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Before Allysteir may turn, I press my lips into a tight seam, swipe at my tears, and burn my eyes against his. Gripping two branches on each side of me, I crouch in a gesture of a promise, my personal vow. He believes he may break me tonight. By morning, any tears I may have will be traded for wrath.
My glorious redoing.
Naked, huddled in the tree with hundreds of corpse brides surrounding me, I watch the Corpse King turn his back.
At last, Igrow. My glorious redoing.
She will believethe shadows I sent to heal the wounds on her back and neck are from Kryach. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is she is safe.
Nausea hardens my stomach. Pain racks my throat. But tonight, I don’t drink Sythe wine. I don’t use shadows to afford myself any comfort. My lungs shrink. I struggle for breath. Wrestle against bile, but it comes anyway. I find a dark corner of the mountain to retch all the contents from our bridal supper.
Tonight, Kryach tortures me. Vindictive. Because she would have consented. Nothing less than Isla’s hatred would have prevented her passion, her desire for our bridal bed. If I could have lied...but the Curse forbids it.
Adrenaline surges through my body. By the time I arrive in my chambers, the violence is uncontrollable. Flinging off the mask, chucking it to the ground, I stare at my miserable, damned face in the mirror. Clench my fists. Smash the glass to smithereens. Do the same with all the others until glittering shards cover the floor, until my fist is bloodied and bruised with glassy fragments lodged in my knuckles. My other is fractured phalanges which will require a full night of slow-healing.
More than I deserve.
Her eyes were the worst torture. Whatever pain infects me tonight is nothing compared to her eyes. Or how she ran from me. I couldn’t tell her how much I was holding my brides back, ensuring she could run. I didn’t know Aislyn would strip her robe and flesh, how the others would leave her in nothing but her radiant flesh.
From the moment she emerged in her glorious bridal attire with her skin drenched in the dew of Eyleanan and the Death-maidens trailing her, I knew Kryach wouldn’t wait. She’d enchanted the crowds with her roses. She’d accepted the crown to become Queen of the Underworld. Too envious, Death would never have permitted Isla to remain?to be bound to my soul, to be Queen forever. He would have devoured her soul. He would have stolen her from me to serve him in the Isles: a mistress in his Harem of Souls.
No, I don’t allow myself pity. Nothing but self-loathing plagues my bones and weighs upon my head. Nothing but blood pounds my ears. My chest heaves from self-hatred.
Never before have I required such extremes. Most brides feared me, hated me. Still, I loved them all...fiercely, deeply, madly until they felt my love beyond my corpse. But Isla, she is the first who loved my corpse. The deepest, strongest heart I’ve encountered. My dark rose. His little wonder. And power enough to tempt the God of Death.
I’ll be damned if I allow him to steal her.
Seething, I tear at my robe, tear it to funereal scraps until I’m as naked as she was. Naked, half-rotted, cursed?my reflection in the glass shards as shattered as my being. I grip a larger chunk. I drag it across my flesh. Hiss through my nostrils. Any pain is better than the torture in my heart. Jaw clenched, I scrawl the sharpened edge of glass across my arm and grind my teeth. I break them until blood clots my mouth and my muscles throb from agony.
The scarlet line doesn’t take long to heal. My Feyal blood knits my flesh, restores it. I growl and cut three more lines upon my arm. “Why half?” I snarl to no one about my ruined self because the room is hollow. My mind is quiet because Kryach is withher. “Better for both sides to match, eh Aryahn?” I taunt the emptiness, the shadows of his essence in my mind. He will hear them later.
I’m delaying the inevitable. Kryach never changes. The hourglass of a year’s worth of sand grains has tipped. If we do not consummate the marriage by the next Feast of Flesh which is held on the Night of Masks this year, the Nether-Void will consume all of Talahn-Feyal.
I have one year. One year to spend with my bride. One year to right the wrongs of this night. One year of days and nights to prove my heart, to love her fiercest, deepest, maddest. Fuck Kryach. Fuck Kanat and Morrygna and their dark vendetta. Fuck my brother and his political schemes and dishonor of our kingdom. Fuck whatever refters come over the next year.
I cut and cut. Carve through flesh, through veins, through muscle and sinew...to my fucking bones. If only I could carve out my heart until it unites with the carnal ribbons of blood pooling upon the ground. Nostrils flaring, veins bulging through my skin, rivers of tears upon my cheeks, I find the largest chunk of glass and discover my reflection.
The sides don’t match. But they are close.
* * *
At dawn, I ride Ifrynna to my bride, climbing the cliffsides only my Guardian may conquer. By now, all my wounds have healed, but the blood-soaked rug was irredeemable.
As soon as Ifrynna’s three heads crest the cliffs where the river cascades, the mystical sight is the last I expected. At first, I’m convinced the gods have transformed my refter bride hollow into an Isle paradise. Where once the bone trees were naked and eerie, flowers now clothe the cadaverous branches. Curtains and tapestries of flowers flutter in the wind like jubilant ribbons. No order. Utter chaos, a mosaic of heather, corpus roses, black death roses, scarlet heart named for Skathyk, white Inker, and various others I don’t recognize from beyond the Underworld. Thousands of petals have shed from the trees to sprinkle the river.
Now, I remember how my bride’s eyes burned as I departed, how they’d transformed to fiery amethysts as if vowing wrath and ruin.
Infuriated, I ball my hand into a fist as Ifrynna’s paws skirt across mantles of blooms upon the ground. I am wrath and ruin. Rot and death. Isla is the opposite. This is her fire. Her baring her teeth and laughing in the face of death.
Not one bone tree is left unclad.
“A wonder indeed,” muses my of-few-words Guardian, her toothy smiles growing as we embark past more flowering trees. Whole vines and roots bearing blossoms shoot from the ground.
Thus far, no sign of my refter brides. Or Isla. Until we make our way to the end of the great bone-tree hollow close to the river’s berth where the trees thin. Cautious because hope is lost in the Underworld?shredded as easily as diaphanous breath?, I swallow a knot in my throat as we approach two massive floral tapestries. They hang between two bone trees, concealing the clearing at the river. From beyond, the sparkly soprano of Isla’s voice echoes. Far higher a lilt than I’d expected.
Ifrynna’s breath grows heavier to puff against the tapestries, disturbing them. They flick to offer a glimpse. Of hundreds of my refter brides. Sucking in a deep breath, I hold it and will my shadows to part the blooming curtains.
My breath hitches. My shadows freeze. Tingling shock sprouts all over my body at the sight of my bride. Isla dances before my refter brides, hips swaying as she speaks to them from behind a barrier of shadows and thorny stakes. She’s woven them full gowns of flowers. She’s knit crowns of thistles and winterbells for their ragged streamers of hair.
