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A snarl stretched over the King’s teeth as Ryn gave up, her fingers sliding off his hand, her arms falling limp at her sides. A wave of confusion came over Alecsander as he beheld the Gold Maiden of Per-Siana this way. Ryn watched his black eyes melt back into gold, and his fingers loosened. The man blinked, dark-lined eyelids squinting as if he had a question. His large fingers slowly slid off Ryn’s neck, and she let her eyes drag closed, her head rolling to the side.

Her last thought before the world turned black was that Alecsander had realized her power was gone.

A cough tore from her throat, startling her awake.

Ryn sat up, gasping, fighting to take a full breath against the agony in her chest. She clutched the neckline of her dress, pulling it away to breathe until she realized her struggle had nothing to do with her dress.

Her eyes fired to her doorway, then around her dark room. Alecsander was gone. She glanced at the sky through the glass doors next, but it was difficult to guess the time with the black blanket across the heavens plunging the capital into darkness.

“Bride of B’rei Mira.” The title made her spring off the couch, her wide eyes settling on a female entering her room—the same artist from the Tribute with the bloodred hair. A wave of others followed, carting in clothes, jewelry, veils. The artist came over, her gaze falling on Ryn’s neck momentarily. She turned to the cart and lifted a golden pectoral that would cover Ryn’s whole chest and come up around her throat like a collar. It reminded her of her breastplate, and Ryn bit her lips together so a sob wouldn’t escape.

“Time for the bridal parade celebration,” the artist said, offering no sympathies for Ryn’s condition.

Ryn reached for the pectoral slowly, the piece shaking in her fingers as the servants went around their carts selecting powders, oils, garments, heeled shoes.

“I want to see King Xerxes,” she whispered. The artist and servants ignored her. “Take me to see King Xerxes, immediately,” she said again. Not a single person in the room acknowledged her demand. When she set the pectoral on the bed and tried to walk to the door, the artist’s hand flashed out and grabbed her arm as she passed, jarring Ryn to a halt. A note of warning curled the artist’s lip as her sharp eyes sliced over to Ryn. Heat pooled into Ryn’s stomach as she realized this woman wasn’t afraid of her. That none of them were.

She was grabbed—her shoulders, her arms, her hair. Ryn was pinned onto the bed and wrestled into a crimson veil, gold jewelry, and a lavish red bridal gown.

“Ah. My bride.” Ryn refused to look up as Prince Mansour took in his reward. His cold hand grabbed Ryn’s and he slid a thick bronze ring onto her finger. The weight of the ruby on it made her arm feel like lead.

The palanquin curtains were wide open as Ryn was carried out of the underground tunnel, through a series of gates in the Outer Rings that opened and locked behind them, and into the streets. Prince Mansour rode a horse ahead, but Alecsander was nowhere in sight. Horns were blown, bells shaken, and people cheered, shouting things at her in the Mira tongue as she was brought into the heart of Pyriwell where the steeples of foreign temples stabbed the sky.

She kept her red-glossed lips closed. Ryn didn’t smile at the barely clothed people, didn’t look at them as they threw red flowers into her palanquin, covering the floor. Bare-chested guards held her cart up, not breaking a sweat even after thirty minutes of it, and at least a hundred guards tightly shielded the parade on all sides.

Ryn tilted forward to glance through her veil at the red and purple burning sky where she imagined a giant hail falling and crushing her in this procession. She slid back into her seat and shoved a heap of red flowers out of the way for her toes. The veil was over her whole head this time, a pinkish, transparent fabric that almost reached her waist, and a crown with uneven spokes rested over it on her head. The wires of her sandals were too tight around her calves, and she moved her heels back and forth trying to loosen them. The pectoral dug in below her jaw too, the tiniest touches sending waves of stinging down her neck. She huffed at the largest gem she’d ever seen sparkling on her ring finger, the praises of an enemy empire washing over her as they took in the beautiful work the artists had done.

“How did I let things go so far?” The shame of it hurt worse than the pectoral banging against her tender throat.

A white-haired woman shifted on her feet far back from the crowd. Sigilene wore a wide, black straw hat, but Ryn still recognized her patchy white makeup and three-fingered hands. The look of hate in her eyes when she lifted her head might have felt like daggers to anyone else, but Ryn felt nothing now. Nothing but resentment for herself.

“I’ve done so many stupid things,” she added, realizing who she was talking to. She could hardly swallow without pain as she rasped the words to him. “I couldn’t even fight back.” A fat tear spilled from her eye and burned down her cheek. “El… I’ve gotten myself tangled in a spider’s web and I don’t know how to get out.” She slid her hands beneath her veil and pressed the backs of them against her icy cheeks. “I think Alecsander is going to kill Xerxes, even if I make it through this wedding.” She bit her trembling lips together. “I’m so ashamed of myself. I can’t believe I let things get this bad. I wish I never did this.”

Her gaze lifted to Prince Mansour waving at the people. He cut a gloating look back at Ryn’s palanquin, then reached behind him and unsheathed his silver dagger, rolling the brown handle over his fingers as his dark lips split into a smile, watching her for a reaction.

“How can I let him get away with what he did to Heva?” She dreamt it in her sleep, she saw it when she woke up, she tasted it with every bite of food. Heva’s last moments: her shock when she was stabbed, her smile of relief back at Ryn, her body being shoved off the cliff into a freefall.

“You must choose my plans over your plans, Adassah, even if it means you don’t get what you want.”

Warmth sailed into Ryn’s heart. She sat up straighter. “El,” she whispered.

“There are consequences for every choice made.” A warm breeze trickled into the palanquin, drying the damp coldness on her shoulders. “Do you trust me, Adassah? Or will you keep feeling this way?”

Prince Mansour’s exquisite crimson coat ruffled as he waved. On his back was a depiction of a giant black cobra. It reminded Ryn of the white judge of the sky back in Per-Siana. His laugh boomed over the parade, his wild eyes taking it all in, his red-lipped, crooked smile showing his teeth to the crowd. She imagined leaping from the palanquin, stealing his dagger, and plunging it into that snake emblem. But her eyes fell to the flowers covering the floor.

“I trust you,” she said. “Deep down, I knew you never told me to come here. It might be too late, but if you’re willing, please make the best of this terrible situation. I don’t want to marry Prince Mansour.”

A beam of sunlight broke through the colourful sky, slashing over the crowd and illuminating faces. Individuals shielded their eyes—all but one.

Ryn glanced over at a broad-chested man lifting his face just in time for Ryn to see before the cloud ate the beam of light. His familiar bright eyes, thin lips, and the subtle crescent scar on his chin were cloaked in shadow again as he turned, a wide hood covering his features. Ryn’s quiet gasp got stuck in her sore throat. The man reached into his coat pocket and drew out a paper flower, and as the palanquin passed, he tossed it past the guards onto the floor with the rest of the red flowers floating in. He turned and sailed into the crowd before Ryn could see his face again.

Ryn dropped to her knees, pushing aside flowers and making the vessel jolt. The men carrying it stumbled to catch their footing as she grabbed the paper flower and scooted back onto her chair.

“El…” she whispered, leaning to look at the crowd again. There was no sign of him. “Is Bastone here?”

The people pressed in, and Ryn ducked when a flower sailed by her face. She waited another moment before carefully unfolding the origami, and a small gold flute rolled out, the thin chain spilling through her fingers. Her hand curled around the metal, her mind racing back to Geovani in the First Temple. The old woman had sent Ryn her flute.

A note was written inside the paper flower in the messiest Adriel letters she’d ever seen, as if the author had never practiced the Adriel alphabet at all.