Page 1 of His Bride

CHAPTER 1

Mila

My sister is getting married today.

“He’s quite a lot older than me,” she says, an excited edge to her voice. She is trying to keep her hand steady as she applies her makeup, but there is a tremor in her fingers she can’t quite tame. I see an ever so slight imperfection in the liner around her pretty blue eye. Nobody else will notice it, but she has already fixated on it. She dabs it away with a kerchief and starts again. It goes without saying that everything must be perfect.

“But he’s very, very rich, and of the House of Darken, no less. I’m going to be a lady with a capital L, can you believe it?”

I can believe it, because Maraline has done nothing but talk about marriage to a highborn for as long as I have known her, which began when she was eight and I was born. She used to dress me up as a flower girl, stuff bouquets of daisies in my hands, and make me watch her pretend to marry a broom. She liked to marry the broom because he was tall and had good hair.That was then. Nowadays, her expectations are significantly higher.

“I was starting to think I wouldn’t get a match at all,” she says, dabbing shadow onto her eyelids. “Twenty-seven is very late.”

Twenty-seven is the very last year in which one can be matched. My parents had already begun to build a spinster wing for her in the castle. I don’t know what they’ll do now. Maybe extend it into a second stable for my mother’s ever-growing collection of horses.

“But I suppose the Artifice was just waiting for the right set of circumstances. The Artifice is so wise. Much wiser than any of us could ever be.”

I have heard her grumble about the Artifice for months now, if not years. Most highborn women are matched in their early twenties. To say that Maraline has become impatient, and even a little bitter, over the years is an understatement.

We were all so thrilled when the missive came. The tablet is sitting on Maraline’s desk even now. It is a simple, restrained cobalt blue with two names written in gold. One is large, prominent, and ornate. That is the name of the man who is to be her husband:

Archon-General Lord Arthur Darken.

We know all about him, of course. The missive came with a complete packet of information, which Maraline and my parents, and yes, even I, have pored over in great detail. Arthur Darken is a war hero, a man in his forties who has distinguished himself in war and now commands entire armies. He sounds terrifying to me, but my mother and Maraline say he’s probably a complete gentleman. I can’t get over the fact that he is fifteenyears older than Maraline. It’s not usual for the Artifice to match people of such disparate ages, mostly because older men are already matched, and older women are no longer eligible for matching. It’s about breeding. Seems crude to me.

“Why is he getting married so late? Did his first wife die?”

“Of course not. He would never be that careless,” she says, carefully lining her eye with dark liquid. “He’s an adventurer and a general, recently returned from the astral front. They say he led our forces to victory. He’s commanded hundreds of thousands of soldiers.”

There is so much pride in her voice.

I wonder if he will make her happy, this Archon-General. I wonder if he will be nice to her, if he will like her, if he will care about her. Maraline doesn’t seem outwardly worried about any of that.

At any rate, what they are most impressed by is his money. He is rich. His income is multiple times our own, and he lives in New Boston, one of the major cities in The State—a whole other country.

My parents have decided that the Artifice must have decided to mix some of our good breeding with his wealth and power. He was born common, but distinguished himself in battle, which I think must surely be one of the hardest ways to distinguish oneself.

We are of good bloodlines, but poor fortune, my father likes to say.

We are the poorest of the rich, my mother often replies.

The fact that we live in a house big enough to provide shelter to a hundred or more people, and that our stables contain some of the most celebrated and rare horses on the planet, does not diminish their insistence on our relative poverty. There are other noble families who own entire moons, or so I am told.

My parents are even more excited than my sister, if such a thing is actually possible. I can hear them talking out in the hall.

“This is an incredible match,” my father exclaims. “A truly proper pairing. I admit I had begun to doubt the Artifice. Some say that it is corrupt, you know, but this match makes me think we just don’t understand all the complexities.”

“Questioning the Artifice is probably why it took so long for Maraline to be matched. The Artifice knows everything about everyone. It understands complexities we aren’t even aware of. The Artifice is to be respected. Worshipped,” my mother says reprovingly.

My mother is very respectful and worshipful. She is probably the reason we haven’t been discarded entirely. The Artifice can do more than select a mate for a daughter. It can reallocate an entire bloodline’s resources if it sees fit.

“Mila, come and help me get your sister dressed,” she says, bustling into the room. “Be careful not to mess her makeup. You look beautiful, Maraline, dear. You remind me of myself on my match day, though of course I was six years younger.”

My mother has turned backhanded compliments into a peak art form.

I do as I am told, ever the dutiful little sister. I am too young to be matched, at only nineteen years of age. Normally nobody ismarried off by the Artifice until they are twenty-one, so I have almost two years before I have to start worrying about all of this.

Maraline’s dress is exquisite. She may not be getting a wedding in the traditional sense. Her husband lives in another country, and technically a marriage is legal and binding as soon as the Artifice decrees it. My mother will not be denied her chance to dress her daughter up, however, and she has ensured that Maraline has a gorgeous dress. The fitted bodice flares out into a dramatic long skirt, with an even longer train. Thousands of little diamonds have been affixed to the fabric in delicate floral patterns. The maids have spent hours doing her hair.