Page 5 of Iron Bride

The Grand Kintyre had been my father’s present to my mother. We stood on the ground Mum had lived in years ago, before he swept her up in their whirlwind romance. When the dilapidated building was for sale, my father bought it, and knocked it all down to build the Grand.

He placed it, and all its profits, in Mum’s name so that only she could control it.

As an act of love, he gifted her a way out of their marriage. Ashergift to him, she moved her entire family into its penthouses, and made it the center of every Green event. Every Christmas, holiday, birthday was spent in the Grand.

Her way of saying that what was hers, belonged to us all.

Who said romance was dead, eh?

Oh, right.Me.

“Go dance with her.” My mother pushed my shoulders towards my bride who marched through the crowd of gossiping ingrates.

I groaned. She had gone right into the heart of the Grand, and gracefully stepped onto the hardwood dance floor where the waltzing had already begun.

No one made any pretenses that this wedding was anything more than an alliance, and that their presence here was simplyproofthat the deed was done. I was surprised there wasn’t going to be a bedding ceremony to ensure the next generation of heirs.

Giovanna was so impeccably timed, that she didn’t need to dodge a single swirling couple as they waltzed to Silver Bells.

In the middle of the floor, she turned around and looked at me, hands on her hips, tapping her high-heeled, silver shoe like an irritated, boreal angel.

I followed her, having to stumble and halt as couples came my way, but managed to get through unscathed.

“Dance?” She raised her arms, as if one was on a man’s shoulder, and the other in their hand. All that was missing was the cutout of the chump who’d occupy that space. I was certain that’s how she saw me. One Green brother, that could be easily replaced with another, were I to meet my untimely end.

“Aunt Kira instructed me to dance at least three with you tonight,” she said, as I took the first step in the waltz, and she followed.

It always irked me that she called my parents Aunt Kira and Uncle Eoghan. It seemed mildly incestuous, even. A kink I most certainly did not have.

“Only three? They told me five,” I remarked as I looked down my nose at her.

“I negotiated.”

Of course, she did.I wasn’t surprised that they had acquiesced.

“You must have withered them with that frosty glare.”

She didn’t respond. Much like she never responded to anything else.

The light sheen on her skin, a dewy glow, seemed to grow as we danced in silence. One song ran into another. The intention was clear—for everyone to see that she and I were together and in love. Let the photographers and journalists snap away, to give this marriage the appearance of legitimacy.

As the third song started, she stumbled, but I caught her.

She whimpered as I pulled her in, until her front was flush against me. She was warm. Too warm.

“You’re pale.” I looked down at her porcelain skin. “And you look tired.”

Was sheactuallyill?

“Calling the bride tiredandpale?” Her words came out choppy, as she pushed them out between gasping breaths. “Care to call me fat, too, and make it a trifecta?”

Her chest rose and fell in a frantic rhythm. The dress wasn’t fitted with a corset. We weren’t twirling in a reel or dancing a polka. We were slowly waltzing, for God’s sake.

So why was she struggling to breathe?

She wobbled on her feet. I tightened my arms around her waist, taking all of her weight. For a piece of marble, she was surprisingly pliant.

“Are you alright?”

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