Page 40 of The Nightmare Bride

T his time, awareness came on like a hammer strike. My head pounded. Boom. My fingers ached. Boom .

Except...that dizzying thump came from outside my skull, not within. Because someone was at my door. Banging.

Loudly.

I opened my eyes. “Ugh.”

Strong limbs tangled around me, but their laxity told me my bed companion was still asleep. I raised my head just as the door opened. A brown-haired man peeked in.

A frisson of alarm shot through me. “Merron? What’re you doing here?”

He surveyed my bedroom, whatever opinions he had about finding me entwined with Ky locked behind an opaque wall. He stepped in, probably figuring that since we were halfway decent, there was nothing keeping him in the hall. “Sorry to wake you. But I need to borrow His Highness.”

I blinked. My eyeballs felt gritty, like I’d spent the night fighting my way through a sand-laden gale. “Okay.”

Ky made a sleepy sound. I glanced up to find those luminous blue eyes fluttering open. When he caught me staring, he brought a hand to my cheek. “Mmm. A little early to be contemplating my perfection already, don’t you think?”

“We have company,” I stage-whispered, and cut a sidelong glance. “Company that’s here to borrow you, apparently.”

Ky’s attention slid to Merron, who stood straight-backed, his gaze locked on the middle distance.

Ky barely reacted. He didn’t even take his hand from my face, just lifted lazy brows and said, “Yes?” in the most regal tone possible.

Merron cleared his throat. “It’s the rot, Your Highness.

It jumped the trenches and infected the lawn overnight.

The stewards are down there digging and burning, but we need help, and.

..” He flicked a glance at me, then resumed his study of the wall.

“Well. You happen to be an excellent trench-digger.”

Ky’s attention swerved to me again. “I am, aren’t I? It’s probably my most impressive talent of all.”

I mustered a smile and peeled myself away. Or tried. Ky tightened, his grip, and in the pause, I read a reluctance in his face, a tick of uncertainty that belied the easy words.

No one else would have caught it, but I did. “What? What’s wrong?”

“It’s...” He held my gaze, even as he addressed Merron. “Can I join you in a moment? I need a word with my wife.”

The head steward hesitated, his silence as good as any answer.

I searched Ky’s eyes. We did need to talk, yes, but the rot superseded any of our petty secrets. If the coops or gardens or pigpens were lost, we’d be ruined. “Just go. This is way more important.”

He studied me for a moment, then pulled me close. “I will,” he said, low enough that only I could hear. “But I want you to stay away from Vick today. Far away. I don’t think he’d actually lay a finger on you, but...I’d rather not find out.”

Surprise gnawed at my stomach. Here I’d thought he wanted to finish yesterday’s confession, when in fact, he was worried about my safety. “Okay. I promise.”

“Good. I’ll be back as soon as I’m able. Then we’ll talk.”

Suddenly, I wanted to cling to him. Beg him to stay. But I forced myself to swing my legs to the floor. This man would only be mine for three more days. Now was not the time to start needing him.

“Your Highness,” Merron said tightly. “You’re needed downstairs. Now.”

Ky nodded, and that infernal half smile flickered, assurance settling over him like a mantle. He pushed aside my castoff chains—he’d unlocked me some time just before dawn—then rolled out of bed and hunted for his shirt, which he buttoned on.

“I hope you realize I’ll need some bacon, first,” he told Merron as he sailed into the hallway. “Not even I can perform acts of heroism on an empty stomach.”

Even after he’d gone, Merron lingered, his hands flexing at his sides.

My heart tilted on its axis. Gods, how must he have felt, walking in on us like that? “I’m sorry,” I said. “You shouldn’t’ve had to?—”

An exhale shot from his nose. “It’s not that. Honestly. It’s just...”

I shut my mouth and waited.

Merron took a fortifying breath. “Look. I know you think I’m mad at you for marrying him, but it’s not that.

It’s not jealousy. I mean, I am jealous.

Obviously. But mostly, I’m just mad at myself.

For not being able to reach you. For not saying or doing whatever he has that’s actually gotten through to you. ”

I blinked. “I?—”

“Like him,” Merron cut in. “Obviously you like him. You’ve never once slept with me like that.”

I didn’t know how to respond. “Even if that were true,” I said carefully, “it doesn’t mean anything. I’m not staying married to him.”

Merron’s look turned pitying. “Maybe you should, though. Have you thought about that? Maybe you should do something just because you want to, not because you think it’s best for Amryssa.”

With that, he marched out, leaving me slack-jawed and staring.

Gods among us. I’d been right about one thing. I didn’t deserve him. I never had.

The knowledge cast a shadow across my mind, but I pushed past it and went to pull on my discarded dress.

Amryssa. She was waiting, and a heart-to-heart with Ky wasn’t the only one I had on my schedule today.

Right now, I needed to scrounge up the courage to tell my best friend where she’d come from.

And pray like hell that it didn’t end with her leaving me.

Despite my trepidation, once I started talking, I couldn’t stop. Mostly because Amryssa didn’t seem to believe me. Somewhere in the middle of my third attempt to explain her godly origins, I gave up and went to my room for the diary. Let the Lady lay it all out.

When I returned, Amryssa sat cross-legged on her bed.

She reached for the book, a few moonlit strands catching on the knob of her elbow.

My eyes snagged there, too. She was so skinny, barely there at all.

How had that happened? Why had that happened, after I’d persuaded the dagger to help her last night?

Goddess, I needed to get her out of Oceansgate. The moment she married Ky, I would take her away.

Amryssa read in silence, turning pages, occasionally backing up again. When she reached the portrait of Zephyrine, she studied it for so long my chest tightened. I feared whatever she would say next.

So I went to the window and studied the lawn, which had been hacked to bits.

Tainted sod had been piled up, and bonfires raged in the heat, sending rippled plumes into the sky.

Ky had joined the efforts in the trenches.

Sweat poured down his spine as he jabbed his shovel into the earth.

Bits of grass stuck to his glistening shoulder blades.

As I watched, Merron’s words swelled in my ears. Maybe you should do something just because you want to .

For a moment—one selfish, stolen second—I pretended I could. That I wasn’t Amryssa’s protector. Just Ky’s wife, and not in this half-cocked, purgatorial capacity, but for real.

Images filled my head—of me standing by the door in the afternoon, welcoming him in from chopping wood.

I would kiss his sweaty skin. Tell him about my day.

I’d mock his fancy accent, and then, when he tried to win me over with a laugh and an arm clamped around my waist, I’d take him upstairs for a bath.

Once there, I’d watch with eager eyes as?—

“What’s this?” Amryssa said behind me.

I whirled. She stared down at the diary, which lay open to the last page.

I shut my useless daydreams into a locked steel box. Mere days from now, Ky would marry Amryssa. Then he’d leave.

The end.

“What’s what?” I said, a shade too brightly.

Thankfully, Amryssa didn’t notice. She frowned down at the pages. “It looks like a letter. Addressed to me.”

I frowned and approached the bed. Sure enough, the Lady had inked an entry into the back, where Ky and I hadn’t thought to check. We’d stopped when the pages had gone blank.

I leaned in. My dearest Amryssa , it began.

“I didn’t see this,” I said, my heart thumping. “Can I read it with you?”

“Of course.”

I crawled onto the mattress, then propped my chin on her bony shoulder.

My dearest Amryssa,

Blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh—I love you so very much. Enough that the word ‘love’ is only a pale descriptor for how I feel.

If you’ve read the preceding entries, you’ll know we’re not kin, at least not in the strictest sense.

But in my heart, in some place in me that runs deeper than a soul, I am your mother, and you are my daughter.

This will never not be true. Time could fill an ocean, then another and another, and still not diminish my belief.

Which may explain why I stopped writing in this journal years ago—you became mine. We became family. I only came across this diary again this morning, and I was surprised to see I hadn’t written in over a decade.

You’re eighteen, now. We celebrated your birthday just last week.

I’ll never forget the way you blew out the candles, because I loved you for granting me that indulgence, for not proclaiming yourself too old to partake in such silly traditions.

In our all-too-brief time together, I’ve cherished our silly moments most of all.

This was no different, even if the occasion was one I’ve dreaded all your life.

As you’ve no doubt guessed, when the sun set on our celebration, I didn’t return you to the swamp. Zephyrine help me, but I couldn’t.

I hope you can forgive me, my sweet daughter. Especially because I know you dream of leaving us, even if you don’t understand why. I see it in your eyes sometimes.

But I can’t let you go. I can’t let you vanish.

So tomorrow, or next week, or maybe the week or month after that, I’ll go to the goddess myself.

You see, there was one part of our bargain I didn’t write about here, in case your father ever went snooping.

I didn’t want him to know, because I didn’t want him to stop me if I decided to exercise the option.