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Frigidness seeped into my veins, flooding my heart until it froze mid-beat, turning it to ice so easily shattered. Air left my lungs in a single sob as I looked at the color of betrayal woven into the cloth of my unraveling hopes. Everything suddenly felt so distant, so stupid, nothing but the echo of a dream that looked like mine but… was not.
“No, he didn’t…” Sebian all but exhaled beside me.
Cici spun around where she stood on a wooden pedestal by the window, red strands framing her wide eyes in the same way the fraying fabric of my sanity shaped around her hips. “Galantia…”
“Oh dear,” Darien, the dressmaker, said where he knelt by the bottom seam of Cici’s gown.
My gown.
Shadowy tendrils sculpted the neckline in the shape of a bird’s nest, the trunk-like columns running down along the corset adorned with shards ofaerymel.From there, it cascaded down into a magnificent train of uncountable black feathers. Shadowcloth embellished the shoulders, gently swaying like wings tousled by the ocean breeze, the edges lined with the finest plumes. And there, hidden beneath the fluff, a single white feather hidden between the same blackness that cast over my core.
It was magnificent.
Just like Malyr had said.
But it wasn’t mine, was it?
A raw sting pinched at the back of my eyes, sharp and unfamiliar, my hands fluttering restlessly at my sides as I swallowed against my tight throat. “What is this?”
“Sweetheart…” Sebian brushed his hand down along my spine, then clasped my upper arm, urging me to back away. “Come on. Let’s go and—”
“What is this?” I’d meant to scream it, but it only came out as a choked whisper, quickly overpowered by the wingbeats that slipped through the flight hole at the top of the wall.
Malyr shaped out of his shadows, tendrils still forming the long black strands that framed those two-colored eyes that bore into me, only for his gaze to drift to Sebian. “You have nerves, flying south to have your ravens poke their beaks into things that are not of your concern.”
“Look who’s talking about nerves,” Sebian bit back, sliding his hand down to intertwine with mine. “How could you do this?”
“How could I not?” Malyr jutted his chin at Darien. “Get out.” The dressmaker shifted right then, and five ravens breezed past me, almost distracting me from the slow, deliberate grind of Malyr’s boots on the floor as he approached me. Until he came to a stop inches from me, and shifted forward for his mouth to hover by my ear, where he whispered, “Did you truly think I would marry you? You?A Brisden?I have nothing but hate for you.”
With the world tilting on its axis, I forced myself to turn my head and look at his hate-filled eyes, feeling my heart tear apart as my throat choked around an invisible knot that seemed to swell. “You… you don’t mean that.”
“All this came at a cost. Obviously, Taradur only made a reliable ally by me promising him to take his daughter as my wedded wife.” A shimmer sparked in the depth of his gray-brown irises, only to extinguish at his scoff, leaving nothing behind but biting malice that dripped from his poison-laced tone. “Thanks to the wedding announcement, Deepmarsh houses enough deathweavers, pathfinders, and fates to make the slaughter of House Brisden more convenient than it ought to be. Granted, I would have liked you to free Marla first, but no matter. We will strike with such force, there may yet be another opportunity. Little white dove, you were nothing but a distraction and a tight hole to fuck while I positioned my forces at your father’s doorstep.”
A slicing blade seemed to cleave through my chest, twisting with each callous word he spat. Hundreds of hairline cracks webbed across my heart, threatening to shatter me into a million pieces, just like he’d said. But that had been before. Before the ride to the cliffs, the kiss, the many times I had felt his love in the pain, in the pleasure, and in every unspoken word between us. It hadn’t been imagined. It couldn’t be… It was real!
“My prince,” Cici murmured, her stare fixed on the ground. “Is it necessary to—”
“Shut!” Malyr’s shout sent a flinch through Cici, tendrils of shadows flitting across the white of his eyes before his voice calmed. “Your. Mouth.” He gripped my throat like he had the day in the forest, bringing his lips to mine, letting them brush his poisonous whispers across them. “Did you really think that I could ever love you?” A faint laugh. “Yes, you did. Poor little Galantia, abandoned, ignored, utterly worthless. Never loved, and oh, so foolish.”
Never loved.
Oh, so foolish.
Another crack in my heart.
“Enough!” Sebian barked, slapping Malyr’s hand off my throat before he pulled me against his chest. “You’re a miserable friend and a fucking cruel bastard.”
“Funny you say that, considering it was you who told me just how to get her all flustered.” Malyr pressed his face into my cheek, letting the moisture of his breath settle on my skin like venom with how he forced the words through his clenched teeth. “She’s so starved for attention, you said, a bit of kindness would get me a long way with her. Guess what? It did. Didn’t take much at all. A few kisses here, a few meaningless words there.”
Empty.
Meaningless.
Another crack to my heart.
Sebian gave a shove against Malyr’s shoulder, pushing him back half a foot. “I said it’s enough! You ruined her twice over now!”
Malyr shrugged. “Now you can… sweep in and save her.”
