Page 13 of Bride of Ash & Dust

My eyes sting; I bite the inside of my cheek to focus on something else. Anything else.

“And now you,” the priest says, turning to Lilias. “Repeat after me.”

She does. She looks me in the eye the entire time.

She does not cry.

Chapter 9

Lilias

EXACTLY WHAT I EXPECTED

Ishould have guessed.

I thought the snake would send someone to check on me, a scout to taunt me and report back. But why go to all that trouble when he could just ride out and taunt me himself?

The snake’s hands are hot as they close around mine. My dress is so tight around my waist that it’s hard to breathe. The air is thick with smoke and incense, and I feel like I’m drowning in cheap perfume.

I want to gag. I want to throw up. I want to cry. Panic crawls up the back of my throat, threatening to choke me, and I seize the only weapon I have.

Anger.

How dare this man I’m marrying meet me at the city gates, when I looked like I’d just crawled through the nine hells? How dare he not introduce himself? How dare he try to weasel information out of me, like a⁠—

A snake. Exactly like a snake.

The priest pulls the silk rope tight around our wrists. My breath catches. For a heartbeat, I think I really will panic, that I’ll scream or try to run. We said the vows. Gods above, how much longer is this going to go on?

Something squeezes my fingers. It’s him, the snake, tightening his grip on me. I scowl at his dark eyes and full lips.

He looks like he’s about to cry.

A strange new feeling wriggles into my chest, something that’s almost sympathy. I’ve heard of grooms crying at their weddings before; I just never thought it would happen to me.

Because I should be marrying Prince Laurance in Ethiria, on the ramparts overlooking the sea. My nursemaid showed me the spot when I was a child, on my first and only visit to the kingdom where I would spend the rest of my life.

“This is where you’ll be married,” she said, as simple as that.

As if my marriage was another fact in a book, something to read alongside cat and rat and dog and frog. It wasn’t until I opened other books, books I wasn’t exactly supposed to read, that I discovered marriages weren’t always planned out in advance by kings and lords.

The priest begins to sing in a high, nasal tone. My chest aches. I read those books about kissing and romance like I read ancient history tomes about wars between the elven kingdoms of Summer and Fall. They were messages from another world, places I could never visit, not even in my waking dreams.

And now? My groom isn’t Prince Laurance, but this wedding is exactly what I expected.

Marriage as a sale of goods. Who was I fooling with my kissing and teasing Blayne? Did I really think it would make one bit of difference whether I knew how to kiss?

No. The snake’s throat flexes as he swallows, and the light from a thousand candles dances across the tears in his eyes.

He doesn’t want me, this assassin who’s murdered princes and generals. He probably learned about this wedding the same time I did, two godsdamned weeks ago, and he’s had to adjust his entire world around the sudden appearance of a wife. Hells, someone that handsome probably has a legion of lovers. Or had.

And that’s why he’s crying.

I swallow hard, and only then do I realize the priest has stopped singing. He closes his long, bony fingers over the silk rope binding our wrists together, just below our clasped hands.

“What is bound in the eyes of Mirdia, she who protects and upholds all vows, can never be unbound,” the priest announces.

A shiver runs down my back, despite the heat of the room. A bead of sweat traces a path down the snake’s neck. I wish those words didn’t sound quite so much like a threat.