Chapter 3

Back in the cathedral, the wedding had reached its grandest hour.

Thousands packed the square outside. They watched it all through the Echo Crystals hung in the air over the city, the captain's vows carried into every street.

Coralie stood on the altar in the stolen starlight gown and drank in the cheering. She was, she was sure of it, the happiest and highest woman alive.

When the rite ended, she slipped off to a side room to fix her paint.

Osric was already waiting for her. The High Priest rubbed his hands together.

"My congratulations, Lady Coralie. Now that it's all done — there was the small matter of the balance we agreed on."

She smirked, pulled a heavy purse from inside her cloak, and tossed it to him. "Ten thousand gold. Take it, old man."

Osric caught it, weighed it in his palm, and grinned until his whole face folded. "Most generous, my lady. Rest easy. The crossed-stars business rots in my belly forever."

Coralie turned to the mirror and looked at her own perfect face, and she laughed.

"What a fool." She lifted the crown off her hair. "Maren actually believed it. Light magic, crossing a paladin's stars. Please."

"You're a clever one, my lady," Osric said. "I gave the Duke any reason at all and he swallowed it whole."

"Of course he did. They always loved me best." Her voice turned ugly. "That little nobody from the country. As if pure mana makes her worth anything. I took her gown. I took her man. And I'll have the last drop of mana in her before I'm through."

She was grinning now. "The fainting, the blood I coughed up — I faked every bit of it. I cry a little and Roland can't think straight. He won't even look at her."

"And the best part." She leaned closer to the glass. "Maren will die never knowing the man she half-killed herself to save was mine from the start."

She was drunk on it. Her arms swung wider and wider.

Her sleeve caught the edge of the vanity.

Something small clinked to the floor and rolled into the corner.

It was one of the smaller crystals, the ones set in every room to carry the vows out to the city. It should have gone dark when the rite ended. The mage who ran them had been thrown to the floor when the Abyss tore the chapel open, and he had forgotten to shut it off.

It was still glowing.

Every word Coralie had said went straight out through it, to the great array at the center of the square, and out of the array to the whole capital.

"...the fainting, the blood I coughed up, I faked every bit of it..."

"...Maren will die never knowing the man she saved was mine from the start..."

Her voice rolled across the square, huge and clear.

Then there was no sound at all.

Thousands of people stood with their mouths open and forgot to breathe.

Inside the front hall, the nobles froze with their cups raised. Duke Garrick's wine glass slipped from his hand and shattered on the floor. Duchess Rosamund went white and swayed on her feet.

Roland stood in the middle of the crowd. The blood drained out of his face.

The stars were fake. The blood was fake. All of it to take everything Maren had.

He saw her eyes again, the dead way they had looked when she walked out. He saw her bleeding in the Mistwood. He saw her smiling at him, white as paper, after they had drained her dry.

No. Not possible.

"No," he said out loud. His voice shook. "No."

Garrick came back to himself first. His eyes went red. He shoved through the crowd like an animal and ran for the side room. Rosamund and Roland stumbled after him.

The door slammed open under Roland's boot.

Coralie was still counting gold with Osric. She jumped at the crash.

"Roland? Mother, Father — why are you in here?" She reached for the soft, hurt face on instinct.

Roland stared at her. There was something on his face she had never seen pointed at her before. Fury. And under it, fear.

He bent and snatched the crystal off the floor. His hand shook so hard he could barely hold it.

"What you just said." His voice came out like dragged stone. "The whole city heard it."

Coralie's smile died.

She looked at the crystal glowing in his hand, and everything in her head went white.