Page 160 of A Game of Veils

This is what I asked for, what I traded love and freedom for. I’m going to make everything I can of the chance.

As we break apart, Leonette staggers to a halt at the end of the trail of fire. She gapes at me in a daze, despair dawning on her face.

I don’t have time to so much as twitch an apologetic grimace her way before one of the guards plunges his sword through her neck.

Marclinus doesn’t even glance toward his last murdered potential bride. He lifts my hand in the air, his gaze still fixed on me, his grin sharpening into a smirk. “Tell the Cleric Pomia that it’s time I take this besotted woman as my wife.”

Chapter Forty-Nine

Aurelia

The palace temple is smothered in pink.

The swaths of silk form a rosy haze at the edges of my vision as I gaze up at my soon-to-be husband. Everything about the past few hours feels similarly foggy—a blur of medics applying their gifts to my trial-induced wounds and attendants preparing my body for the wedding.

I’ve been bathed and dressed, powdered and perfumed, and now we stand here before the most prominent cleric of Ardone in Dariu.

I keep my hands loose and relaxed at my sides. The small weight of my sapphire ring provides a fragment of comfort.

It’s the only article on me that actually belongs to me. I asked to wear it with my wedding attire as a symbol of this deeper union of Accasy with the empire as well as me with the imperial heir, and that one request was granted.

I can’t risk looking away from Marclinus. The one time I did, to take in the swarm of nobles packed into the temple around us, my gaze caught on four faces I wasn’t sure I’d ever see again.

The princes could have fled on their own as they’d planned. They didn’t need me with them for their gambit to work perfectly well for their own escape.

But they’re here, standing amid the crowd to my left, their stances tense and their faces taut with emotions I can’t afford to dwell on.

The cleric finishes intoning her prayer for the godlen of love’s divine blessing on our partnership. She wraps a strip of pink silk around my palm and then Marclinus’s, literally binding us together in the Darium way.

I knew the expected words by heart before I ever left Accasy. “I swear before all the gods to love and honor you from now until my last breath leaves me.”

Marclinus repeats the vow to me, his careless grin invalidating the promise in the statement.

Cleric Pomia slides a thin gold band over my other hand and activates the embedded enchantment. The metal contracts around my wrist, not tight enough to pinch but fitted so it could never be removed naturally. I look down at it as she does the same for the imperial heir.

It feels like a gilded manacle.

“Let it be seen that these two are married!” she calls out.

The court cheers. Marclinus bows down to kiss me soundly. The strip of silk falls away, and he grasps my fingers to lead me to dinner.

It’s done. I’m his.

After he’s licked the last icing from our wedding dessert off his fork, Marclinus raises his wine goblet toward me. “Was that not a most satisfying feast, wife?”

I widen the smile that’s been molded to my face since the moment I joined him on the dais this morning and clink my glass to his. “The best I’ve ever had, husband.”

My gaze slides away from him over the nobles assembled in the dining room before us. For our wedding banquet, we newlyweds took the head table all for ourselves, other than Emperor Tarquin watching us from his usual throne-like chair at one end. Platters holding more food than I could eat in a week are laid out all around us.

The feasting nobles chatter at a more subdued tone than usual, with regular glances shot our way. They’re evaluating their new empress-to-be. Considering how they can best position themselves to benefit from this shift in power.

Possibly wondering how they might begin to ingratiate themselves into my favor after the chilly initial reception most of them offered.

I skim my eyes more swiftly over the four princes seated next to each other at the nearest table. I still catch a glimpse of Raul’s scowl, Lorenzo’s drawn expression, Bastien’s glare, and Neven’s braced stance.

Why didn’t they take the chance they had and leave?

Perhaps it didn’t seem worth the gamble when they couldn’t know if I’d reveal their lies.

---