Chapter 2

The chapel bells started ringing.

Roland led Coralie out by the hand. My parents followed them, smiling like they had won something. Not one of them looked back at me.

I stood alone in the empty room.

A few of Roland's groomsmen came in instead, paladins in silver, officers of the Order. The vice-captain, Bram, looked me up and down, taking in the plain dress I had on.

"Well. The bride we almost had." He smiled. "I always said it. A country girl they dug out of nowhere was never going to suit our captain."

"And Lady Coralie is gentle. She's the twin-star. She's the one the gods meant for him."

They said it to my face and laughed.

Coralie came back then, in her second gown, maids fussing around her. She saw me ringed by the knights and pressed a hand to her mouth.

"You haven't left yet?" She came toward me and held out her hand, palm up, easy as asking for the salt. "Good. The rite drained me again. As a wedding gift, give me half your mana. Roland wants me in a perfect body tonight."

She leaned on the last part and watched my face.

"You heard the lady," Bram said. "It's an honor to feed the captain's wife."

I looked at her the way you look at something stuck to the bottom of your shoe.

"Get out."

Her face dropped. Then the tears came, right on time. "How can you say that to me— Bram, my chest, it hurts—"

Bram's sword came out of its sheath, and the point swung up at my throat. "You'd hurt the captain's wife? I'll teach you what that costs."

The tip moved toward me.

Then the floor jumped.

The whole cathedral shook. The light went out of the windows all at once, like someone had thrown a sheet over the sun. Something pressed down on the room, heavy as a hand made of stone, and everyone in it folded under the weight.

Bram's sword hit the floor. His knees buckled. He coughed blood onto the marble.

Coralie was flattened where she stood, screaming, unable to lift so much as a finger.

The air split open. A long crack ran down the middle of the room, and the dark poured out.

A man stepped through it. Dark-gold robes. Silver hair down his back. Red eyes that moved over the room and stopped on no one.

The Abyssal Lord. I had only ever heard the name in stories told to scare children. The thing even the gods stepped around.

He walked past the knights like they weren't there and stopped in front of me. His eyes found mine, and all the cold went out of them.

"You called me at last," he said. His voice was low and rough. "My bride."

He went down on one knee, lifted my hand, and pressed a cold kiss to the back of it.

"Take me away," I said. My voice didn't move.

"As you wish."

He lifted me into his arms. He didn't waste a look on Coralie. He raised one hand, and half the wall behind us crumbled to dust. The screaming started up again as he stepped into the dark, and Velmoria was gone.

There was no sun where he took me. Only the dark, and pale lilies growing along the edge of the lava.

I sat on a cold stone throne. He knelt in front of me with a cup. The liquid in it glowed a faint blue.

"This is the Lethe draught," he said. "Drink it, and you'll stop loving them. You'll stop hurting over any of it. You'll remember every face. You just won't feel a thing."

He paused. His voice went careful. "Are you sure?"

I looked at the blue turning in the cup.

For years I had begged my parents like a dog. I had given Roland everything a person can give. I had gotten betrayal, and theft, and a room full of people laughing while a sword pointed at my throat.

"I'm sure."

I took the cup and drank it down.

The cold ran down my throat and into my hands. Something came loose deep under my ribs and lifted away.

The years of being second. The wanting Roland and never being wanted back. Gone. All of it thinned out and drifted off, and my heartbeat went quiet and even.

I thought their names. Garrick. Rosamund. Roland. Coralie. They landed like strangers'. I remembered everything. None of it touched me.

Alaric watched my eyes empty out, and he smiled.

He rested his head against my knee.

"Now you're only mine."