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“Say the line.” It’s all Myron grits out, his form shaking as if anger is devouring him.
“My home shall be his home, my throne shall be his throne.” I rush through the words, not meaning a single one. I no longer have a home. If the Wild Ray hasn’t been destroyed, it has probably already drifted across the Eherean oceans to the Guardians know where, so even if that vow is binding, the Crow King will never get his claws on the ship.
As the weight of what I’ve done settles within it, my chest aches. Wings rustle around me as the Ceremonial lifts a hand, gesturing at Myron and me.
“May this marriage be prosperous and the bride last longer than the ones before her.”
If this line is also a tradition, I don’t want to know.
Caws fill the throne room, both cheerful and menacing, and I swear the foundations of the palace shake as the marriage is sealed by whatever magic the Ceremonial holds.
Eleven
I’m not hungry,but I sit at the long banquet table at the back of the room all the same, poking the steak in front of me while my eyes wander across the feathered crowd. Under shafts of fading sunset light, Crows sit at tables similar to mine, devouring meat with claws and beaks like the monsters they are. Nausea has long decided I won’t get a sliver of food down while in the presence of those creatures, and the worst of them is sitting right beside me.
“If you don’t enjoy your well-cooked steak, I’m sure one of my people will be happy to share.” The way King Myron says it makes the sip of water I’d taken earlier roil in my stomach. Raw meat. On the plates around the room, raw, bloody meat sits, half devoured by hooked beaks.
“No, thank you.” I fold my arms over my chest, staring at the plate in front of me, stomach clenching and bile rising instead of words.
Perhaps I should be at least pretending to eat. If he has a shred of decency in him, he’ll let me finish my meal before the wedding night. Now I’m nauseous in earnest. What the sight of raw meat hasn’t done, the thought of having to spend the night with the Crow King achieves in a heartbeat.
Without another glance at the creatures around me, I cut into my steak and lead a minuscule piece to my mouth. I feel the weight of all-black eyes on me as I chew, but that doesn’t stop me from staring at the wall ahead where smooth dark stone shimmers in the moonlight.
“Eat up, little bride.” The Crow King’s hiss slithers along my neck as he leans closer. “You will need your strength for our wedding night.”
My heart lodges in my throat, knife screeching along my silver plate as my hands start shaking.
The cruelty in his tone, the finality… Everything inside my body tenses to run, to fight, and I lift my knife on instinct.
The room responds with hissed gasps and cawing laughter as the Crow King pries the knife from my good hand with a deft one of his and makes it disappear. His gaze scolds me with a set of lips twisted in dark humor, and I tuck my hand under the table out of his reach.
“You think a knife will save you?”
More laughter carries from the rows of tables, filling the air with cold malice and cruel anticipation, and I wish I’d died in Fort Perenis. I wish Ludelle’s eyes had been the last thing I saw.
Still, it’s the Crow King’s all-black ones that hold my horrified stare as he leans even closer, lowering his voice to a whisper so only I can hear, while under the table his hand locks around mine, grasp firm but not brutal. “Hide this in your skirts, Wolayna. Who knows what monster you’ll need to fight off tonight.” He pushes the familiar handle of the knife back between my fingers, and I don’t know what shocks me more, the way his lips twitch as I close my hand on instinct or the way his fingertips graze my wrist as he lets go. “But rest assured, it won’t be me. This may be our wedding night, but I’m not going to force myself on you. If I ever bed you, it will be because you beg me to.”
For a moment, all I can do is breathe, in and out until I can think again, but no matter how much I try to make sense of his actions, I can’t focus long enough to even begin to understand, for the Crows are done eating, and they are getting to their feet, forming a feathered corridor leading all the way from the table where King Myron and I are sitting to the door behind the throne.
“Shall we?” The Crow King heaves himself out of his chair as if reluctant to leave his wedding banquet, but in his eyes, something sparks that I really don’t want to see.
He holds out his hand, feathers swishing over the edge of the table as he waits for me to take it. The fact that he even thinks I would ever touch him makes my head explode, but I tuck the knife between the folds of my skirts, grasping onto it in hopes it will remain concealed by the layers of feathers attached to the fabric, and stand. My bad hand, I ball into a fist and lock at my other side.
A room of expectant Crows is watching as I try not to cringe from the man who has taken my future away. One deep breath and another.
I want to run, but I don’t want to die badly enough to try.
The Crows cawed cheers drown out my wild heartbeat as King Myron grasps my bad hand anyway and holds it between us so my palm lays on the back of his, fingers secured so I can’t pull away. It’s the way a king leads a queen to her throne. Only, I’m not going to a throne. I’m being paraded in front of his people all the way to the end of the room where he pulls me through the open door into a dim hallway.
I pray to the Guardians that this will be the end of it. That he’ll let go of me and I can recoil into myself, but the Crows follow us, and Myron holds tight, grasp so hard my fingers go numb. A glance at his face, his unwavering gaze, his set mouth, tells me he is on a mission, as does his deliberate stride. He knows what he’s doing, has walked this exact path before—ninety-nine times before with ninety-nine brides. There is no moment of hesitation, not one falter in his graceful movements that would allow for me to hope he’d stop or divert from his path.
“Where are we going?” The caws fill the corridor as the Crows follow us with a few steps distance covers my voice, but the Crow King hears me anyway.
“My chambers.” He gives me a flat look that makes me wonder if I’ll die tonight after all, and my fingers curl more tightly around the knife.
Instinctively, I stop, digging my heels in and stumbling along as he pulls me on. “Don’t fight.”
If you want a chance to survive, don’t fight him tonight. Royad’s words come back, and for a moment, I wonder if this is what he’d referred to. That I should say nothing—do nothing—when I’m being towed away against my will.
