Page 634 of Shadowblood Souls
Oh! I’ve seen this before. It’s a church. They must be coming to a wedding.
My heart skips a beat.
Weddings bring big emotions. Delicious, giddying, fill-me-up-in-one-gulp emotions.
It’s so much easier to overindulge.
I hesitate and then gird myself. I’ll only walk over to the fence between the playground and the church. Absorb the edges of the celebration from a distance. That’s safe enough.
Pleased with the compromise, I stroll over. The wafting festive energy draws me in.
I rest my hands on top of the picket fence. Only traces of the largest emotions reach me, like standing outside a bakery and imagining pastries filling your belly from the scents seeping past the door, but it’s a feast all the same.
The burn of my hunger eases. After another five minutes here, it’ll be nothing but a smolder. Five more, and I’ll be completely sated.
The stream of wedding-goers trickles to a halt. It must be almost time for the ceremony to begin.
A small wooden door on the side of the church opens, and a woman in a poofy white dress steps out onto the narrow lawn.
Her pale hair swirls around her head in a fancy arrangement of overlapping loops. Gold jewelry gleams around her neck and in her earlobes.
I stare at her. What’s the bride doing out here?
How are all the people inside the church going to revel in the marriage if she isn’t in there doing the getting married part?
A current of more concentrated emotion washes over me from her, so close by. Without trying, I can pick up on a sour tang of doubt and a bitter knot of guilt alongside the delicate tendrils of excitement.
Oh no. What does it matter if the people inside are happy for her if she isn’t happy herself?
Is there some way I can help her?
My resolve to keep my distance wavers. I never want to come here and only take.
People who do that… People like that are the reason my feet hurt.
I walk along the fence until I’m directly across from the bride. "Are you all right?”
At the sound of my voice, she startles. She spins to face me with a rustle of her massive skirts and knits her brow. “Are you one of Ted’s cousins?”
I shake my head. “I’m not a guest. You just look like maybe you need someone to talk to.”
The bride droops. “I—I don’t know.”
She presses her hand to her forehead. “I thought I wanted this, but… we haven’t been together for very long. Only a year. Everything’s felt soright, and I didn’t want to wait. But what if I’m being crazy? Who jumps into marriage like that?”
My understanding of human relationships comes mostly from fictional ones on screens, but that gives me context. “You’re afraid you’re rushing in too fast. You might not know him well enough.”
“People don’t normally do this. There’s obviously a reason why.”
Through her uneasiness and shame, the quivers of excitement still reach me. There’s the edge of a richer, more substantial sweetness like a honey-glazed roast.
“He didn’tdoanything to make you feel that way, did he?” I say. “He’s good to you.”
A smile lights up her face.
“He is,” she says, and it’s in her voice, in her sparkling eyes meeting mine: the whole roast and a heap of buttery mashed potatoes and caramelized squash besides. “When I’m with him, I feel like I can do anything. And he’ll be right there, cheering me on.”
She lets out a choked sort of laugh. “Even if I went in right now and said I want to wait, he’d just hug me and reassure me that we’ll sort everything out.”
