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A gilded cage.

Once more stricken by how heartbreakingly beautiful her prison was, Wren thought about how, back in Lorne, she would not have been able to imagine such an absurd, alien place like Verlanti. Its people loved shiny, colorful, and resplendent things, but they were just as cruel as the fish swimming in their dungeons who would eat anything dead or alive in a second.

“Filthy,” one of the women grunted.

Wren glanced at the elven servant with black hair streaked with silver and shrugged. “I wasn’t really given a chance to bathe.” She settled back in as the two women scrubbed and washed her skin with unforgiving relentlessness. “You don’t have to be so rough.”

They ignored her.

She glared over her shoulder when one of them yanked her hair so hard it felt like they’d torn some out. “That hurt,” she growled.

They stayed silent and continued scrubbing. The water around her quickly turned pink, dried blood and scabs alike sloughing off her skin until Wren was bleeding anew.

Hardly an appropriate look for a wedding.

She snatched her arms away from the women and held them protectively against her chest when her patience finally snapped.

“That is enough,” she told them, her voice coming out as a raspy whisper belonging to a woman three times her age. “I will not abide by this.”

“As neither you should,” came a voice from the door, surprising both Wren and the old women.

The queen, dressed in soft swathes of pearlescent fabric that seemed to both hide and reveal her figure all at once, stepped into the bathing room. She looked nothing short of a goddess, with an angelic smile and kind, wise eyes.

Entirely unlike everyone else in her godforsaken country.

The queen smiled at Wren, all perfect white teeth and disarming charm. “That’s enough, ladies. I shall take it from here. My soon-to-be daughter-in-law deserves a gentler hand.”

The two women nodded and exited the room without another word. For a moment, the queen simply stood by the door, inspecting Wren in the bathtub with polite interest.

Acutely self-conscious, Wren moved to cover herself even more, but then the queen laughed and closed the distance between them. She knelt down, gently pulling Wren’s right hand free so that she could wash it. “My name is Astrid,” the queen said with a soft smile. “I imagine you’re scared and confused and more than a little bit angry right now.”

Wren did not trust herself to speak—she doubted she knew what to say in the first place—so she merely nodded. Was this a trick?

Queen Astrid scrubbed soft circles against her hand, carefully clearing all the dirt and blood from beneath Wren’s fingernails, only stopping once her skin was pale and white again before moving onto Wren’s left hand.

It was the kindest touch Wren had felt in what seemed like forever, and though this queen was very much her enemy in the same way that Arrik and High King Soren were, Wren could not find it in herself to hate Astrid.

“Thank you,” she rasped.

“Think nothing of it, my dear. We’re family.” Astrid smiled. “Well, soon to be family.”

Wren wisely kept her mouth shut. Her family had died in the isles. The elves were not any relation of hers.

After a few more minutes of cleaning, the queen rose to her feet. “All right,” she said, allowing a demure servant Wren had not even noticed was standing behind a tall, spiky plant to hand her a towel. “Time you got out of there, Princess Wren. Let’s get you dressed.”

Wren had never thought of herself as meek, but that was exactly how she felt as she shakily got out of the tub and allowed Astrid to wrap her in the towel. It was soft as sin—nothing like the rough-spun cloth with which she dried herself back in Lorne Castle. A wave of tiredness washed over her once she was wrapped firmly in the towel, and she let out a yawn.

Astrid merely laughed. “Not the reaction I would hope to see on the day of your wedding! But I guess even I would be tired if I went through everything you have been through.” A pause. Astrid squeezed Wren’s hands. “But you just have to get through today, and then you will be sleeping in a real bed. A soft bed. Then you can recover from all your woes and sleep at will. It’s not so bad here. You’ll find your place. We all do.”

Wren, once again, said nothing. Just having to get through today seemed like the hardest trial of her life so far, which was saying something. It was only when the servant presented Wren with the dress she was to wear for the ceremony that she finally spoke aloud.

“I—I cannot wear that!” she objected. The dress was everything her own gown for her marriage to Rowen had not been: all gauze and sheer material, with a low back and plunging neckline.

And it was black.

All the more skin for the Verlanti Court to ogle.

It was obscene. No self-respecting woman of the Dragon Isles would ever wear something that revealing outside of her own chambers, and even then, the nightwear was, in all likelihood, less scandalous than this. They really expected her to wear that to the wedding?