Page 1 of Her Blind Deception (The Dark Reflection #2)

Chapter One

T he day had been one of cloying humidity and blinding sunlight, making my dress stick to my skin and my hair wilt. I was glad to see it die now, making a bloody mess of what horizon I could see from the carriage window. It seemed an omen of some kind, that much red, tightening the sense of foreboding draped around my neck like a string of pearls.

Leela watched me steadily as the carriage swayed, her brows pinched together.

‘Stop looking at me like that. I feel as though you’re expecting me to turn into an ogre,’ I grumbled, crossing my arms and scowling out the window.

‘It’s not my place to make judgements, ma’am,’ she said slowly, ‘and I’ve no right to criticise your decisions--’

‘Then why do I feel like you’re about to?’ I interrupted. ‘Just sit silently and make sure my hair is perfect when I step out of this carriage.’

She continued her steady stare, her frown deepening, hardly reacting at all to the words I’d just slapped her with. After a few moments filled with only the crunch of the carriage wheels against the road, she spoke again. ‘You’re afraid.’

I pressed my lips together and looked back to the sky. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

She left me alone with the turmoil of my thoughts after that, but she continued to watch me with that expression of concern that galled me. I didn’t like that she thought I was making a mistake. It made me consider that she could be right. But it was too late to turn back now, to make a different decision. Far, far too late.

The buildings shrunk and warped as we moved down the hill toward the edge of the city, going from proud, upright structures gleaming with paint and polish, to crooked, sooty hovels squashed tightly side-by-side. The carriage took a turn down a tight, gloomy street and shuddered to a halt before a squat little sanctum. Leela peered around us as we stepped down from the carriage, lifting her skirts away from her shoes to keep them free of mud.

‘I know you’re wanting this kept secret for now, but this place…’ She let the end of her sentence dangle when she caught the look I shot her. She’d been dismayed at this plan from the beginning, at the secrecy, at the haste. Why would I marry someone without permission from the council? Especially now, amid the flurry of the search for Princess Gwinellyn, when I was already mired in so much suspicion and rumour. It would be like kicking the hornet’s nest.

But try telling that to the man waiting just beyond those doors.

‘Do you want me to wait here?’ The question came from Cotus, who was driving the carriage. The ex-swoon dealer didn’t look comfortable in his new uniform yet, constantly tugging at the ruffled collar and trying to keep his ruddy curls from escaping his cap. His brow rippled as he eyed the sanctum, probably still trying to figure out what we were doing there.

‘No. Drive around and loop back. The carriage draws too much attention. You’ll likely wind up getting robbed if you wait here.’ I tried to keep my tone teasing, and that seemed to mollify him a little as some of the creases smoothed out of his face. But he would be sullen again soon. I knew he was a little infatuated with me, and I may have leveraged that when I’d convinced him to help me kidnap Gwinellyn and dump her in the Yawn. But he was in too deep now to cause any trouble.

We stared at the sanctum as I worked up the courage to go in. In this neighbourhood, only a few streets away from the suvoir where I’d spent so much of my old life, sanctums tended to be poverty-stricken relatives of those found higher up the hill, and this one was no exception. The stone was grey and stained with lichen and damp, the windows were either thick with grime or boarded up completely, and there were empty alcoves where once there would have been sculptures of the Sacred Seven. A perfect fit, really. A joke of a sanctum for a farce of a marriage.

Shaking off my misgivings, I took a deep breath and headed for the door. ‘Let’s just get this over with.’

A cold gloom sat thickly over the interior of the building, sending a chill creeping down my arms, but it was in better condition than I expected. A priest shuffled forward and I gratefully turned my attention to him, hoping I could get a hold of myself before I had to stand before the altar. If I was going to do this, I was going to set the tone from the very beginning. I was a force to be reckoned with. I wasn’t going to be manipulated and threatened into submission.

Never mind if that was how I’d wound up here in the first place.

‘Your Royal Highness,’ the priest said as he bobbed forward in a bow. ‘I must say, when this young man sought my services, I didn’t believe him. But here you are.’ His voice was warm as he squinted up at me from beneath absurdly bushy eyebrows, his face creased with a smile.

‘Thank you for your discretion,’ I said. ‘You’ll be well rewarded for it.’ To my surprise, he waved my words away with a wrinkled hand.

‘No, no, no. Marriage is an agreement between two people and the gods. It is not a thing for an old man to go blabbing about, no matter who is standing before the altar.’

How ridiculous. A bought silence was far more reliable. Besides, who in the Trough would turn down a bribe? I flashed him a smile. ‘Perhaps I can make a donation, see to some renovations?’ I said, glancing at the boarded-up window.

He followed my gaze and chuckled. ‘Oh, the thing about windows is they just keep breaking.’

I was prickled by a shard of irritation that I tried to keep off my face. ‘Then maybe your personal rooms could use refurnishing?’

His smile faded, turning sad. ‘If you feel that strongly about it, the Sisters of the Soil administer food and care to the poor and their funds are always thin. If royal money is to be spent, it would be better used there than on rugs and curtains.’

He gave a brisk nod that left me feeling strangely chastised and headed to the altar. It was neatly kept, perched in a shaft of filtered sunlight that illuminated a bronze icon of Aether with a powerfully muscled torso and legs completely obscured by clouds. His hands were outstretched, a bowl of water balancing on one palm and a stone of amber in the other. I had always thought Aether looked quite smug with his own power, and this icon was no exception.

It took my eyes a moment to adjust to the gloom enough to pick out the other person smug with his own power standing in the shadows. And this one was certainly no god.

Draven watched me with the same shrewd, unflinching intensity that always set me on edge, and now it carried with it the added irritant of memory. I had to consciously stop my hands fidgeting. Too bad there was nothing I could do to stop the blush that flooded my face. Idiot, idiot, idiot. I had schooled myself for this moment, had chanted cold and aloof to myself all morning. A blush was neither cold, nor aloof.

A smile kicked up the corner of his mouth and I forced my eyes away from him. It was then that I realised he wasn’t alone. A man and a woman stood beside him, watching me steadily. The man was short, thick-limbed and bristly haired, and there was something familiar about his face. The woman was much taller, with close-cropped spiral curls, skin as rich as soil and a face soft with curiosity. Draven began to head towards me, drawing my attention back to him. He offered me his hand.

‘Shall we?’

‘Who are they?’ I jerked my head in the direction of his companions.

‘Witnesses,’ he purred, shooting a look at Leela.

I folded my arms. ‘I thought we were trying to keep this quiet.’

He withdrew his offered hand, but there was amusement in his grey eyes. ‘I trust them.’

‘All the more reason I shouldn’t,’ I muttered. ‘Let’s just get this over with.’ But before I could turn to the altar, he held out a flower. It was a red tulip, its petals glistening with dew, springing tall and bright from the grip of his fingers. I blinked at it for a moment, waiting for it to be exposed as a trick, perhaps to reveal a mouth full of teeth and take a bite out of me.

‘Brides carry flowers,’ he prompted, and I carefully accepted it, my fingers brushing his as I took the stem.

‘Unusual choice,’ I said, staring down at it. Not exactly traditional.

‘Isn’t it?’ He offered me his hand again, and I warily accepted, allowing him to lead me towards the priest waiting at the altar.

‘Welcome, friends,’ the old man began, nodding to the witnesses before turning his gaze on us. ‘I’m delighted and humbled to preside over this ceremony as the eyes, ears and voice of the gods. Marriage is a representation of humanity’s divinity, a replication of the union between Aether and Madeia.’

The priest sprinkled first soil, then water over our clasped hands as he droned on about Madeia’s fertile body and Aether’s blessings of sun and rain and air, and as he spoke I eyed Draven, my heart beating a constant warning within me, my skin thrumming where he touched me. Part of me wished he was ugly or stupid or fumbled in bed. My attraction to him made me vulnerable, and for all his talk of partnership, I knew my vulnerability was dangerous. Because I had lied to him. I’d told him Princess Gwinellyn, my stepdaughter and heir to the throne, was dead. If he ever discovered my deception, I would pay for it dearly.

As he slipped the ring onto my finger, he smiled like a hunter who’d snared a rabbit in his trap, and I felt uneasy. Already, this marriage felt nothing like my last one. Even when Linus had been at his most aggressive, I always believed I had the upper hand. There was power in being desired by someone I felt nothing for.

This was different. Draven got under my skin.

When the priest finished his lines, Draven held onto my hand for a few moments longer, dropping it as his companions approached him, and I scanned them suspiciously. Neither spoke to me, and they drew him away to talk in a murmur too low for me to hear. It might have infuriated me, but I was feeling jittery and not at all myself, especially when I looked to Leela. She was hanging back, but her gaze was sharp and fixed on my new husband.

Watching Leela watch Draven gave me a sense of vertigo. Perhaps there was a tiny slither of me that thought I’d made him up, that he didn’t exist beyond those secret, shadowy moments he’d spent in my life, or perhaps that I walked two worlds that never intersected. In one, I was queen of Brimordia, powerful and beautiful in ways most could only dream. In the other, I was just another maisera at the mercy of a man with more power than me. Seeing those two worlds collide meant I was somehow both at once, and it made me dizzy.

Everything moved fast after that. I felt suddenly like the room was too small, the stone walls too thick, and I escaped back outside to gulp down a few deep breaths, seeking some calm.

He followed me, of course, like a shadow at my back, and I was painfully aware of his every movement, the fall of every footstep, though I tried to pretend I hardly noticed him. As I stepped into the street, I realised I had no idea what was supposed to happen now. A secret marriage. How was I supposed to proceed? There were no normal traditions to follow, no feasting and celebrating and congratulations. I wanted to take the lead now, early, so he didn’t think he could. But I hadn’t thought this part through.

‘What are you stewing over?’ he asked as we walked the path to where Cotus was approaching with the carriage.

‘I’m worrying about how I’m going to pay for your insistence that we do this immediately,’ I said without pause. ‘If you’d been patient, I could have smoothed it over with the court first.’

He sighed, then caught my hand, tugging me to a stop. Before I could guess at his intentions, he wrapped an arm around my waist, swept another beneath my knees, and lifted me from my feet.

I shrieked and threw my arms around his neck to steady myself. ‘What are you doing?!’

He grinned wickedly. ‘Stealing you from your thoughts. I want them all to myself today.’

‘Put me down!’

‘No.’

I briefly caught sight of Cotus’s expression of shock before I was manhandled into my own carriage and deposited on the bench. Straightening up, I scowled at the man who’d put me there. He swung the door shut and hung out the window as Leela hurried over, her eyes wide, her fists bunched like she intended to swing punches.

‘Why don’t you climb up next to the driver?’ he said.

She flashed a look at me. ‘I’d rather travel with my mistress.’

‘It’s alright, Leela. Sit with Cotus,’ I said, glaring holes into the back of Draven’s head. We had things to discuss. Her brow furrowed, but she nodded and Cotus helped her onto the seat beside him.

The carriage lurched into movement, and there I was, sitting across from Draven.

My new husband.

With painful clarity, I thought of him the night he’d convinced me to take his deal, when I had lost myself in wanting him. None of my assumptions had been right. Having him hadn’t lessened my response to him now, to his proximity, to his gaze on me in this tiny carriage, to the way his legs splayed across the seat, bumping into mine no matter how far I retreated from him. The air was laden with those memories, hanging over me like smoke, like the carriage was burning down around me and every breath was laced with danger.

His fingers tapped against his thigh as we eyed each other, a steady rhythm against the sway of the carriage. Tap, tap, tap.

‘Come here,’ he said finally, the command a lash against my skin, turning me hot with its surety.

‘No.’ My reply was immediate. Instinctive.

‘No?’ he repeated, his eyebrow raised, the corner of his lips curling.

I crossed my hands, one over the other. ‘We have things to discuss.’

‘We could have a discussion.’ He leaned forwards, his elbows on his knees, consuming the distance between us inch by inch. ‘Or I could unlace your dress and find out how far down that flush in your cheeks reaches.’

I shuffled back on the bench seat, my heartbeat a heavy thud in my chest. ‘Don’t be obscene. We’re in a carriage. ’

‘One with very small windows.’

My gaze flickered to those windows, noting that we’d hit the busiest road in the Trough, where there were so many carriages and people milling about that our pace had slowed to a crawl. Beggars would be peering in with pleading faces and empty hands at any moment.

‘I know what you’re trying to do.’ There was a slight waver to my words, but the jolting of the carriage surely disguised it. ‘It isn’t going to work.’

A smile stalked the edges of his mouth. ‘Oh?’

‘If you’ve married me because you think you can play me at my own game, you’re a fool.’

He cocked his head, and the smile crept a few steps closer. ‘And what game is that?’

‘Seducing me into doing whatever you want me to do.’ I kept my face carefully blank, my tone matter-of-fact. Nothing would betray the hot, squirming feeling in my stomach. ‘You clearly think you’re very clever, and maybe you are, but you must have a comically high opinion of yourself if you think that will work with me.’

His jaw ticked, and he shifted until he was leaning against the wall of the carriage again, the smile gone. ‘My dear, if you think that is the extent of the game, then you don’t know what game you’re playing.’

I clenched my teeth against a quick response, stewing on something that would cut him down a peg, but he didn’t seem to be waiting for my reply. He was peering out the window. He grabbed the door handle and took a hold of my hand, and before I could brace myself to resist, he’d pulled me from the carriage, and we were stumbling onto the road .

‘Are you mad?!’ I spluttered as mud splashed up my skirts from the hooves of a horse clomping the other direction.

He didn’t answer me, only called out to tell Cotus that we’d be right back, then yanked me between two wagons lumbering past and slipped us off the street. I flashed a glance back over my shoulder to catch Leela and Cotus looking at me with twin expressions of shock, Leela half-risen to standing, like she was about to follow us, before Draven jostled me down an alleyway. I snatched my hand out of his.

‘I don’t much care if you have a death wish, but I’d prefer it if you didn’t take me down with you,’ I grumbled, rubbing my wrist where he’d gripped me too tight.

‘We were barely moving,’ was all he said in reply, holding out his hand impatiently.

I eyed the offered hand. ‘Where do you want to take me in such a hurry?’

‘Follow me and you’ll find out.’

Huffing a sigh, I ignored the hand but followed him when he began to walk again. ‘I’m starting to think that you refuse to answer questions just because keeping me oblivious makes you feel clever.’

‘I’d be lying if I said there isn’t a certain charm in the way you pout over it.’

When we emerged from the sludge and the smell of rotting food into a street on the other side of the alley, he stopped. Looked at me.

‘Recognise this place?’

‘I know every lousy street in the Trough.’

He stepped in behind me and placed a hand on each of my arms. I shrank away from him, hating the way my skin thrilled with awareness when he was standing at my back, and he swivelled me around. ‘This isn’t just any lousy street, though, is it?’

Now I saw what he was pointing me at, and I stiffened. There were far more people in the street on this mild evening than there had been on that rainy day, but there was the bin, the tavern, the wall, and where there had once been a rug and a collection of junk, there was now a young man selling roasted nuts from a tray. My stomach twisted with the memory of hunger, the taste of desperation.

‘Why did you bring me here?’ I asked.

‘Because,’ he said, his mouth hovering over my ear, sending a shiver down my spine, ‘this is the game, Vixen. And look how well you’ve played it. You’ve climbed all the way from this street to the throne.’ He released me, and I turned to study him, trying to read him.

‘I’m not ashamed that this is where I came from,’ I said finally, though I wasn’t sure whether the words were true or not.

‘I haven’t brought you here to shame you. I’ve brought you here to remind you that you didn’t leave this street by fighting against me. However you believe I’ve wronged you, look at what we’ve accomplished together. You’re a queen. That is the game you're playing. The game that keeps you on that throne.’

I chewed my lip as I stared up at him. And what game are you playing? I thought, before finally looking back down the alleyway. ‘Let’s go and find the carriage before Leela thinks you’ve dragged me off and killed me.’ I hitched up my skirts and started back down the alley, picking my way along the wall to avoid the sludge, Draven a few steps behind me. The carriage was waiting for us a short way from where we’d abandoned it. I muttered a quick apology to Leela, whose brows and lips were drawn tightly together, and we were on our way again.

‘If you want to work together,’ I said after we settled back into our seats, ‘prove it. Tell me who you are. Tell me what you want.’

He stared at me with hooded eyes, menacing me with a slow smile. ‘Who I am is your new husband. And what I want right now is you.’

My heart beat a little faster. ‘Don’t deflect. I want answers. What’s your surname?’

‘Martalos,’ he said, not missing a beat.

‘Your real surname.’

‘I’m curious why you think is matters.’

‘If it doesn’t, why won’t you tell me?’

Tap. tap. tap.

‘Sovereaux,’ he said finally. ‘Which is your last name too, now.’

'Technically,' I muttered. The name tickled a wisp of familiarity, and I turned it over in my head, trying to tease the connection out, but it slipped away again.

‘Anything else?’ he pressed after a few moments of crunching gravel and loaded silence.

‘I want to know more about the magic I wear,’ I said immediately.

‘Riveting wedding night conversation.’

‘Well, you said this is a business transaction. I want to check the terms are what I think they are.’

‘I also said it could be fun.’

I ignored the comment. ‘Does this marriage mean our deal is done?’

‘No.’

I waited, but he didn’t elaborate. ‘Do I always have to squeeze every drop of information out of you?’ I demanded finally.

His eyes creased slightly at the corners, like he was amused. ‘The terms of the deal were three apples. You only delivered two.’

‘But I did what you asked me to do.’

‘Not quite. But,’ he held up his hand to still the barrage of protests that I’d been about to hurl at him, ‘the deal will simply remain unfulfilled.’

That I didn’t like. ‘What does that mean for the glamour?’

‘Nothing is going to happen to your mirror. You didn’t fail to deliver the last apple, since I never gave it to you, so I will remain bound by my promise.’

‘And what will happen to me if I wear the glamour for years?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I know people become… dependent on it. Enchanted face creams rot the flesh if you stop using them after a long time. Will that happen to me?’ The carriage began to pick up pace again as we rolled out of the Trough and further up the hillside towards the palace. I still wasn’t sure exactly what would happen when we reached it.

‘Do you plan to stop wearing it?’ he asked.

‘Of course not.’ It’s why I’d never bothered to ask before. But I had to prepare for the remote possibility that Gwinellyn had more gumption than I gave her credit for and would one day wind up beating down the palace gates.

He studied me for a moment, as though he was trying to read me. I liked the idea that he needed to. It made me think I may not be as transparent to him as he made out. ‘ Stolen magic is corrosive, Vixen,’ he said finally. ‘The stuff the Guild squeezes out of the veins of its victims is an entirely different thing to what is contained in your mirror.’

‘Stop calling me Vixen,’ I snapped, folding my arms. ‘That life is long behind me. I won’t have you reminding me of it all the time.’

Some of the amusement dissolved from his face, and he studied me more soberly. ‘I thought you said it wasn’t something you were ashamed of.’

‘That doesn’t mean I don’t want to forget it,’ I replied irritably. The carriage rolled to a stop at the gates of the palace, and I stiffened as voices began calling back and forth. ‘They’re going to check who’s in here,’ I muttered. ‘Don’t say anything.’

The door was swung open and a square-faced guard peered into the darkness. When he caught sight of me, he gave a quick bow.

‘Apologies for disturbing you, ma’am, just protocol.’

‘Fine,’ I said, flashing him a smile. ‘Are you satisfied I’m not an assassin in disguise?’

‘’Course, ma’am. ‘Av a good day.’ He barely even glanced at Draven before he swung the door closed and knocked on the wood. The carriage lurched forward, and we passed through the gates without attracting any more attention.

‘What are you going to do with me once we get there?’ Draven asked.

‘Why? Do you have any ideas? Or are you just going to sit there and laugh at me?’

‘Well, would you look at that? You asked for my opinion on something.’

Flexing and clenching my hands, I tried to let go of the urge to smack him. I was wound up so tight that my shoulders were aching and I felt I might grind my teeth down to nubbly little stubs. ‘When we get to the palace, I’ll have you shown to a room, and I want you to stay there until morning. The council meets tomorrow, and I have an Aetherdi celebration to host tonight.’

‘Your plan is to keep me a prisoner?’

‘Only until morning,’ I repeated as the carriage rolled to a stop once again.

He ran a thumb over his lip, considering me with the sort of suspicion I was pleased to inspire. ‘Don’t try anything foolish, Rhiandra,’ he said finally. ‘You’ll find me difficult to get rid of.’

‘Believe me, if I thought anything different, you’d already be dead,’ I replied sweetly as Cotus swung down from the carriage and opened the door. He looked as glum as a toddler sent to bed hungry, and I was in no mood to pander to him, so I barely offered a smile before I swept past him and began casting around for Leela. The night was settling in properly now, slinking over us in a gloom. Only a few corners and turns away, members of the council and their families might be beginning to arrive for the dinner I’d invited them to. The last thing I wanted was Draven interacting with any of them. I didn’t know what he’d do, and I wanted to try to pre-emptively smooth over the outrage I was going to invoke in the morning. With two secret royal marriages under my belt, I was certainly cementing my place in history. They’d barely forgiven Linus for marrying me without permission, and he’d been king for thirty years. How would they respond now?

‘Don’ t tell me. We’re going to sneak in through a window,’ Draven drawled from close behind me, making me jolt.

I’d be a liar if I said I hadn’t considered it. I would have even better preferred leaving him locked up in the menagerie until I was ready to let him out, but I doubted he’d take kindly to that.

‘Leela will take you to your room,’ I said imperiously.

‘And I’m to stay there and not talk to anyone,’ he said, and I was relieved to find that he sounded like he was going to comply. I don’t know what I had expected him to do instead. Perhaps I’d thought that I might get him inside, and then he would shred the carpet, claw his way up the curtains and savage anyone who walked past.

‘She’ll make sure you’re taken care of. You won’t need to leave the room,’ I said firmly.

He caught my hand, pressed it lightly to his mouth. ‘As you wish, my lovely wife.’