Page 23

“You understand, Tamsyn?” Mama pressed. “I need to hear you say you will keep your face covered.”

“I understand.” Now that he had seen my face and believed me to be a servant, this was more critical than ever. “The wimple and veil stay in place until after the bedding.”After the bedding.Then the hiding would end. And... everything else would begin. I swallowed reflexively.

A smile curved her lips. “That’s a good girl.” She was all efficiency again. “Now. Let us finish preparing you.”

She summoned the ladies, and they resumed their work on me.

I was shrouded head to toe. My forearms and hands—pale, trembling appendages no matter how I tried to control their movements—were the only things visible beneath the loose sleeves of the kirtle.

The wimple covered my hair and revealed only the circle of my face, and then, for good measure, a gauzy veil was added that leftjust a vague outline of my features. I stood in front of the mirror, staring out through the sheer material that cast a miasma of gold over my reflection. I was unidentifiable. Only an indistinct countenance behind a veil.

“Fret not,” the queen assured me, tugging on the fabric and checking the thin gold circlet around my head to make certain it was secure. “It has been explained that this is the custom. He won’t expect to see your face.”

I nodded, glad she could not see my expression either. Glad no one could. If even a fraction of my mounting panic was glimpsed, Lady Frida would be diving for the sejd to make certain I was properly agreeable to the impending bedding.No, thank you.I would do this without any potions or tonics. It would bemegoing into this fate and not some dazed and befuddled version of myself, so out of my head I would willingly couple with anyone.

We departed the chamber and wound our way down the castle steps and through the Great Hall. One of the queen’s ladies waited there with a cloak. “Don’t wish you to catch an ague, Your Majesty. A strange chill has taken the land. I blame it on the arrival of these barbarians.” The woman sniffed as she settled the cloak over the queen’s shoulders, pulling the fur-lined hood over her head.

“I’m sure it has nothing to do with our guests.” A cloak was offered to me, but the queen waved it away. “We don’t wish to ruin the efforts we have taken with her appearance.” Before stepping outside, she turned to me. “You can do this, daughter.”

I nodded.

She clasped my shoulders. “You must go the rest of the way alone.”

I would take the long march to the chapel on my own, through the deepening day. I understood this. There were some walks you must go alone in life. This would be one of them.

I passed through the double doors, and a cheer went up that I absorbed like a physical blast. The din was deafening. Flowers were tossed. Colorful pennants waved. People filled the bailey, all come to watch a princess of Penterra make her momentous walkto the doors of the chapel, where the Beast of the Borderlands waited for her.

Waits for me.

We would enter the church together. The evening air was indeed cool, opaque, hinting prematurely at the winter to come. I counted my steps to ease my anxiety.

Sixty-seven, sixty-eight.

I recognized Lord Dryhten’s form across the distance, taller and bigger than everyone else, even if I could not clearly make out his face.

Ninety-three, ninety-four.

With my vision impaired, I proceeded carefully past the onlookers, their faces featureless smudges against the darkening night.

One hundred and thirty-nine. One hundred and forty.

I was almost at his side when I stumbled, my slippers tripping over a bouquet of flowers someone had tossed.Hell’s teeth.This veil was a nuisance. I longed to yank it off, but that would only result in a far greater nuisance—this warrior uncovering the perfidy being played upon him and running me through with his sword.

He stepped forward and caught me, one steel arm sliding around me.

Dread unfurled in my chest as I looked at him through the gossamer fabric. He was so near I could feel the hot puff of his breath.

This close, the most prominent features of his face stood out starkly through the sheer material brushing my nose. The dark slash of his eyebrows. The deep-set eyes. The nose that might have been large on someone else but fit his face perfectly. His precise expression eluded me, but he was definitelynotsmiling. Did this man even know how to smile?

His stare cut into me, and I feared how much he could see of me. Enough to know I was the girl from the chancery that he had caught spying?

I felt his scrutiny in my bones, in the very marrow of me. The intensity of his gaze drilled deep, attempting to see past my veil.

This is it. This is when he will recognize I am not Feena or Sybilia or Alise. He will know he holds a fraud in his arms.

“Shall we?” he asked in that deep voice, which I felt like a lick of heat on my skin.

I waited a heartbeat and then nodded.