Page 10 of His Bride

“Thousands,” I repeat.

“There is a private elevator to your floors. You will not come into contact with the rank and file, and when you leave the property, you will do so either in the company and custody of the Archon-General, or myself.”

Custody. Makes me sound like a prisoner.

I have to wonder if that is not the case. I was taken away by officers of the Artifice in my hometown, subjected to a frankly humiliating inspection, then conducted to a guarded plane, then met by a guard here… if it weren’t for Mother and Maralineframing this entire experience as desirable, I might have started to panic a long time before this.

I have not been brought to a home. I have been brought to a vertical military encampment. My husband is somewhere in there, a man I do not know, and yet who I now belong to, legally.

I start to breathe more shallowly, my eyes running up the length of the building. The height of the thing makes me feel dizzy. I stumble back, attempting to regain balance, and am steadied by my guard. If pity were a person, it would be incarnate in this woman.

Mila

Lydia guides me into the house through thick, reinforced, and heavily guarded doors. There are two elevators in front of us. One appears to be for the rank and file, the other has a gold emblem on the doors. That’s the one we go through.

“You will need to be chipped,” Lydia says. “The doors will open for you then without my presence. For the moment, you will need me.”

“Oh, okay.” I don’t know what to say to that. I don’t know what being chipped means. At home, chips are tasty fried potatoes. I don’t think that’s what she means, not at all.

We are swept upward for what feels like miles. The other two guards are left outside the elevator, so it is just Lydia in this space with me. I wish I could ask her questions now, but thereare too many and her expression is taciturn and closed. She is a guard, not a guide.

The elevator doors open into a grand obsidian foyer lit with red lights. It is not quite dim, but it is also not quite bright either. I can see, but in the way one can see at night. Colors are muted, and I almost feel as though I am underground even though I know I am miles in the air. Life has become very strange very quickly. This place does not smell like home. It is impeccably clean, and has little in the way of homy touches. The house I grew up in was bursting with character, every shelf and sill packed with stories. There were pictures festooning the walls, some photographs, and many portraits of our ancestors. People we still look like, though they lived hundreds of years before us. I was surrounded by not only family, but family resemblance and family culture.

There is none of that here. There is not a single item of decoration besides a sword that hangs on the wall. It is as long as I am tall, and it is backlit in red. There’s nothing else. No welcome mat. Nobody to welcome me, either. It’s just a big empty space that is clearly designed to hold people who are coming and going, and to make them uncomfortable.

“The Lord Darken sustained an injury that makes bright white lighting untenable,” Lydia offers the explanation generously. “He is able to operate with medication, but when he is at home, he prefers not to take it.”

I notice that she knows this about him, not just his medication, but his preferences. I suppose everyone who works for him would know. It only serves to highlight how little I know. I have come to meet a complete stranger who will determine the course of the rest of my life.

I look toward Lydia for some indication of what I am supposed to do.

“Does he know I am here?”

“He does,” she says. “But he is a very busy man, with a great deal of important…”

“Business?” I finish her sentence.

She gives me a sharp look, and I know that I have done something inappropriate.

I don’t see what could be more important business than the arrival of one’s Artifice-chosen bride. I have been taken from my homeland to be here. The least he could do is greet me. I am trapped somewhere between fear and annoyance. I am afraid to meet him, but I also expect to meet him.

“Wait here,” she says. “I will see what the Archon-General wishes to be done with you.”

Wishes to be done with me. I can hear Maraline’s voice in my head, telling me to walk out the door. Maraline was always very staunch about not allowing men to waste her time, when they attempted to court her when we were teenagers. It was allowed because the Artifice considered it important for young people to develop social skills. If a young man was so much as two minutes late, she would decline to receive him.

She would be furious if this was to be her welcome to her new life. She would expect a banner of some sort, and a coterie of new friends, servants, and nobles. She would expect her husband to have met her at the airport. Gosh, she would be so disappointed.

I have grown up looking up to Maraline. She has always been my template for what a girl and then a woman should be. I hearher voice now, strident and irritated, telling me I should make the man pay for this absolute indignity. I am being treated like a courier with an unwanted parcel.

Having been left to my own devices, I decide to explore my new home. There are several doors and archways leading off the foyer. I take my first left and find my way into a sitting room of sorts. There’s a lot of black leather and polished black granite here. It’s a sitting room for people you do not want to sit down at all. We have one of those at our home too. My mother had a specific list of people who were always to be shown into that space.

I pass through the sitting room and find myself in a little back corridor, not accessible from the main foyer, but leading to a bathroom. I go into the bathroom. It, like everything else, is sleek and black and low-lit. There is a large mirror, however, full length with an ornate floral carved frame that seems just a hair out of place for this house. I reach out and touch it with the instinct of someone who has grown up in a fine old mansion, pressing one of the rosettes that is just slightly out of place. There is a satisfying click and the mirror swings open.

I forget all about being married, being in another country, waiting to meet my husband. I’ve just found a secret passage. Short steps lead up at a sharp vertical angle. I go up them quietly, shutting the mirror behind me. I am cast in darkness, but I know that nobody puts a good secret staircase in without providing a little in the way of ambient lighting.

I can hear voices, and I can see a little light coming from further up. There is a standing platform just off the staircase, and two little holes to look through. Oh, I know what this is. My great-great-uncle Norton used to love putting these into the house. In Addle Manor there are dozens of these.

I can’t quite see much of anything. Whoever installed this must have put it in as an amusement, or perhaps the room was laid out differently before. I can hear though, the voice of a man speaking in a broad State accent. His voice is deep and full of irritated gravitas.

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