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She hooks her fingers in the collar and tries to tug it off, searching for some kind of clasp or buckle. There isn’t one, of course. Kahn fused this to my throat. He marked me as his, and his I remain, even if he is gone.
“The collar doesn’t come off,” I say.
“I’m sure we can cut it…”
“The collar doesnotcome off,” I repeat in tones that hold the very real possibility of violence.
She takes a step back, putting her hand to her mouth at my indelicate display of temper. But she recovers quickly. She is a wedding attendant after all, she knows how to work with one of mankind’s most dangerous and irascible of creatures: the bride.
“Very well. We will cover it with a lace choker. Lace neck adornment is very fashionable right now, and you do have a good neck.”
I let her do her thing. I tolerate all her annoying little last minute pampering touches, like the way she coils my curls around her finger and places them in just the right position, then sprays them in place so they cannot move. My hair looks amazing, but it is stiff and unmoving, just like the rest of me.
I feel absolutely empty inside, as though I have become either numb or completely void of soul.
It is my wedding day.
I am sitting in a dressing room festooned with white flowers, wearing an exquisite gown of such incredible artistry that every inch of it is fresh delight. This dress was created by the very last of the fabric artisans, women who require years to hand-sew endless numbers of pearls into the handmade lace of the entire garment.
This is the sort of gown that girls and women alike dream of. It fits me perfectly, the bodice fitted to my curves, the skirt flaring out in a grand dramatic sort of way in all directions. I barely look like a woman. I look like half of a woman sticking out of a very large silken creature. Walking in the thing is going to be practically impossible, but I’ll do it anyway.
My makeup has been done by a very nice team of people who have transformed me into a version of myself that never existed. My cheeks are blushing and yet somehow paler than they usually are. That’s because I’m miserable. Deeply, totally, broken.
The wedding I ran from is going ahead, of course.
In the eyes of the world, there was merely a short delay in the preparation for the city’s wedding of the century. My objections, if anybody is aware of them, are absolutely irrelevant. I was made to be a thing to be traded, and traded I shall be.
I stare at myself in the mirror, barely recognizing the woman who looks back.
Then, in the midst of what truly feels like the absolute pit of despair, my collar pulses. Warm. Comforting. Powerful.
Goosebumps appear on my arms as I realize that can only mean one possible thing:
Kahn is alive.
Somewhere. Somehow.
And he’s close.
I remember what he told me all those months ago. I remember how intense and blue his stare was as he informed me that the collar meant he would always be able to find me.
He meant it.
He’s found me.
I feel an electric charge running through me. I look around, drying my eyes to try to see where he’s coming from. I even peek out into the church. I feel as though if he were here, people would be running and screaming and panicking. But they’re not. They’re talking, in many cases, quite loudly.
I don’t see any sign of him. This wedding venue is absolutely packed, though. There are quite literally thousands of people here. They don’t care about me. They don’t care about the wedding. They care about earning my father’s favor. They care about being seen here, and what being seen here means for their own power and their own status.
I retreat back into the little room in which I have been cloistered. I sit here like a pretty doll in a brand-new box waiting to be opened. As more time passes, I start to wonder if I was wrong. Maybe I imagined the pulse on the collar. Now when I reach up to touch it, it feels as it has felt for a while. Dull and plain and inactive. Wishful thinking.
“It is time, Stella.”
My father appears in the doorway. He is dressed in a gold suit which does absolutely nothing to avoid upstaging me in white. We all know what today is about. Him. Everything is always about him.
My brothers are ranged about the cathedral. Their wives and their children are up the front. They all look perfectly beautiful.
If one were to look inside the cathedral and nowhere else, one would think that the world is as it once was. Everybody here is well dressed and well fed. The children are in little suits and dresses that mimic the fashions of their parents. Everything is clean and fresh and new. But I know that two blocks away, the world is burning. People just like us are eking out a pathetic survival on whatever is left over from my father and his ilk’s hoarding.
