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She had plenty of joy to share.
Marble columns ringed the outside of Khides’ temple. The entrance was flanked by two stone statues, both ancient warrior-kings with the heads of wolves. The sun was high overhead, the shadows short.
Midday on Midsummer—there could not be a finer time for the Radiant Queen to wed.
As soon as they dismounted, Elina clasped Warrick’s hand and pulled him up the steps, abandoning the heat outside for the coolness within. The serjeant’s and the knights’ boots clapped rhythmically behind her. Ahead stood the priestess, garbed in a simple black robe.
“Welcome,” said she in the southern tongue, then glanced at Warrick. She spoke what Elina assumed was the same greeting, but in the eastern tongue. Her gaze continued on to the knights. “You are here to wed or to invade?”
Elina grinned and bounced up onto her toes. “Wed.”
“So you shall. You have a red ribbon?”
“I have it here, my lady.” Serjeant Iarthil produced the crimson length.
“Then give to me your hands.” The priestess repeated the instruction to Warrick. Elina’s heart thumped wildly as he threaded his fingers through hers, his dark eyes locked on her face.
“Your names?”
“Elina of Aleron.”
“The Radiant Queen of Aleron,” the serjeant emphasized.
The priestess’s gaze flicked to his face and narrowed, but she said nothing. Only looked then to Warrick. Her brows rose when he spoke his reply. Yet again, she said nothing, and began winding the ribbon around their clasped hands.
“Elina and Warrick are not yet bound together. So we gather to witness their joining, as two…be-become…one.” Her voice faltered as her fingers brushed over Elina’s rings. She drew her hands back. “You ought not wear such jewels when you speak your vows.”
Face hardening, Warrick spoke harshly to her in response.
“He says that you cannot take them off,” Serjeant Iarthil murmured to Elina. “That they keep you alive.”
The priestess glanced to Elina’s face, as if searching for the reason why.
Sick dread boiled in her chest. “A curse,” Elina told her. “A wasting disease. Why must I not wear them?”
“The power the jewels hold—you cannot know what such magic will make of the vows you speak, what spell it might cast…and what it might do if you choose to unbind.” She looked to Warrick and repeated her explanation.
His brows snapped together upon the last word.
“He asks what it means to unbind. The priestess says that it means to unmarry.”
Warrick scoffed.
“He says there is no such thing.”
“There is,” Elina said and let the serjeant translate her reply as she spoke it. “Not in Aleron, but in other realms through which we’ve traveled. If a couple marries, and one of them unknots the ribbon, the marriage is undone as if the wedding never occurred. If one of them cuts the ribbon, each take from their home the possessions that are theirs alone, and thereafter they are as if dead to each other.”
“Here in Darcoth, that is the way,” said the priestess.
Warrick clasped her hand tighter, his gaze boring into hers. His words were sharp, fierce—but with a hint of uncertainty that pierced through her heart.
“He asks if you intend to one day unmarry him. He asks if such a spell would matter at all.”
“Even if I had long to live, it would not matter. I would never wish to unmarry,” she said, her throat suddenly clogged with her roiling emotions. Some sweet. Some painful. But she would not cry this day. She turned to the priestess. “Let us speak our vows.”
“You are certain?”
Elina nodded. As did Warrick, when Khides’ priestess repeated the question.
“Very well, then.” She again took up the ribbon, threading it through their entangled fingers and around their wrists. “Elina of Aleron, do you pledge yourself to this man and vow to be his faithful wife?”
Happiness began to rise again through the dread and fear that had been weighing heavily in her stomach. “I will.”
“Warrick of the Ghost Clan”—she paused and switched languages to finish the vow.
Warrick’s gaze burned into Elina’s as he replied.
The priestess knotted the ribbon. “Then you are now wife and husband.”
With a relieved laugh, Warrick dragged Elina forward by their bound hands and kissed her, so thoroughly that he might as well have consummated their marriage right there.
“The ribbon must bind your hands until dawn,” the priestess reminded them when Warrick finally released Elina. “I suggest you take close care of it after.”
In Aleron, the ribbon could be tossed away after dawn—though some brides kept theirs for the memory of it. But Elina would happily follow the priestess’s suggestion. This was a memory she would always keep near.
“My queen.” Serjeant Iarthil bowed to Elina. Then to Warrick. “My king.”
Behind him, the knights went down to one knee.
Warrick laughed and shook his head at their display, then scooped Elina into his arms. He strode for the temple’s exit.
“Keep up, Serjeant!” Elina called back to him, laughing. “We have songs to sing and wine to drink and a feast to eat! And you, my king—” She looked up at Warrick and twined her arms around his neck. “You need to take me to bed.”
