Page 11 of His Bride

“They are advancing on the front again. I should be deployed. I should have been deployed six months ago.”

Someone replies. I can’t tell if they’re in the room, or speaking through some kind of distance device.

“The Artifice hasn’t allowed it. You are matched. You need to mate with your new bride, bond with her. At some point, you have to allow the others to do the work of war, Arthur.”

At that moment, there is a tap at the door.

“Come!” the first voice barks.

Lydia enters the room. I can see her standing inside the doorway, which she has left open.

“Your bride is waiting to meet you, Archon-General.”

That gravelly voice growls in surprise. “She’s here? Already? I thought she was coming next week.”

“It is next week, sir. At least with regards to her arrival. She is waiting for you in the foyer. It might be best to attend to her; she is rather timid and overwhelmed.”

I know I am timid and overwhelmed, but there is something that feels very different about having someone else say it about you when you are not in the room.

“Eh… eh…”

Oh, no. I’m going to sneeze.

The worst thing about sneezing is that you get almost no notice that it is going to happen before it happens.

I slap my hand over my face, but the urge to sneeze is stronger and faster than I am.

“Ehhhhh-choo!”

I sneeze a spectacular sneeze, the largest sneeze of my life, and possibly the noisiest sneeze of all time.

Their reactions are incredibly fast, and an absolute credit to them. The portrait I am standing behind is whipped open like a door. I must have been leaning against it, using it to balance, because the moment it swings open, I tumble out, head over heels, my skirts getting tangled up over my head for a brief moment.

“Hold, Lydia!” The gruff voice barks a command.

I was almost skewered by my own guard. She is perched over me in an instant, the tip of her blade a half-inch from my nose. She was going to stab me through the face, apparently, which is an incredibly savage instinct to follow.

A tall man steps over to me, appearing mostly as a shadow at this moment of inopportune introduction.

“Who are you?”

Lydia lowers her blade and mutters to me beneath her breath, “Lady Darken, meet your husband.”

My husband is tall, broad shouldered, and has handsome, but cruel features. His eyes are a dark gray hue and his hair is raven. It is glossy and it curls thickly over his forehead and down to hisshoulders where it hangs long and now slightly wild. It might have been tied back behind his head at some stage, but it is not now. There are signs of his age in the silvering at his temples, and in the rougher condition of his skin. He is a man who has seen life, and fought it.

There is a scar running from his hairline near his right temple, all the way down over the bridge of his nose, to the left side of his mouth. It does not make him any less attractive, but it does make him look much more dangerous.

I thought men of his rank sat in plush offices and commanded others to die. Clearly he has risked death himself on more than one occasion. That means he must have taken life as well. I do not get the impression he is a nice person. He is not looking at me with a kind eye. His gaze runs up and down my body, finding me wanting in some fundamental way.

His lips are full, and they curl into a sneer when he looks at me. I know I am not dressed properly for such an introduction. Even if I had been, the manner of my arrival is dubious at best.

“Where is your mistress?”

He snaps the question at me, glowering as if I have offended him personally with my presence. I swallow my reaction and blink back tears of exhaustion. The flight was long and I am tired and already missing my home. It may be large, but it feels much smaller on the inside than this palatial expanse of a house does.

“I do not have a mistress.”

“I was expecting my bride, not a stray common girl. Though, you do have the speech of a noble, if not the bearing, or the dress.”

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