Page 38 of The Tenth Muse

Misha vibrated with energy,samples of wedding dress fabric, ribbons, and other shit I didn’t even know the name of surrounding her. It felt like I’d been in this room with her for at least four hours, but it had only been … I turned to check the clock on the wall, fifteen minutes. I was at my wits end with this wedding preparation fuckery; I thought I made it clear that I didn’t care what she did, but apparently, not well enough.

“I think we’re going to get really close,” Misha said, the poor thing terribly unaware of what was really happening here. “There’s so much to do! So we’ll be spending a lot of time together. First, we can go over the wedding dress samples, there are about 25 of those, and then we can go over the flowers. I think that’s probably all we’ll get to today. Tomorrow, we can reconvene about the ribbons that will be draped over the aisles, the cutlery?—”

I jumped from my seat, my chair scraping the marble floor loudly. “I don’t give a flying fuck about any of this!”

Misha shrank back, tears already welling in her eyes as her hands shook with one of the fabric samples. “But the wedding …”

“Misha.” I dragged my hand down my face. “When I said I didn’t care about any of the details, it wasn’t because I was so love-stricken that none of it mattered. It’s because I don’t care. At all. I would get married naked and then feast alone in my room if it were up to me.”

Not totally alone … with Zuri.Fuck, that was still so complicated. Ever since our moment in the bar, our first kiss, I’d grown even more irritated with this wedding. The union to Sanjry and Kaizer was needed, the brujas were dwindling, from the war and the lack of men to create witchlings, but it was getting more difficult to care about any of that. As the daughter of our coven’s leader, I knew I had a duty to my people. I wanted nothing else than for us to thrive, but I hated that this was the only way. We’d lost too many great brujas, and while my gut instinct was to kill Kaizer, there was something else at play here. Certain things felt … bigger than me. More significant than my mother. I just didn’t know what yet. Regardless, this was the last place I wanted to be.

“Okay, okay,” she stuttered as she looked to be gathering her thoughts. “I can do it. I just don’t understand. Why don’t you care?”

She wasn’t just confused, she was perplexed by the idea that a woman didn’t care about the frivolity of a wedding ceremony. Surprised that I hadn’t been thinking about this moment since I had conscious thoughts like many of the women here. Brujas didn’t do these kinds of ceremonies. If we loved someone, we didn’t need to show the entire world how much through our choices in cutlery and flower arrangements.We tied our souls, never left that person’s side, and died with them. That was, if they even chose to do that, we lived our lives so much more casually in Caldera—the kingdom of air. Many of us enjoyed the freedom of being unattached. Part of me felt like marriage wasused as a ploy to control the women here, keep them busy and eager to settle for the mediocre vampire men.

“All of this.” I motioned to the room covered in frills and lace. “It doesn’t mean anything to me, witches don’t do this. I’ll be there for the ceremony, but that’s it. If you need help, tell Kaizer, and he’ll give you someone to bounce ideas off in my stead.”

The king himself would have more opinions than I did. If the agreement didn’t magically bind me, I wouldn’t have even shown up to the ceremony.

Misha shook her head. “I’ve done this hundreds of times. I don’t need anyone. I just thought you’d want to be part of it. It’s so special.”

“I don’t,” I said as plainly as I could.

“Well.” She tucked her hair behind her ear as she got herself together, and a smile stretched across her face. “It’ll be like a surprise! I’ve never done one of those! OH, this is exciting, actually.”

“Sure, if that makes you feel better about it.” I turned and left, the room vibrating once again with her over-the-top energy before I got into the hallway. A crash and then manic laughter boomed at my back, and I picked up my speed before Misha tried to pull me back in. We were meeting in my wing of rooms, pretty far away from myfiancé’swing of the castle, and he didn’t come this way often. But apparently, he was over here for something; I knew his footsteps, knew the unique beating of his heart. Kaizer was heading my way, and from what I could hear, he sounded eager.

The time in which he intrigued me was long gone. We’d shared a few heated moments, mostly ones where I was taking what I wanted. After all, an orgasm was an orgasm. But he wanted me to be someone I wasn’t, and there wasn’t a soul in this world who I’d let dilute me. He didn’t think his kingdom would respect someone who behaved as I did. Someone whoshowed skin, who fought and cursed. A woman who did as she pleased. I was certain he didn’t know what he was getting into when agreeing to marry me. Or getting my mother to trick me into agreeing more so. Contrary to the fire they wielded, the women here were soft and meek, and that was what he wanted from me. To ask a witch to be docile was a crime. We were born to be free, to be daring and dangerous. There was an old saying that every time a bruja was born, the world shook in terror.

The wind stilled, and the heartbeat deep within the core of our land paused to recognize the power brought to life.Thatwas who I was. My very name, Dayanara, meant forceful, and nothing could stop that. Above everything, I did care about my people—my coven. It was why I was here. But something about this place wasn’t right. I just needed to figure out what it was first. There were ways to … free myself later. What I did know was I had no interest in sticking around for whatever Kaizer wanted from me.

Before I could think about it, I opened a portal and entered a hall on the other side of the palace. I should be grateful I still had the ability to portal at all. Since the agreement didn’t allow me to leave this stupid fucking place without permission. I was reminded that vampires weren’t too familiar with portals as my smoke cleared, and I smacked into one. There was always the potential to open one directly in front of someone. Witches were pretty well-versed in portal travel and stayed on high alert. We developed quick reflexes because of it. As I caught a whiff of justwhoI ran into, the irritation waned immediately. My beautiful handmaiden turned friend turned … something else.

Zuri gasped and tried to turn around to face me, but I held her, pretending to need her body to keep me stabilized. My hair fell over her shoulder, and she gave up the fight of trying to figure out who had run into her. I gave enough leeway for her to spin in my arms and smirked as I let her go. I’d portalled to astretch of halls I normally didn’t see too many people, but Zuri looked to have been carrying big reams of fabric that were now unraveled on the ground. Which was definitely my fault. Oops.

I bent down to help her pick them up. “What’s this for?”

“Your wedding,” Zuri teased.

“Yeah … about that.” I looked around to see if anyone was nearby.

Zuri stepped closer to me before asking in a hushed tone, “What did you do? Are you running?”

“Oh, he’s alive. Unfortunately. Imayhave told Misha to fuck off in regards to everything wedding.”

I couldn’t be sure, but I was fairly certain Zuri’s shoulders sank with disappointment. Shit, I was disappointed the fucker was still alive and eager to be wed. Alas, the tattoo marking our magical agreement on my skin remained—the shimmering, burning tree of Sanjry forever mocking me. We were getting closer to fulfilling the arrangement, it would all be over soon. Then I’d have more freedom. Or I could fake his death. Whichever felt better in the moment. Nobody knew if it was the creator goddesses that overlooked magic-binding agreements. Seeing as all four of them weren’t around anymore, I assumed it was some other ethereal power. Regardless, breaking an agreement came with unimaginable consequences. I wasn’t interested in dying, or losing a leg, or anything else that would happen should I not marry Kaizer.

“I’m not sure if an unsupervised Misha is better or worse,” Zuri said as we cleaned up the last bit of fabric.

“She said there weretwenty-fivesamples to look at forwedding dressesalone. I don’t understand. They all look the same to me. White can only be done in so many different ways. Where were you taking these?”

“To Misha,” Zuri laughed.

I snapped open a portal, seeing the wedding coordinator crouched on the ground with various lace samples around her. Not waiting for her to see the portal, I threw the reams in. Her head turned as they thudded against the table, but I closed the portal before she saw me. There was no way I was being pulled back into that mess.

“How much time do you have before you’re needed?” I asked.

“Well, I was supposed to help Misha with whatever she needed after I dropped those off. I guess I have some time now before she comes looking,” she responded.

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