“And now the wife,” the priest said. “Say your vows, kind lady.”
I looked at Bluebeard and paled.
“It was you who wanted a real marriage and I have complied with your wishes, you ambitious climber.” He said the words like he was spitting them. “You ask for things above you and I have granted them and now you reject my gift?”
“I reject nothing,” I said carefully. I didn’t know why he thought this was some kind of maneuver on my part, but I wasn’t ready to see blood spilled over it, and there was violence in his eyes. “But I will need your help. The words are unfamiliar to me.”
With his prompting, I repeated his vow.
“As long as rivers run and moon shines, as long as the earth has bones and death has claws, as long as the ages pass and fail – that long shall I be wife to you. Flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone you will be. Spirit of my spirit, heart of my own heart, fall what may, we shall be one. Your days shall be mine and your happiness my own. My body I dedicate to none other. The bounty of my wealth is yours. If ever it be otherwise, may I waste away with sickness and may famine eat my strength, and may my enemies overtake me, and siphon from me the blood of my life.”
I felt a chill wash over me at my words. When I glanced behind me, my father’s face was wet with tears and my brothers’ expressions were sickened.
“And so, I declare, man and wife,” the priest said, still seeming to be oblivious to our situation. “And you may kiss your bride.”
“There will be no kisses,” Bluebeard said.
And for that one thing, I was thankful to him.
Chapter Seven
“You should say your goodbyes now,” Bluebeard said, his shining cat’s eyes never leaving my face. He had an odd look on his face like he was trying to read my mind right through my skull. “We leave at first light. I think that counts as spending the night under your roof, little King.”
The King’s mouth tightened but wisely, he said nothing. What could he say? We all had heard of the power of the Wittenbrand – even if I’d been a skeptic until today.
A thousand years ago, they waged a war against humans and nearly destroyed us completely. We still didn’t know why they’d called a truce and relented. We only knew that we were bound by some old treaty to allow them into our mortal courts if they asked it and to provide a tithe to them if requested. And apparently, there was this Law of First Greeting no one had told me about and now a Law of Marriage no one had seen fit to mention. Because obviously, you wouldn’t mention it to the one person who likely should have been told. Where would the fun be in that?
Whoever had designed this world of Kings and Wittenbrand had been like the ladies in the workroom – not very interested in the consistency of their work.
I kissed my father’s cheeks gently, ignoring – for the sake of his pride – that they were so wet and his eyes so glassy that he likely saw only a blur instead of a daughter.
“Your honor is not besmirched,” I whispered to him. “Tell my mother that you did all you could do and paid a high price for the sake of the kingdom. And do not forget that the King owes you now. It could have been his daughter who was taken. Be sensible. Demand a knighthood for Svetgin and a good bride for Rolgrin. Tell my mother that I love her and will miss her and that she must not blame any of you.”
“My Izolda,” my father began, but I kissed his cheeks again, embraced him, and his voice broke. He need not say anything, for I knew his heart and that he loved me and that he wished beyond anything that he could save me from this.
“I absolve you of any guilt,” I said. “Live in peace.”
I kissed each of my brothers and murmured to them, “Live well and be prosperous. Your sister is proud of you.”
They seemed stunned as they spoke the words of goodbye back to me, their voices hollow with shame and their faces pale as death.
In time, they would forgive themselves. There had been no way they could protect me from this. I had sealed my own fate. It would have been silly to think otherwise or to expect the impossible from any of them. A part of me found it interesting that they had been willing to risk me to a marriage that only had a dice roll’s chance of success as long as it was within a world they were comfortable with, but they were terrified to offer me to this foreigner and found it shameful, though the risk was similar to me. The difference was only in degrees and not in kind. For all I knew, this inhumanely beautiful monster also loved horses and spent his time breeding them. For all I knew, he could also be so obsessed with them that he thought of little else.
It was unlikely, but still possible.
But even though I could see all that, I loved them too much to want to leave them with sadness or shame.
“Cheer up, my father and brothers,” I said bravely, “for though I may never see you again, you have given me in marriage to a foreign lord for the sake of our nation and should feel no shame in it. Indeed, I’m sure your King and country thank you.”
I looked at the King. He swallowed and his face turned red almost instantly. There. I’d planted a sliver into his mind. He would always remember how he owed my family a debt.
Oddly, he leaned in for a fatherly kiss on the cheek. “Go with our blessing, daughter of Pensmoore.”
And then I turned and faced my fate.
My new husband wore a strange expression on his face and a darkness in his eyes that made my heart speed, and my knees turn to jelly. I took one wavering step before I forced the iron of my will into my legs and managed a straight back and steady steps again. It took an effort of will that consumed most of my energy.
We were all silent as the King himself led us down a short corridor to a suite of rooms as fine as his own – perhaps they were his very own.
“Your men will be given appropriate accommodations,” he said tightly. “And you are free to leave at dawn, having consummated your marriage and made a legal binding out of what has been offered nation to nation.”
And now it was my face that was hot as fire as I realized why he’d insisted on a night beneath his roof and a wedding chamber for us both. And if I’d been irritated at my people for trading me off as tradition demanded, I was even more horrified at a King who offered my innocence up as the price of security for his kingdom.
And yet the practical side of me was impressed. It was a very tiny price for a kingdom to pay for security. And it cost the King almost nothing at all. He was getting a very clever bargain. Even if my cheeks flamed at how it would be paid. I doubted I could be so cold.
I did not meet his eye as my new husband growled in answer and opened the door.
“How hospitable,” he spat. “Your laws, mortal man, are as delightful as your city.”
The King seemed mollified by that – which was ridiculous. Could he not see that the Wittenbrand mocked both his laws and holdings?
At Bluebeard’s curt nod into the room, I entered the suite before him and managed to hold myself together long enough for him to follow and lock the door behind us.
After that, it was all I could do to make it to the nearest flower pot before losing the lunch I’d hurriedly eaten at midday when my life seemed settled, and the supper of dried meat and hardtack I’d eaten on the road the night before, when I’d been excited to see the city for the very first time. With the contents of my stomach, I brought up every hope I’d ever had of living a happy – or even a quiet and relatively peaceful – life.
“How very mortal of you,” Bluebeard said with a grimace when I was done. He shoved a pitcher of wash water toward me and strode away as I dutifully washed out my mouth.
I was grateful he’d given me the whole jug. One more glance into the room and at the massive four-poster bed with its thousands of pillows and silken bedcoverings and I was heaving up the last of the acid in my belly. It turned out I needed most of the pitcher to rinse my mouth before I made it any farther into the room. Just the sight of that bed was enough to make me queasy again. I wasn’t ready for this. Not with a
man who had just killed another with his bare hands. Would he snap my neck, too?
“I will promise you very little beyond what promises have already been made,” Bluebeard said from a chair by the fire, where he was reading a book entitled Marvels of Modern Accountancy, “but I can promise you this. I will feed you food that sits better in your stomach and has not soured. The ladies of my court do not spend most of their time bringing up what has been fed to them.”
At least he thought I’d eaten something bad. That was a good thing. I swallowed down another wave of nausea. I doubted he’d be pleased if he learned the real reason for my sudden attack of illness. I didn’t have much experience with men, but likely the idea that I was sick at the thought of him consummating our wedding would irritate him.
At the very least.
Possibly even enrage him.
The sensible thing would be to hide my feelings on the matter.
It was hard to do when he was already half disrobed, his jacket and shirt unbuttoned and open to his breeches and one of his legs slung up over the arm of the chair.
I looked around the room warily – trying to put my eyes on anything other than him. He was not entirely human with his too-quick movements, his flickering facial expressions, and those strange eyes mesmerized me.
He twitched his nose just a little when he spoke like a cat might. But none of that took away from the very masculine lines of his body or the way his muscles – laced with silvery scars – were taut and well disciplined. No, it would be unwise to let surface things influence my opinions of the violent murderer who had married me. If I did that, then I’d be like those girls preening in the mirror and I’d fall into a worse trap than I’d fallen in already.
It was worrisome enough to be married to an unpredictable man of violence. It would be much worse if I allowed myself to let my emotions swirl when he was around. A clear head was my last weapon.
Better to focus on the room. It was massive – which gave me a lot to look at. Bigger than my parents’ apartments and all of their children’s put together. It was also grand – filled with objects of curiosity and fine craftsmanship. I could spend all night going from one to the next and not have time to give each its proper due. They were stored on shelves and in cases, on little tables and in opened chests. The chest nearest me held a helm and mail shirt made entirely of gold and adorned with gems made to look like peacock feathers. It was utterly impractical – and beautiful as a summer’s day.
There was a wide door to one side, and I could see through it a brass tub and stack of cloths for drying. The enormous bed sat on a raised dais, a window with a small balcony on one side of it, and a huge fireplace with a roaring fire on the other. Beside the fireplace were a pair of high-backed chairs and a stack of books.
Bluebeard was skimming the books and then throwing them into the fire one by one. I tried very hard not to be appalled. It didn’t work. Instead, I bit my lip.
He was not just a murderer, but also a book murderer, which felt similar in an odd way.
“Not a single worthy page in the lot of them. As if economics is not a black art of magic controlled by a few demon summoners. And this one! A treatise on morality. From a group of people who sell me delicious young women as brides for nothing more than the promise not to kill them.”
He looked up at that and smirked. I tried to keep the fear from my expression as I opened my mouth to ask him how old he was, but he raised a hand to forestall me and leapt up from his chair, flinging the book he’d been holding into the flames. They burst into sparks that shot out into the room like a thousand orange stars.
He was in front of me – inches from me – in a heartbeat. His finger covered my lips and his beautiful eyes looked into mine. All of a sudden that tightness in my chest drew me to him as if I had been fitted to a yoke pulled inexorably to his breast by a dozen oxen. I fought the feeling and kept my feet firmly planted in place.
“As of the moment we were married, the spell of magic and its curse has fallen upon us,” his voice oddly breathy. “I must warn you not to break the spell under any circumstances, or the curse will come to pass and with it, the goodwill I have for your people will end. I will turn on this place and ravage the cities and lay waste to the towns. I will burn every home and any place where two sticks have been set on one another. I will sow the fields with salt so that no crops will grow. I will slaughter the inhabitants and lay them out head to foot across the kingdom and write in their blood that these souls were lost because of Izolda of Savataz. Is that clear? Don’t speak.”
I swallowed, nodding carefully. He was a madman.
“Good. I see you understand perfectly.” He smiled one of his foxy smiles.
I understood perfectly that he was utterly insane.
“There are terms to our marriage that go beyond the vows,” he said.
Even I knew that. Why did he think I was vomiting into the flowerpot?
“I have not the patience to tell you all of them.”
What a surprise. No one had bothered to tell me any of them, which was how I ended up here.
“Would you like to hear one term, though? The one that matters most tonight?”
I had to look away from his eyes. They were too intense, as if he could peel back my layers and expose my core.
I looked nervously at the bed, but he caught my chin between his finger and thumb and brought my gaze back to his deadly and beautiful face.
“The curse is this – I may not speak a word to you in the day and you may not speak a word to me at night or the spell will be broken and, with it, our marriage. You must heed me on this.”
I blinked at that. Stunned by such a very strange request.
“And if the curse is triggered, I will have to enact the horrors I just enumerated. Do you understand?”
I nodded. But seriously, the threats were going to have to slow down or I was going to pass out from how ill I felt.
“I think that will do for tonight,” he said, releasing me. His eyes seemed to be weighing me like he was going to purchase me by the pound. “I didn’t ask my men to bring your things here and I don’t think I will. Take something from the King’s wardrobe to sleep in.”
He nodded to a tall armoire, and wordlessly, I stumbled to it and opened it. Robes of silk and fur in every color known to man, embroidered with scenes of hunting and fishing filled the wardrobe. All of them could have fit three of me. I stretched an arm out to take one and he reached past me, snatching up a royal blue robe in shining silk that was trimmed with white fur.
“I’ve changed my mind. You should wear this,” he said with a wink.
Icy cold shot through me.
I paused for a moment, not taking the robe. I’d agreed to the silence and agreed to the marriage. But if I didn’t put my foot down somewhere, I’d be nothing more than a doormat. I looked him squarely in the eyes and reached past the blue robe to pull out a gaudy bright red one trimmed with orange fox fur, and covered all over with scenes of a particularly bloody hunt.
I turned on my heels and went to the dressing screen without looking back, though I heard his growl behind me. As I stripped out of my dress and wrapped the robe around me, the growl turned to a laugh.
I hung my dress up carefully and stepped out from behind the screen, the hood of the robe pulled up over my head.
He smirked and gestured toward the bed. “I’ll take the chair. Go to sleep. It will be a long ride tomorrow.”
Wait. What? He wasn’t going to ... My cheeks heated again.
He raised a single eyebrow.
“Fifteen wives I have had of mortal blood and fifteen wives have worn what I told them to wear that first night. But I sullied myself with none of them and I will not sully myself with you either, even though you are clearly no mortal woman but rather a demon sent to torture me.”
And with that insulting declaration, he stalked over to his chair and sat down much more energetically than necessary, picking up yet another book, cursing, and t
hrowing it into the flames.
I seized the opportunity, ran across the cold flagstones, and flung myself into the massive bed, gathering the blankets around me like the walls of a keep and burrowing into them so that nothing of me showed but my eyes.
I do not know how long I waited like that, afraid and close to being ill again, as he cursed at book after book, but eventually, sleep stole me away more thoroughly than the Wittenbrand could.
Chapter Eight
The next morning, I woke still shrouded in blankets. My legs ached from being curled up under me all night and my eyes were surprisingly puffy. I wiped them awkwardly. I might have been crying in my sleep and I did not like that at all. If he’d seen that, it was a sign of weakness.
The sun was not yet up, and Bluebeard was asleep beside the dying fire, his head hanging over the high back and his mouth wide open as if he were a particularly expensive fly trap.
By the candle clock on the wall, it was five bells of the morning.
I crept from the bed, slipped into the bathroom, and poured water quietly to clean myself. It was cold – of course – and brisk in the winter room, but I scrubbed myself carefully and wiped away all signs of tears, combing out my long hair and braiding it in an elaborate double-woven braid – the fanciest I knew how to make.
I was not vain. I knew well enough that I was not the fairest girl of the court.
My face was long rather than round, my eyes tilted slightly instead of wide and large, and my mouth had an unusual bend to it, so it often looked like I was smirking when I was not. And my figure – such as there was of it – was more bony than properly curvy. I had a serviceable body and a face that expressed my thoughts, and a woman could hardly ask for more when she had her health and family.
My thoughts stuttered at that part because I no longer had a family, though I did have a very strange husband.
Fly with the Arrow: A Bluebeard Inspired Fantasy (Bluebeard's Secret Book 1) Page 5