by Ella Fields
Upon the nightstand, light catching the jewels and snagging my attention, was a familiar sapphire hilted dagger.
Despite the hovering cloud of uncertainty, I smiled at what it meant—at the return of the gift I’d once attempted to use against him.
After a near-silent breakfast—terse with things none of us would say—I checked my rooms, found no sign of Dade, then went in search of my mother who was in the mending room on the second floor.
We needed to talk, and I wouldn’t let it be about livestock, trade, nor the dwindling numbers of both.
With the marriage alliance, we would fix all that and more. And soon.
A commotion outside lured me toward the nearest window in the stairwell. A wagon ambled by the castle gates outside, loaded with crates of produce, two younglings in the back waving gold and red ribbons.
Footsteps ceased above me. “Oh, thank the fucking stars.”
Edwan, holding a mound of ruined material, hurried down the steps to where I stood, his violet eyes watering instantly as he bowed. “I heard you were back, and I’m relieved you’re okay, but please,” he said, swallowing hard, “please tell me you’ll stay.”
I frowned down at the material, bright color shredded, others crinkled and singed. All of it likely repercussions of my mother’s moods. “She’s been that bad?”
He hesitated, then nodded. “I love her,” he rushed out. “The stars know I do, but I haven’t been able to leave her side. My mate is furious. He’s barely seen me in weeks because I’m too afraid to sleep too far away from her.”
I wasn’t sure what to say and how I could help when it was becoming apparent that this disastrous plan would not be for everyone’s benefit. Especially not my mother’s.
Yet I would see it through anyway, so I hugged Edwan tight and made him no promises. Then I watched him go.
Up the stairs, I entered the mending room, wove between the stands of fabric to the large windows that overlooked a small portion of the front courtyard and one of the entrances to the city beyond.
People streamed in and out, more of those ribbons fluttering in the breeze. I watched two vendor carts crawl in behind the gathering masses, followed by horses carting a wagon of ale.
“You said private, Mother.” I closed the drapes upon seeing a group of males laughing and drinking, tankards in the air, and turned to glare at her.
She stuck the handle of a small knife in her mouth, fussing with the beading on a lavender gown I hoped was for her, for I had no desire to wear it. “The ceremony, yes.”
I unclenched my teeth, infusing calm I did not feel into my voice. “What point is there in having a private ceremony when everyone now knows?”
“Our people need faith, to believe this sacrifice is an end to the war. Celebrating grants them that reprieve.”
Reprieve.
“You do not think he’ll stay true to his word?” I asked what she’d already made clear. “He agreed to end the attacks, the bloodshed, only if I marry him.” I made sure those last words registered, hit their mark.
They did, my mother’s hands stilling over a flower made from ribbon. She swallowed, and the hairs upon my arms rose as I watched her busy herself with the baskets of tools by the wall.
“I know,” I said, gentle and careful. “I know this must be hard.”
“Hard,” she said as though I knew nothing, and she would be right in assuming so. “You do not know the meaning.”
“I have spent weeks away from here.” I blinked at my own audacity, the firm tone I’d taken.
Linka appeared in the doorway, a large wad of lavender tulle in her arms, and paused. Her eyes gave away nothing, and she flitted to one of the two long desks, placing the fabric on a cleared space at the end.
I continued. “For countless days and nights, I have endured and survived and hoped to be the salvation you and father said I would be for this family. No, I haven’t provided you with another heir, but I’ve still helped. I’ve made this happen. Do not let my efforts be in vain.”
Linka made a noise, a snort perhaps.
I ignored her, kept my eyes trained on my mother’s back as she drifted to the window, her fingers at her lips. “Do not speak of him.”
“Father?”
Her entire body visibly coiled, and she hissed. “Don’t, and do not stand there and try to make me feel guilty for all you have done while I’ve been here, doing nothing.”
“You’ve been grieving,” I said. “While also keeping this kingdom from the brink of collapse.”
She turned from the window, her hand falling to her orange skirts, the sunlight catching the beading on her matching corset and sending orbs over the white walls. “Have you lain with him?”
Shocked, I stepped back. I could not answer.
She knew. She already knew. As did the female behind her, who pretended to be busy with tidying the desk.
They both knew. But they did not want to know. So I gave them what they wanted, what they needed, even though they were painfully aware it was nothing but a pretty rotten lie and shook my head.
“Right.” My mother’s chin rose. “Because to find yourself actually caring for the savage who destroyed our family would mean the end of the Gracewood line.”
My blood curdled into poison that tainted each breath I tried to keep steady, but I held her gaze. I held it while two warring entities inside me threatened to send me to my knees—guilt for lying about Dade, therefore belittling and reducing all we’d become, and guilt for having done any of it at all.
Linka eyed me pointedly from across the room, and I eyed her back, unflinching. She tilted her nose toward the ceiling and turned away.
Back in my rooms, I found a king perched upon my window, seemingly flummoxed by the sights of the city. “Well, my beautiful swan, I don’t know about you, but I’m beginning to think that mother of yours has spread the good word.”
I placed the pitcher of freshly squeezed orange juice on the dressing table and poured us each a cupful. “I know.”
“Everyone’s together, their happiness brightening the fragile beauty of this land…”
The word fragile rankled, and I suspected there was more to what he was hedging at. I elected to put us both out of our misery rather than play. “And your thoughts on this are?”
He finally looked at me then, and that burn returned with a vengeance with one slow, deliberate sweep of those eyes. “That she wants us confused.”
I offered him the glass of juice. Though I was inclined to agree, I still asked, “Why would you think that?”
“Because we are,” he said softly, taking the beverage from my hand. “Thank you.”
He drained half, then rose and set it down by the pitcher before collecting me into his arms. “I’ve missed you.”
“It’s been mere hours,” I pointed out, yet I couldn’t help but smile as I rubbed my face into his clean shirt. He must have warped back to his rooms. That or he purchased a new one. It reminded me of an important detail I hadn’t overlooked. “There is a dress for me and no clothing for you.”
“That makes perfect sense.” He didn’t elaborate when I looked up at him. Fingertips soft at my chin, he tilted it back for his mouth to ravage mine.
I broke away after a sweltering moment, my voice breathy. “Where did you go?”
“Where haven’t I been?” Twirling a lock of my hair around his finger, he smiled at it. A crooked smile that didn’t climb and popped just one dimple. “I went to visit a sorceress who stole your blood and handed you no fate.”
His lashes lifted toward low brows, and my lips parted. Of course.
“You came here,” I said, knowing it was true before I’d even pushed the words out. “You came here just to find out your fate?”
“You know what they say.” He released my hair, the strands curling through his fingers and back against my chest. “Knowledge is power.”
I didn’t believe that was the sole reason, not entirely. “What made you visit her?”
Dade lifted a finger, tracing my brow with it, his eyes following his touch all the way down to the corner of my mouth. “Honest answer?”
I shivered. “Always.”
A quick, satisfied grin as he noticed. “I wanted to know what most of us wish to,” he said quietly. “If there was something else, I suppose.”
“Something else?” I repeated, and that finger drifted from my chin to my chest. “Besides revenge, you mean?”
His eyes gleamed before dulling, and he withdrew a step before turning. “Yes.” Cold washed in as I watched him walk over to the window, his large form nearly blocking out the sky. “It was that and wanting explanation for the intense attraction. I’ve heard of it, witnessed it countless times, yet to find myself mated to a Gracewood, a swan…”
“You didn’t know that,” I said, feeling my brow crinkle. “That I was a swan.”
“No,” he said, his back still to me. “But I suspected, scented that there was something more to you.”
“You were hoping to also glean what that was.”
“Indeed.” He set something upon the windowsill. “I believe this belongs to you.”
A strip of parchment. I hurried over, unraveling it and finding…
“Nothing,” I said, then frowned up at him. “She gave you a blank piece of parchment?”
Dade’s mouth curved. “Breathe over it.”
Still frowning, I slowly peeled my eyes from his and did as he said.
Gold dust fluttered into the room, sprinkling over my fingers at the edges of the parchment and onto the floor. One golden line at a time, the words appeared in a cursive so thick, I could barely make out what was written.
Dade read the words, low and as though he’d memorized them already. “When feather meets fire, vengeance will expire.”
“You received the same one?” I was about to ask him where it was when the parchment caught fire then disintegrated, falling in curls of black ash to the stone floor. “Did you know mine would say that?”
“No,” he said, bending down to swipe his fingers over the ash. It danced into nothing at his touch, and he brushed his hand over his pants as he rose. “But I had a feeling it might.”
His tunic sleeve slipped over his wrist as he straightened. I didn’t miss the tinge of brown upon his skin, and grabbed him.
He didn’t stop me as I folded the loose sleeve back and turned his hand, checking him for injury. I sniffed the air, no other signs of blood anywhere, then asked him, “What’s this from?”
He smiled and gently took his limb back, the cotton falling. “I had to climb a trellis.” He rolled his eyes. “Or ten, rather, as you lot seem so fond of the nuisance things. One of your feral flowers bit me.”
I laughed, then cursed when I noticed the sun dimming to a golden orange.
Dade skimmed his fingers down my cheek, then released a heavy breath and walked by me to the dressing room. “Let’s get you ready.”
“But what are we going to do with you?” He could wed me wearing his cotton tunic and pants, I supposed, but I had a feeling that was not what he’d have preferred.
I smothered a snort, laughing again when he opened my dressing room door. A shimmering blood-red vest hung inside, a black shirt of rich silk underneath and matching colored dress pants. “My,” I laughed out. “You have been busy.”
He grinned, broad and smug. “Shall we dance, sunshine?”
My mind raced back to that cave, my heart trembling. Still, I answered, “I thought you’d never ask.”
It finally sank in when the wide-open doors of the throne room loomed up ahead. That this was truly happening.
Dade was already there. After dressing, he’d given me some privacy and time alone with my racing thoughts and heart, saying he’d be fine when wariness clutched at my vocal cords.
I’d already seen his attire, had seen him wearing it, but apprehension had kept me from absorbing it as wholly as I now could. Panic still swam inside my bloodstream, my heart a bell that rang deep and haunting in my ears, but all of it washed away when I saw him standing before the dais.
It wasn’t his fitted pants, the vest that sat snug over his sculpted physique, that drew too much breath from me and refused to give it back.
It was his eyes. Radiant, they drank me in as though I were a prized jewel he’d spent his life hunting.
And now, he could officially lay claim to me.
That heated gaze floated from my slippered feet, the tiny bows upon the toes catching the lace of the matching cream gown I’d chosen over the ruffled mess my mother had selected for me. A tiny rebellion, maybe, but if I was really doing this, if this was actually happening, then it would happen in a dress I’d chosen for myself—one that made me feel more like myself.
Small, barely detectable until the light caught and revealed them, beads speckled the free-flowing skirts. The bodice was tight but not uncomfortable, silk ribbons crisscrossing over my chest and at my back, and lace belled sleeves cupping my shoulders.
Dade’s eyes paused at my hands, which were clasped before me, fingers gently entwined around a cluster of black roses. They then crawled over my chest to my face.
I met his shocked stare, biting back a smile and then remembering I’d brushed red rouge over my lips.
“I did not expect the roses,” he murmured in my ear when I reached him, fingers sliding over mine and stealing between them, linking as I stopped before him.
“I did not expect any of this,” I surprised us both by saying.
Hesitant, he nodded, his mouth hovering over my cheek. “I will make you happy. This I vow over all else.”
And the rough vehemence in those words, in his darkening blue eyes, made it impossible not to believe him.
Footsteps sounded, and I made to take a step back as my mother entered.
Dade’s fingers tightened around mine, and I scowled at him, but he wasn’t looking at me. Shoulders stiff and high, all affection and heat vanished from his eyes as he surveyed my mother, the closing doors behind her, then the rest of the shadowed room.
Daylight had faded, early evening throwing shades of orange and gold through the two arched windows on the far side of the room. Hydrangeas swayed outside them, their sweet scent unable to mask the tension brewing in the cavernous space.
Mother’s eyes, narrowed with enough malice to burn down the sun, slid from Dade to me. “Are you sure you want to do this?” Noticing my gown, she hardened her expression, lips thinning. “Opal,” she started, and I lifted my brows, awaiting her disapproval, but she sighed. “You look lovely.”
Typically, we’d have someone draw a portrait of a royal couple upon their wedding day, and my heart sank when I realized that would not be the case for us. “Mother,” I began, but a low hum entered the room.
The serpent sorceress arrived, tendrils of smoke slithering toward the rafters and a crimson smile brightening those red eyes. “Well, look what we have here.”
My mother stayed in the center of the room, her apricot and lavender gown swaying with an unnatural breeze.
Dade’s blank expression did not falter, nor his stance, as the sorceress’s heeled slippers clicked over the white stone to the small carpet we were standing upon. “A beast and a bird.”
“Thank you for coming, Silver.”
I was still absorbing the fact that my mother obviously knew the sorceress on a first-name basis when Dade said, “You are to marry us.” Not a question but a clipped acknowledgment of her presence.
Silver tore her attention from my mother, her lips curving as she stopped mere feet from us. Her two snakes uncoiled around her arms, writhing. “I did fail to mention that with your little visit earlier, yes.” She forced a pout. “My apologies, king.”
My mother’s eyes flew to Dade, but he paid her no mind.
With a small wink at me, Silver whispered none too quietly, “Fates are funny things. Are they not, my bright flame?”
“You think this is funny?” My mother took a ste
p closer and growled, “Let’s get this done with. I want him out of my castle, my city, and our lives.”
Silver gave me a feigned look of shock, then turned and spread her fingers toward me, her back to Dade. “Nikaya, darling, how your heart must bleed…” Moving back to face us all, she watched me and Dade, her snakes stilling. “Oh, my.” Turning to the windows, she released a cackle that made all of us tense and gape at her back, her red gown scraping over the stone. “She doesn’t know.”
Dade’s jaw clenched, his hand growing hot, too hot, in mine. With his other, he loosened the collar at his neck, and I could feel nearly every muscle straining. He wasn’t just on edge, he was holding on to a fraying piece of nothing, and I had a feeling if it weren’t for me, his mouth would not be closed.
He was behaving, had leashed himself, for me.
“What are you talking about?” Mother asked vacantly, and I noticed her eyes flick around the room. Indeed, she was impatient. So much so, she seemed to miss the fact that the sorceress was talking about our bond.
Surely, she knew by now. Surely, she was not merely pretending it did not exist.
Not all bonds could be sensed, but she was my mother, not to mention a queen with powers unlike many in our lands.
Silver tilted her head her way, then grinned. “Never mind. We are here to wed these two divine creatures.” Sauntering back over, she snatched the roses from my hand, sniffed them, then tossed them to the floor. My eyes narrowed, then bulged as she climbed the dais and seated herself in my father’s, now my mother’s, throne.
Her red nails tapped over the golden whorled ends of the thick arms. Behind her, the spiraling curls of gold fashioned into sun rays rose as though a second crown to the snakes that circled and then stilled upon her head. “So let us proceed.”
A golden priestess typically officiated at weddings, and I’d half expected one to be the witness to our pledge to one another. The serpent sorceress was reserved for nobility—should they request her over the priestess—too great a cost for most common folk to afford. Not to mention intimidating.