Page 27 of A Vow of Embers

“It’s the law of the goddess. She is the giver of all good things.”

Suri frowned at me, shaking her head.

“The exchange of gifts is one of the most important parts of the wedding,” Io said. “It is important to establish at the beginning of the relationship, to teach us that we must give to one another as the goddess gives to us.”

I threw up my hands in exasperation. I had to save the fight in me for other situations. I didn’t have the necessary energy to take them all on right now. “Fine, I’ll keep it all. But if this is about exchanging gifts, I don’t have anything to give him.”

There was an uncomfortable silence, and then Zalira said, “Youare the gift to him.”

I had to close my eyes against her words. This was as bad as the bride price. I was not a gift or prize to be handed over. I was a person.

Wanting to change the subject, I said, “Let’s open all of this up. Help me.”

There was a frenzy of cloths being unwrapped and bags being unknotted.

“Look at this,” Io said, lifting a length of dark blue cloth and handing it to me. “This is your wedding dress.”

It was the softest material I had ever felt. I rubbed it against my cheek. I loved it. It was luxurious and beautiful and I briefly wished that I could marry this dress instead of the prince.

“Look at the embroidery on it,” Ahyana said. “This stitching is so intricate.”

“It must have taken weeks.” Zalira was tracing some of the stitching with her finger. “How was this prepared so quickly?”

Because he had known who I was for weeks. This dress was proof. Not only that he knew, but that he had always been certain that I would say yes.

I hated his arrogance.

“Why is it blue and gold?” Ahyana asked.

“Those are the colors of Locris,” I explained. “Blue for the ocean, gold for the sands that cover our nation.”

“When blue and yellow are mixed together, they make green,” Io said. “And green and black are the colors of Ilion.”

Io was trying to make something out of this but I wasn’t going to feed into it. I never would have admitted it to her, but secretly, I didn’t know how to feel that he had ordered the dress in my family’s colors. He didn’t have to do that—he could have demanded that I wear Ilionian colors.

It was strange to be so murderously furious with someone but still able to appreciate a tiny gesture like this that they had made.

“Look at this,” Ahyana breathed, and when I saw what she was holding, my throat went completely dry.

It was a black pearl necklace.

Chapter Ten

That tiny hole the prince had pricked in my heart by sending me a dress in my family’s colors expanded when I saw the necklace. He could have sent jewels in a dozen different shades with a thousand different settings. This had been deliberate.

He had remembered.

And, apparently like the goddess, he was also restoring to me what had been lost.

I wanted to be suspicious, to figure out what his angle was. Why would he have done this? I couldn’t come up with a reason other than kindness and that made me even angrier with him. He didn’t get to be nice to me. He didn’t get to make thoughtful gestures. He had lost that privilege when he kidnapped my sister.

“There’s a matching set of earrings and bracelets,” Ahyana said, showing them to me.

“My ears aren’t pierced.” We’d never had a need for it in Locris—there weren’t any earrings left for us to wear.

“Do you want me to do it?” Zalira offered.

“No, thank you.” The last thing I needed was to have my ears throbbing on my wedding day. I needed to be aware of everything happening around me and couldn’t afford any distractions.