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More Guild soldiers close in, barely a few feet behind me.
Before the crowds fill the riversides, I collect my gown ends, run past bodies, and say a silent prayer, holding fast to the memory of the King in the Skull Ruins. The Nether-mark erupts fire and ice into my back, but I don’t stop.
I plunge into the Cryth River.
Its icy arms stab into me, deep and swallowing. But I rise to the surface where crowds scream, gasp, voices shocked from the interruption to their festivities. Ignoring the onlookers, I haul my body through the cold water. My teeth chatter. The Shivering River’s chilled fingers claw through my blood. No, they close around my ankles, my wrists, and my throat.
They drag me under.
Screams penetrate the watery veil from beyond the surface. Once I open my eyes, it’s my turn to scream. Panic vaults pain in my chest. Too much air escapes my lungs in frantic bubbles. Dozens of incandescent eyes gleam all around me, shining like silver fire. Colder than winter bones, their ghostly forms surround me. I thrash my head, understanding the danger of the Cryth River, why it is this cold.
These are spirits. Lost souls lingering in the doorway to the Nether-Void.
The fatal spirits pull me lower, deeper, into water as black as a closed coffin. Those silver flame eyes haunt me. Determined to make me one of them. Hmm...I consider how beautiful my body will appear once it surfaces. Lips blue as a plague. Hair of fire and ice. Skin of white roses. Perhaps, the spirits will take my clothes. Quite a scandal it would create! I giggle more bubbles.
Before my eyes may close, before I accept the bitter touch of Aryahn Kryach’s shadows to hook my soul into the Nether-Void, a streak of blue shimmers past. All at once, the spirits thrust mehigher. Mad, delirious, certain I must be hallucinating, I cough, swallowing water, but the spirits don’t stop. They propel me through the dark river until the light of hundreds of chandeliers blurs through the water to assault my vision. My body charges into the air and collapses upon a hard surface. On my hands and knees, I peer through my soaked strands: the spirits have dropped me onto the lowest step of the dais.
The crowds’ voices gasp, astonished while the monarchs flick their confounded gazes to the water-logged and wild human girl with water sluicing off her body and splattering the velvet as she boldly tears toward the throne. The King’s warriors raise their bone-swords at the unlawful action and potential threat. I crash my knees to the dais before the throne. And lift my head to gaze at the Corpse mask concealing his face.
Incensed, Elder Kanat bares his teeth, but it’s too late.
Heartbeat exploding and sending seismic waves into my body until all my limbs shudder, I grin, triumphant, and open my mouth to proclaim my dying anthem, “I volunteer to be Bride of the Corpse King!”
“Where the damneddevil is my mother-fucking brother?!” Aydon rants from the secondary hall, pacing such a rampage, he will wear a hole in the marble. He’s removed my horn and tooth crown, his outer robes, and the corpse mask to the blackwood table in the center of the room.
Head pounding from my confrontation in the Skull Ruins, I snort and make my appearance from the back passage. “Blood and bones, Aydon! I assure you I’ve never fucked a mother in my life,” I chide him as he marches toward me in a fury. “Unlikeyouranything-goes palette, it’s one-night virgins for me.”
Eyes aflame, veins twitching, Aydon demands, “Where have you been?”
Rolling my eyes, I stride past him, curling my lip at Elder Kanat lingering in the corner of the room and speaking in hushed tones to the lower elders. “Rescuing a little dove lost in the Skull Ruins.” I wipe bone dust from my shroud, succeeding in my corpse hand shedding. Always making a mess as Aydon claims.
“And whileyouwere bird-watching, I was experiencing history in the making,” my brother says and follows me to the blackwood table before the lesser dais to fetch the flask of Shee wine. Not as spicy or effective as Sythe wine, but it will ease this ailing headache. At least my skull is intact thanks to my robes cushioning my fall.
“Oh, tell me, whatever could it be, Aydon?” I don’t hide my sarcasm while removing the cork with my teeth and spitting it to the floor. Swallowing a long draught, I click my bony fingers along the table, appreciating their musical thuds. “The Shee and Sythe aligned to battle the shifters? Or did the Blue-Skin monarch welcome the Eylfe king’s advances for the first time?”
Aydon hunches, pounds his fist on the table an inch from mine. I sneer, remembering our younger years when he’d purposefully knock into me. A game for his flouncy noble friends who’d predicted which bones would fall first to collect the winnings.
“For all we know, you could be fucking a mother by the next fortnight,” Aydon says and rubs a hand down his face, straightening.
Our eyes drift to Elder Kanat who breaks from the others to approach us. “Your highness...” he bows, hand upon his breast?too exaggerative considering ourtumultuousrelationship.
“Good to see your hair grew back, Kanat,” I leer, preening inside, remembering the last time I upset one of his rituals. Bringing an ancestral skeleton to dancing life before his altar was worth him dropping the candle and burning the shrine to the ground. A bonus along with scorching half his braid.
Ever stuffy and superior, Kanat maintains his stoicism and continues, “I strongly advise against this, Your Majesty.”
I flick my eyes to Aydon for an explanation. All I want is to sink into the chair and drink this full flask, but I suspect it wouldn’t last. Sitting and standing require nimble effort to preserve my form.
Aydon’s eyes bore onto mine like icy barbs as he reveals, “For the first time in over five hundred years, a girl has volunteered for the bridal path.”
“What?!”
“You’ve received a proposal, Allysteir,” Aydon sighs and swears under his breath.
My bones rattle at the announcement which Elder Kanat confirms, voice strained, “Your Highness, we know nothing of?”
“Where is she?” I bark, scanning the bone warriors flanking the sides of the room and the elders mulling about like confused mice.
“In the Great Hall guarded by our soldiers,” reveals Aydon. “Pretty, pale thing must be shaking in her slippers and undoubtedly regretting her impetuous and foolish decision.”
