We quickly wind our way through the empty corridors. All the guests have surely already gathered on the beach. Alia points me down small hallway, a shortcut to the courtyard, when a voice rings out.
“I don’t. I don’t have to. It isn’t necessary. You heard Father, it’s all set up anyway—”
Sofie.
Then another girl’s voice meets hers. “Dearest, they’re all waiting for you.” The hard-edged lilt to the girl’s consonants tells me it’s Agnata, one of Sofie’s hofdames. We were seated across from each other at the women’s feast yesterday. “You can’t disappoint them.”
“The people won’t care if he marries me or anyone else. In fact, it might be best if I don’t show up. Then this is purely a financial transaction.”
Alia’s eyes meet mine, and suddenly they’re shot through with glee. On her lips is a particularly human question:Cold feet?
There’s some rustling, and a footman appears. Alia greets him with a wild smile, and I wave, and hope he didn’t see us standing there, still as stone, listening in. We burst out of the doors, all but running. Our hearts are pounding as we hit the cobblestones of the sea lane that leads down to the main beach. The wedding canopy comesinto view, and the smile falls off Alia’s lips. She grabs my hand and repeats, almost as a silent chant: Cold feet. Cold feet. Cold feet.
As guests of the castle, we’re placed on the groom’s side, in the very last row of the covered seating, new friends that we are. Around the edge of the canopy, thousands of citizens mingle as if they’re at a sporting match, the lot of them sprawling out onto the beach, seated on woven blankets and the sun-warm sand.
Not two minutes after we’re seated, Niklas reappears, no worse for wear from his boys’ night. His hair shines dark and is styled with care, a crown fat with sapphires upon his head as he smiles from the altar, dimples flashing along.
Alia spots him before I do, and everything about her goes still and rigid beside me. I know she’s seeing the boy she’s dreamed about for more than a year exactly as she hoped he’d be someday with her at his side. Again, she mouths her refrain, hope in her eyes for the first time since it died on the marble balcony.Cold feet. Cold feet. Cold feet.
Niklas settles in next to the chaplain and turns to face the crowd. My breath catches as he immediately finds Alia in the crowd. Though we’re in the back and dressed in Havnestad blue like the majority of the groom’s guests, he can’t help but be drawn to her. To look at her. He meets her eyes, and for a moment, my heart flutters, just as it did that day on the balcony.
Maybe there’s a chance.
Maybe he really does love Alia.
Maybe that love is enough that he’ll stop this wedding farce and bring Alia up there instead, marrying her with a kiss so fierce, the magic has no choice but to be satisfied.
Maybe the only sad part of the story is that I will remain human against my will. If Alia is happy and survives, that will be enough for me.
But then, as quickly as their eyes met, Niklas forces himself to look away. His gaze finds the tips of his polished boots. His hands remain crisply folded behind his back. And that swoop of hope in my heart crashes into the sand. He’s going to go through with it.
As if in confirmation, Niklas’s eyes sweep up again, and he smiles. The whole crowd gasps, and we don’t need to turn to know what he sees. What they all see. Sofie has arrived, cold feet and all.
At my side, Alia begins trembling hard enough that I grab her hand to steady her in her seat. Suddenly I hate Niklas so much that in that moment I wish we had time to make him suffer. To experience an ounce of what Alia feels in her heart right now. Alia’s whole body shifts toward mine, words ready to be formed without sound. Her eyes are big and round, purple shadows of her sleeplessness carving moons beneath her lashes.
He loves me.
I shake my head and force my voice to stay a whisper,hundreds of ears around us now. “If he loved you, he wouldn’t put you through this.”
Alia’s mouth sets into a tight line, her brows pulling together hard and quick. She shakes her head and then her hands and lips and the entire hang of her body is throwing herself into what she wants to say.
Look at how he watches me. Look at how he’s drawn to me. He. Loves. Me.
“Alia,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. “Whatever he may think of you, it’s not enough.”
Her lips quiver in response.
“It’ll be all right, Alia,” I insist, gripping her cool fingers tightly. “We’ll be all right.”
I hope I’m not telling her a lie.
The band strikes up, and Alia’s eyes squeeze shut and she resets our hands so that she’s gripping me as hard as possible.
Sofie sweeps down the aisle on the arm of a man who must be her father—Baron Gerhard—but who seems so slight that a strong gust might blow him all the way to Rigeby Bay. It’s hard to believe this man holds so much power over Niklas—his heart, his love, his life. But there he is, same moss-green eyes as Sofie’s twinkling in the salmon light of dusk, as he deposits her beside the young king.
The ceremony is blessedly short. And then comes what everyone is waiting for. Niklas removes Sofie’s veil,pushing it over her hair to reveal her face. It’s polished with a smile, no ounce of the doubt and frustration we heard from her before. Then he bends down and, without hesitation, plants a kiss on her upturned lips.
Next to me, all the tension in Alia’s grip fades. I tear my eyes away just as Alia’s body goes slack.
