tried in vain to patch together the rest of the conversation from the snippets she’d overheard. In the library, Quin had told Mia their union was an alliance between powerful houses. But that was before his parents paid him a midnight visit. Their marriage was still about leverage . . . just not the kind he’d thought.
Now Quin had even more reason to hate her. My blackmail bride.
Did they really think she was dangerous? Some unspoken truth ni
bbled at the fringes of her consciousness. She pushed it aside.
“You won’t even recognize yourself,” Angie said, “once I’ve worked my magic on your face. You’re absolutely stunning, Mi, but it wouldn’t hurt you to embrace a little embellishment every once in a while!”
Her sister was chattering more than usual. Mia was grateful; it kept her from having to talk. She gazed sullenly at her reflection, her mind blurred with dread and confusion as Angie pinched and painted her into the shape of a princess.
She stayed silent as her sister led her to the wardrobe and deftly laced her into the whalebone corset, then the oyster silk wedding gown. With nimble fingers, Angie threaded the train into the back drapery. Mia despised the train. It was absurdly large—you could hide whole worlds in there—crimped and creased into a froth of cumbersome ruffles. She was trussed up like a birthing cow.
Angie stepped back to admire her handiwork. “You’re so lovely, Mi. At least there is something beautiful amidst so much sadness. I wish Mother were here to see.” She touched the moonstone at her throat and squeezed her eyes shut.
“Do you need to rest?” Mia said, worried. Her sister had gone vaguely green.
“I’m all right. I was just thinking of Mother. Sometimes it’s all too much.”
Mia ached to tell Ange about the journal. In a night of cruel mysteries, the journal was the one that hurt the most. But her sister was devastated by anything that had belonged to their mother. Other than the moonstone, she’d kept nothing; the smallest knickknack could bring on a torrent of memories that put her in bed for days. After Wynna died, Griffin and Angie wanted to burn all her things, whereas Mia wanted to keep everything she had ever touched. It wasn’t sentimental. She was combing every artifact for clues: a strand of hair, an unfamiliar fragrance. Even the tiniest trace might illuminate the path to her mother’s killer.
“You look like a princess from a fairy tale.” Angelyne leaned against the bedpost, her long lashes dewed with tears. “Mia Morwynna, Daughter of Clan Rose, Princess of the River Kingdom.”
Mia didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
She startled at a sharp rap on the door. Her father was standing on the threshold.
“They await you, little rose.”
This time, when he offered her his arm, she took it.
The sun sank in the west as Mia and her father proceeded down the castle corridors, a cavalcade of guards and servants keeping pace a short distance behind them. She wore a new pair of lambskin gloves for the occasion, milky white studded with black and red buttons. After the ceremony, she would be free of them forever. Small consolation for the price she had to pay.
She longed to tell her father what she’d overheard, to ask him what it all meant. She wanted desperately to believe he had done what he’d done for good reason. Perhaps he really was trying to protect her.
“Father,” she began, but the words died on her lips. Her whole life she had trusted him fully and implicitly, as only a child can do. But trust took a lifetime to build and only a few short weeks to destroy.
He was keeping secrets. Something her mother said came back to her: Secrets are just another way people lie to one another. Mia wanted her father to tell her everything, but she couldn’t trust a word he said.
They were almost at the Chapel when he did the most peculiar thing. He dropped her arm and pressed his hand into her back, firm and urgent. When he spoke, his words were gruff.
“Your mother loved you more than anything. Never have I seen such a heart. A love like that has power. Love is a lodestone, a force so powerful nothing can stop it, not even death. You, too, bear this love. Run to it, little rose. Run fast and free.”
She felt her soul lift its weary head, tilting toward this sun-drenched promise. The corridors were dark but she felt lighter. Perhaps her mother was there—in the air, in Mia’s reflection on the onyx stone. Perhaps she was not alone.
She was sure she saw her father work his mouth around forgive me when the wedding trumpets blew.
Chapter 10
Promise Me
MIA STOOD AT THE golden altar to marry her true love.
Only, it wasn’t true and it wasn’t love. The altar wasn’t even really golden, more of a tarnished bronze. She was drowning in oyster silk, and the air was redolent of rotting lilacs. The prince was an icicle with perfect curls.
“We have come here today,” Duke Tristan intoned, “by royal decree of Ronan, Son of Clan Killian, Uncontested King of Glas Ddir, to witness this most hallowed union . . .”
He wasn’t walloping candles this time, but he might as well have been. Mia felt every word shiver through her with a resounding crack.
Five hundred pairs of eyes bored into her back—servants, courtiers, dignitaries, and the ominous guards. In her periphery she glimpsed the Hunters, their hands resting on the grips of their swords and bows.
Overhead, a colossal pipe organ jutted out of the balcony like a skeleton with jagged bones. Statues of deities lined the walls, emaciated male figures in funereal robes presiding over mausoleums harboring the early kings of Clan Killian, now piles of sacred human dust. Beneath the vault of smirking angels, a giant ring of candles was suspended from the ceiling, dripping wax. The Royal Chapel was gargantuan and gloomy, a cathedral more befitting a funeral than a wedding.
“It is the obligation of all those present to honor this most perfect union,” said Tristan, “marking an alliance between two great houses . . .”
She snuck a glance over her shoulder to where her family sat in the balcony. Angie braved a smile, but her father’s face was drawn shut like a curtain. Why had he spoken of her mother? In the moment it had given her courage, but in hindsight it seemed almost cruel, taunting her with a lesson on love before she embarked on a loveless marriage.
The prince raked his fingers through his blond curls. He wouldn’t look at her. She thought of the honeyed warmth when he touched her in the library, compared to the icy stab of his words to the king and queen. She is dangerous. My blackmail bride.
“If any man has cause for objection,” Tristan said, “sound belief these two should not be wed, let him speak now or forever hold his peace.”
Always the man, Mia thought darkly. Gods forbid a woman have cause for objection. Gods forbid a woman ever express a “sound belief.” Girls destined to be Huntresses were expected to waltz happily into marriages with boys they hardly knew. Magnificent princesses were forced to watch churlish little brothers inherit whole kingdoms when they themselves were far more qualified.
Mia had always harbored a hope that maybe someday, if the Hunters could eliminate magic, King Ronan would deem Glas Ddir safe. This was another reason she labored over her anatomy texts: surely there was some way to neutralize magic, to figure out how Gwyrach could control another person’s body, and put an end to it. Girls would no longer be monitored and confined, but free to live out their destinies.
It was a wild dream and a sweet one; it had pulsed through her every day of Huntress training. Why shouldn’t women get to craft the lives they wanted? Messy, complicated, vibrant lives full of adventure? That sort of freedom had always been her dream—not just for her, but for all Glasddirans.
Now that she had spent the last few weeks in close proximity to the king, she realized what a child she’d been. Ronan thrived on power and violence. He saw the Gwyrach as an assemblage of demon body parts to be dismantled and strung up—but he didn’t treat his human subjects much better. There would be no freedom for the women of the river kingdom. Mia would bury her dream in a shallow grave.
Quin fidgeted with the gold buttons of his bridegroom jacket. As usual, wintry squalls were rolling off him, prickling her skin. How was it possible that, only hours before, his touch had ignited her flesh? She closed her eyes to clear her head.
But it didn’t clear. A strange thing was happening. Her mind conjured a vision of a place she couldn’t quite see, all hues and textures, no distinct shapes. She closed her eyes and let the col
ors dance across her lids, vivid sea blues and igneous reds, alive with movement and vibration. She wanted to drink it down. Had she been to this place, or only dreamed it? She couldn’t grasp hold of any one image, but she heard music trilling at the edges, mingled with the rich, raucous laughter of girls.
What was this sumptuous delusion? She wanted to believe, to inhabit its colors and feel its truth in her bones. This was a place where she would never be forced into a marriage arranged by men, a place where she could roam free, owned by no one, loved by none. Only in a life without love could you ever be truly free.
Her eyes shot open, drunk on what the world could be. She meant to look past Quin, but she looked right at him.
He was looking back. His eyes were two sulfyr sticks, a scintillating green.
“No objections, then,” Tristan said.
Mia objected. A moment ago she’d been safely ensconced in her own fantasy world. Now she was stripped to the nubbins, raw and vulnerable and bare. She had no theories as to why her whole body popped and rattled, a whirl of feelings without logic, thoughts skittering, slamming, crashing into one another.
It was not a pleasant feeling.
“You will now speak your vows in unison,” said the duke. “Take one another’s hands and swear your sacred oath.”
Quin took her gloved hands in his. Did she imagine it, or were his fingers trembling? The rest of the Chapel flickered and dissolved in a cloud of smoke, leaving only them. The candles braided themselves into a tapestry of light.
“Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone.
I give you my body, my spirit, my home.”
The words rolled effortlessly off her tongue. After weeks of not sparing her a second glance, Quin wouldn’t stop looking. She watched his chest rise and fall as he pressed his lips together. His gaze tore into her flesh and knit it back together, building a whole history of fire and frost and ashes beneath her skin.
