Page 3 of The Nightmare Bride

I n the morning, I awoke to silence.

A groan crept from my cracked lips as I pried my lashes apart. Across the room, my balcony doors hung askew, admitting sunlight so cheerful it threatened to make me retch.

I closed my eyes until the urge passed, then took inventory. My wrists and ankles burned where the manacles seared my rubbed-raw flesh. Meanwhile, someone had put my limbs through a sausage-grinder, and a throb had cemented itself to my bones.

But I’d lived, which meant I could go to Amryssa. That was all that mattered—her, and the fact that there would be no wedding today. Not when the prince was dead.

A grin pieced itself together on my aching face. Sweet Zephyrine, my prayers had actually been answered. Now the urge to kiss someone filled me. Maybe next time I passed Merron in the hall, I’d do just that. Months had passed since the last time, but today called for a celebration.

I just needed to unchain myself, first.

I raised my head. My keyring lay ten feet away, where I’d hurled it against a baseboard last night in a bid for survival.

I whispered to the dagger at my waist. I couldn’t reach the hilt, but I didn’t need to—the dagger awoke, its energy curling in my mind like a question mark.

Yes?

“Keys,” I rasped. “I need my keys.”

The knife’s energy flared. The keyring arced through the air, landing against my palm with an abrupt jangle. The dagger’s sizzle subsided as whatever consciousness lived inside fell into slumber once more.

I thumbed through the keys with stiff fingers, then flung my chains away and stumbled out into the hall, where another key scraped in yet another lock. I shoved Amryssa’s door open and lurched through.

The sight of her, wan and exhausted, shredded my heart, but at least she’d survived. I fumbled with her restraints. She watched with limpid eyes, too depleted to even greet me.

Which was probably was for the best. If I’d spoken, the truth of the prince’s fate would’ve leapt from my swollen throat.

But I refrained, knowing we’d have to feign surprise at breakfast. Someone would inevitably rush in, shrieking about the royal corpse in the drive—or the front hall, or whatever resting place Kyven had made it to in his final, ill-fated seconds—and Amryssa had zero capacity to lie.

Of course, I’d still tell her the truth, once I’d played dumb for Olivian. I wouldn’t even protest the seneschal’s punishment, as long as it didn’t cleave me from Amryssa’s side.

I helped my best friend from bed. While she clung to a bedpost, I exchanged her nightwear for a proper gown.

My own dress—of burgundy cotton, its bodice stiff with dried sweat and blood—scraped at my skin, but I didn’t have the stamina to change right now.

No one would expect much of us this morning, anyway.

“Breakfast?” I managed.

Amryssa nodded.

We hobbled down the grand staircase together. In the breakfast room, sunlight stabbed through the windows, the air already verging on musty. By midday, the temperature would be unbearable in here, but we’d be in the rooftop cupola by then, seeking a reprieve in the meager breeze.

Apparently, Olivian had beaten us down. He sat at the head of the table, his black locks springing in every direction. He’d managed to don a waistcoat, though he’d neglected to fasten his topmost shirt buttons.

He didn’t acknowledge us. He simply glared at the corner, which apparently he’d been doing for some time, because his chipped plate lay untouched. I followed his gaze to a brass torchier, then shrugged.

If he’d rather stare at the furnishings than interrogate me, fine. I just hoped the news of Kyven’s untimely death would arrive after I’d had my coffee.

Amryssa collapsed in a high-backed chair.

I went to the sideboard, where an array of platters and teapots awaited—Miss Quist’s work, which never ceased to amaze me.

No matter how brutal the nightmare, our cook always dragged herself from bed early and stocked the breakfast room with biscuits and eggs and a variety of other foods I couldn’t have forced down my raw, stinging throat if I’d tried.

Amryssa shrank from the steaming tea I set before her.

She looked so frail that she reminded me of the starling that had once crashed against these very windows.

The bird had fallen to the gravel outside, and when I’d scooped it up, I’d found a creature of the poisoned bayou in my palm, with an extra eye in the middle of its forehead and seven toes on one foot.

I’d tried to revive the poor thing with my dagger, but, when that had failed, I’d settled for hoping the bird had savored the wind in its last, explosive moments, and died with a song in its throat.

Because I didn’t hate animals the way I hated people. Animals were innocent, only cruel when they had to be. Meanwhile, people injured each other for fun.

Not Amryssa, though. No, she’d saved me, back when I’d had nothing and no one.

Now I lowered myself beside her, taking the seat closest to Olivian. Once he tired of his staring contest with the torchier, he might start talking, and I liked to act as a buffer when I could.

“Last night was awful,” Amryssa murmured. “I swear someone’s turned my stomach inside-out.”

“Tell me about it.” I tipped milk into my coffee. Steam arose, pulling my attention up to the spotted mirror above the sideboard, which cast my reflection back at me.

The milk pitcher slipped from my hand and thunked against the table. Holy Zephyrine, I looked like shit.

My black hair hung in clumps. The skin of my face sagged as if dripping from my bones, and the melting-candlewax effect only served to sharpen my already severe nose. Dried blood crusted my chest, and my brows were little more than dark slashes over the haunted pits of my eyes.

I hunted for my napkin. A quick scrub cleared the rusty flakes from my chest, but the girl in the mirror was still haggard enough to look forty instead of twenty-seven. Beside me, Amryssa appeared almost untouched, as if the heavens had beamed down a bright ray of light.

Well...whatever. I wasn’t here to impress anybody. I tossed the napkin aside.

Amryssa lifted her tea. She sipped tentatively while I rubbed soothing circles against her back. Her shoulder blades mapped out ridges and valleys beneath my palm.

Damn, but she’d gotten skinny. I really would have to coax her into eating more and staring out the window less.

Amryssa’s cup clinked against its saucer. “And what of the prince?”

I glanced down the length of the table. Olivian stared blearily back, apparently invested enough in my answer to have abandoned his confrontation with the torchier.

“He got in last night,” I said slowly. “I watched Kyven pull up from my balcony.”

The seneschal grunted. “And you instructed him? Told him how to chain himself?”

I gnawed at my lip. “I told him everything he needed to know.”

Not a lie, really. Die screaming had pretty much summed it up. But tossing in a few legitimate details to make things more convincing wouldn’t hurt. “He sent his attendants inside, first. There were two of them—one tall, one short. I’m sure we’ll be meeting them soon.”

Or not. The nightmare had snuffed Kyven from existence like a beetle crushed beneath a bootheel, and the royal attendants—if they’d survived—would probably flee back to the capital at once. If I were them, I wouldn’t have lingered in Oceansgate a moment longer than necessary.

Olivian nodded, seemingly satisfied, then frowned down at his plate, as if surprised to find it empty.

A rare sense of charity welled up. Normally, I steered clear of the seneschal’s struggle with lucidity, but now I’d killed his plans. Stabbed them through the heart. The least I could do was offer him eggs. “Are you hungry?”

His gaze snapped up, as if he’d already forgotten me. In all likelihood, he had. “Hungry?”

“Yeah. You know...food? Coffee? Tea? What would you like?”

“I...” His eyes flicked back to the torchier and narrowed. “Anything.”

I slurped more coffee and dragged myself to standing. “Amryssa?”

She stared down at the delicate creases spider-webbing her palms. “Do you ever wonder? What might come out if someone drew on you with a knife?”

I jolted. “What?”

“Everyone says it would be blood, but I think I’d spill brown earth and blades of grass, instead.”

I surveyed Amryssa’s place setting, then reached for the knife Miss Quist had included and whisked it out of reach. “Well, then. Why don’t we use our forks to slice our sausage this morning?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

I shook my head. Even in the best of times, Olivian and his daughter didn’t boast the firmest grips on reality, but today, they’d ventured further afield than usual. But maybe food would speed their recovery. At the very least, it would help pad out Amryssa’s pitiful frame.

I filled two plates with eggs, sausage, and biscuits, then deposited one in front of Olivian and the other before my best friend.

She eyed the offering without enthusiasm. “I hope you’re eating, too, Harlowe. You must feel every bit as grim as I do.”

My lips crooked. Her kindness never failed, but the more I ate, the less there’d be for her. “Don’t worry about me.”

“But I do. Of course I do.”

“That’s not your job,” I said gently. “Just eat. Get your energy back.”

She smiled up at me, and I hovered, hesitant to sit back down.

Standing over her like this felt...right, somehow.

Like I could shield her from her father’s machinations, maybe even from the toxic marsh outside.

Beyond the windows, the cypresses threw their noxious purple glow, visible even in the broad light of day.

“Take my biscuit, at least.” Amryssa transferred a pastry from her plate to mine. “Please?”

The doors opened.

My battered body snapped to attention. I braced for a panicked housemaid, but a group of strangers sauntered in, instead. And there stood not one, not two, but three people I didn’t recognize. All of them very much alive.

Fuck.