Page 19 of Queen to the Sunless Court (Brides of Myth #2)

The Wedding Night

Theron

Anthemos, eight years earlier

No matter how many deep breaths he took, Theron’s head continued to pound.

The wedding feast had been too loud and too gaudy—in the exact fashion he didn’t want it to be.

Come, Majesty, a royal wedding must drip with gold. Solon’s insistent words, paired with the glee in his eye, prompted Theron to correct his soon-father-in-law immediately and with a measure of ice.

Not when this capital is still grieving and rising from the ashes, it does not.

But of course, it had to look like the royal wedding, overdone to the point of obscenity.

The vows took place in Hera’s Grand Temple, decorated to the high ceiling, smothered with incense, and packed with people—much to Lykos’ very vocal dismay.

From there, it was an excruciatingly slow and cacophonous journey with his bride among the cheering crowds to the feast in his palace, in a bedecked open carriage.

Theron had anticipated not enjoying the event, but he vastly underestimated how much he would despise every moment, gritting his teeth and replaying Xanthos’ advice in his mind—the reason he endured everything in the first place.

Your kingdom needs to continue, Theron. You must show your people that there can be life and joy after the losses and atrocities that have happened. They need hope. Give them hope.

It rang true. His parents were dead. The kingdom needed a rebirth—and an heir. The advice seemed as reasonable as Xanthos himself.

Theron barely ate during the feast, focused on keeping a smile plastered on his face.

He raised his glass for the toast and feigned laughter at the customary jokes while his bride sat beside him, silent, hidden behind her thick veil.

She wasn’t supposed to lift it until they were alone in their bedchamber.

At one point, he couldn’t decide what was worse: the thought of their wedding night, or sitting at his wedding feast feeling like it was his own funeral.

He found out soon enough—as soon as he took her hand and led her from the feast, the cheerful uproar of congratulations and the song to Hymenaios, the god of weddings, fading behind them as he was escorted by his sentinels to his—well, their— marital chamber.

Once the door closed, he was left alone with a woman he barely knew.

Now his wife.

Amatheia paused in the center of their chamber, perhaps orienting herself in their marital bedroom—once just a spare room in his private wing—though he doubted she could see much from behind that veil.

He hadn’t consulted her about the interior design of their bedroom and he was about to congratulate himself on keeping it minimal, white marble and pale-yellow mosaic, when his eye caught a mural covering the entire wall opposite the bed, and he stared in shock.

First, he was taken aback by the gaudy colors, and then, as the motif became clear, his jaw slackened.

It was a bucolic image of Eros and Psyche in a meadow: the happily-ever-after of their story, the lovers reunited after Psyche’s trials, though most murals showed them flying or holding hands or something similar.

This one deviated from the usual… a lot.

Eros was positioned between Psyche’s open thighs, his eyes on his wife, while she arched back with an ecstatic, breathless expression: clearly an excuse to depict a naked female with meticulous attention to detail, though not much attention to her body’s proportions.

Psyche had enormous breasts, a tiny waist, wide hips, and overly long legs wrapped around her husband.

Her golden hair floated around her, and butterflies swept through the air as she was lost in rapture.

It was a small mercy that the artist hadn’t devoted as much attention to Eros’ manhood as he had to Psyche’s body, but even so, the scene left little to the imagination.

He blinked at the tasteless mural, embarrassed by its tacky colors and theme. I couldn’t have commissioned this vomit.

He searched his memory until he recalled that Solon had asked if he wanted to delegate the decoration of their chamber to Amatheia’s mother—now his mother-in-law, and now he stared at what the mural disclosed about her lack of taste.

“Husband?”

He looked at Amatheia in surprise, then quickly remembered that he was indeed her husband now and composed himself, hoping she hadn’t noticed his momentary confusion through her thick veil.

He should remove it now. As was customary, she had been wearing it since before sunrise, during the ceremony at the temple and the feast, so she could see her parents’ faces on her last morning as a maiden and her husband’s face on her first evening as a wife.

His eyes drifted again to the hideous painting.

He stifled a sigh. It’s not that I can hide it from her or take her away elsewhere.

“Wife,” he said tentatively, testing it on his tongue.

It felt foreign, like a word of a language he didn’t know, without any meaning to him.

He caught the edges of the veil. “Let me take it off.”

He knew what she looked like, of course—beautiful.

During their brief courtship, which had essentially been an awkward introduction—awkward because the decision was already made, and she knew she had been chosen as his wife—there had been a few dinners with her parents where he’d gifted her expensive jewelry from Pyrkamon and barely spoke to her, as well as one poetry evening they’d attended together as an engaged couple.

In that short time, he’d found nothing wrong with her.

At twenty-three summers, she was a blossoming woman with exceptionally large eyes and a smile which thankfully lacked the calculation of some highborn women he had seen.

As the only daughter of the powerful House of Fousteios, she had been raised to the highest court standards: opulence and perfection for the perfect bloodline.

Fit for a king, according to the Assembly.

He lifted her veil, draping it over her head.

Amatheia’s smile wavered. Perhaps she was also trying to come to terms with this new, strange reality, where she was married to a man she knew more as a king than as a person, stepping into her role as the queen by his side.

It must be just as hard for her. He held onto the sympathy that stirred in his heart, one real feeling in the numbness slowly overtaking him.

Her eyes drifted to the painting behind him, widening. She continued to stare at the painting, then at him.

“Erm…” He wondered how to explain that atrocity. “This painting—I didn’t commission it.”

Her face was red as she stared at it. “No? But this is…” She looked away. “Our bedchamber.”

“I know.” It would be even more awkward to admit he’d spent less than a couple of hours thinking about this marriage. Unlike her, most likely.

“So…” Her eyes flickered to the scene again. “Who decided this belongs here?”

“Your mother. Just… don’t look at it. I know it’s atrocious,” he replied with a sigh and massaged his forehead, eager to change the subject. “Are you hungry? You sat through the feast with this veil down...” He said, unwilling to admit he hadn’t noticed whether she ate.

“I had some oatcakes and dates with me,” she confessed, no longer looking at the mural. “Mum said I’d need them.”

“That doesn’t sound like enough for the whole day.”

“I’m... not hungry. You didn’t eat much either.”

He shot her another surprised look. “I wasn’t hungry either.” He exhaled, unpinning the veil and laying it down on the bed, noticing her cheeks redden. “If you need some time for yourself or wish to go to the bathchamber—”

“No.” She blushed even deeper. By now, there was no mistaking the emotion in her eyes: adoration.

He wished he could borrow some of it.

He thought about the women from his past—from his first trysts in the royal garden, away from his parents’ eyes, to the women employed by his father as part of his education: all more experienced than he was, eager to share their knowledge, and enjoying his enthusiasm to learn how to leave them breathless.

But that was before he suddenly found himself on the throne as a consequence of a barbarian attack on his kingdom taking away both his parents. Even in his thirties, he felt their loss more profoundly than he’d ever imagined he could, cast adrift on a sea of grief.

He’d known his parents wouldn’t live forever, but losing them both within days tore a hole in him, leaving him so numb that he sometimes didn’t recognize the man in the mirror.

That man no longer considered partners or intimacy of any kind—he was too busy, too tired, and too broken. So broken, in fact, that he often struggled with simple duties, despite being prepared for the throne. He frequently relied on Xanthos to make decisions, just like his father had in the past.

Xanthos’ judgment always proved to be right.

But now, just four months after watching his parents’ funeral pyres, he gazed at the woman chosen to be his wife and prayed she would also prove the right decision, desperately ignoring a voice whispering that he was sacrificing whatever remained of himself at the altar of duty.

The nauseous feeling of making a terrible mistake was far worse than anything leading up to this moment, and even the demands of his kingdom didn’t seem enough to justify this union.

Except it was too late.

“Husband,” Amatheia’s voice threaded into the silence between them. “What’s bothering you?”

He looked up from his thoughts. Her puzzled expression told him that his face had betrayed him—or perhaps she was more perceptive than he had given her credit for. “It’s nothing.”

The awkward silence stretched between them again.

“Shall we?” she asked, blushing, reminding him that their wedding night had requirements he was supposed to satisfy, regardless of how he felt about it.

“Yes,” he said absently, but didn’t move.

She watched him for another moment. “I—I’m not surprised that my mother asked for a mural like this.

” Her tone was light, conversational. “She showed me some illustrations of what is supposed to happen on a wedding night, and they were bolder than… this.” She hid a mortified smile behind her hand. “But also very simple.”

He tried not to imagine. “Probably because there’s nothing complicated about it.”

“No?” She considered that. “So what do I need to do?”

“It depends on if you want to do anything.” He didn’t mean to say that, but it slipped out.

Her eyes lingered on his face. “I didn’t know I could refuse it.”

“Of course. I won’t insist on anything.”

For a few heartbeats, she stared at him. “I married you because I wanted to. It’s no chore.” Her eyes darkened. “What about you, husband?”

Snap out of it. He had to steer away from a disastrous course of this conversation.

“Likewise,” he lied, choosing not to elaborate.

To explain that he’d married her because of political pressures would be heartless, especially on their wedding night.

If she was smart enough, she knew it already.

If she believed he was also captivated by her beauty, he preferred her to think that.

She cast him a long look, then sauntered to the fruit platter and picked up a golden orange.

Theron perched on the footboard and kneaded his temples, but it did little to ease the pounding headache.

Briefly, he closed his eyes, hoping the ache would fade just enough for him to focus on the essentials of their wedding night.

When he opened his eyes again, she had returned, holding the peeled orange in her hand.

She twisted a segment away and held it near his mouth. He tilted his head up and took it between his teeth. It burst with zesty sweetness, reminding him of sunny, carefree days from his childhood at his grandparents’ orchard.

She slipped a piece into her mouth and chewed. Her eyes widened. “Oh! So sweet!”

“It’s from the palace orchard.” This was his first genuine smile. “My grandparents’ gardeners have worked hard to develop this variety.”

“Exquisite,” she said. “Is it your favorite?”

“Yes. It reminds me of good times.”

She tilted her head, trying to decipher his words. Then she slipped her hand onto his shoulder, her face close. Too close.

He froze, then shot to his feet, and she was forced to take her hand away.

“Let me refresh myself,” he said, turning away and heading to the bathroom, where he undressed from his wedding robes, praying she wouldn’t follow him, because he already knew this night would be a disaster.

His body was cold and numb, and the only thought that ran through his mind was that it was a horrible mistake.

He took a long bath, hoping she would fall asleep as she waited for him…

And she did.

Curled up under a blanket, she slept—lonely and lost in the vastness of their marital bed. He exhaled, relieved, and slipped under the cover, keeping his distance from her before allowing himself the luxury of sleep.

***

Ghost-quiet, she woke him during the last dark stretch of the night, just before the shattering of the dawn, snuggling next to him.

Her hands smelled of orange. She slipped a couple of slices into his mouth, and the sweetness that flooded his tongue brought back the memories of distant, sun-drenched days.

Her bare skin glowed like fading moonlight as she placed her hand on his chest, her eyes shining with hope. “Husband?” she whispered. “I’m ready.”

It had to be done, for his kingdom’s sake… and hers as well. She’s my wife. My refusal now will humiliate her. Thankfully, he could coax enough fire into himself to fulfil the expectations of a husband on a wedding night. Afterward, he held her close, unspeaking, his mind empty and faraway.

Her forehead against his collarbone, her skin still flushed from her climax, she traced shapes on his chest, over what she thought was a heart—and was, in reality, a charred remnant no one could claim, least of all her.

Even though she fell for him that morning and believed he would grow to love her, this one thing he couldn’t change.

And when he learned that whether by luck, coincidence, or fate, she conceived that morning, he did not return to their marital bed ever again.