Page 5 of The Nightmare Bride

O n our way up the stairs, Amryssa stumbled, but I shored her up as best I could.

The tangled knot beneath my ribs only loosened once I locked us in my room. I sat Amryssa on my bed, stowed my castoff chains, and dug through the bottom drawer of my armoire, searching for the letter that had arrived weeks ago. My pulse blurred as I scanned the lines.

“What’s that?” Amryssa said.

I swiveled to look at her. “A warning.”

“A warning?” She frowned. “Against what?”

“Against letting you marry that... thing downstairs.”

She chewed at her bottom lip. Her aura had dulled even further in the last few minutes, as if the prince had tarnished her merely by existing. “I don’t see that I have much choice.”

“No. To hell with that. I won’t let it happen. I won’t let him touch you.”

“But...I thought he seemed kind enough. Didn’t he?” Her eyes glazed over, as if only half of her occupied this room with me. “I’ll just...lie back and close my eyes. Ask him to be gentle. I can endure gentle, I think.”

My heart burst apart like a dropped globe of glass. Here she was, barely able to face this sanitized ideal she’d dreamed up, when meanwhile, the truth would destroy her.

“Kyven’s not...what he seems.” After a moment’s hesitation, I offered Amryssa the letter. I hated to ambush her like this, but she needed to know the truth. “The prince isn’t what he pretends to be.”

She took the parchment, her gaze sharpening as she read. One snowy hand rose to circle her throat. “Oh my. This... No. This can’t be right.”

“It can. Eliana sent that letter. And you know she wouldn’t lie.”

Eliana—the articulate, well-bred woman who’d once served as Amryssa’s tutor, then as her stand-in mother, after Amryssa’s had died—had fled to the capital months ago to live with her sister.

Before she’d gone, I’d begged her to unearth what she could about the prince, and so she had.

She’d sent all the sordid details I could ever want, plus plenty more I didn’t.

“We should show this to my father.” Amryssa’s voice wobbled. “He can’t... He has to know about this.”

I bowed my head, wishing the letter had the power to make the seneschal relent, but I might as well have tried to hope the nightmares out of existence.

“Am, he won’t listen. He agreed to this wedding months ago, for reasons that probably have nothing to do with you, and you know how he gets when he makes up his mind. What happens next is up to us.”

The letter trembled in her grip. “What’re you proposing, exactly?”

“A switch.” My answer came out strong. Unhesitating. “Just now, at breakfast, Kyven mistook me for you. All I have to do now is put on your wedding dress and marry him myself. After that, he’ll have no claim to you.”

She recoiled. “But marrying Kyven is my duty. My fate.”

“It doesn’t have to be.” I stood and went to her. The ruddy sunbeams streaming through the windows seemed to check themselves before reaching her. She looked oddly lifeless, all shades of white and boiled-down gray.

Her brow creased. “But my father would stop you. At the wedding. He’d object.”

“Not if he isn’t there. You could ask for a private ceremony. Make it a condition of your cooperation.”

She paused. “He’d be furious, afterward.”

“Let me deal with that.”

“But you’d have a husband .” Her words were a gossamer thread spun by pale lips, ready to snap. “You’d be tied to a brute.”

My smile hardened to stone. It’s nothing a good stabbing can’t cure . “Until one of us dies, yes.”

“No,” Amryssa breathed, but there was no force in it. Only misery and an awful, bare-faced longing.

My throat constricted. My poor, sweet friend—so soft, so very gentle.

How I wished that, just once, she would rail against the injustices that colored her existence.

I wanted her to scream. Hurl something fragile against the wallpaper just to watch it explode.

I wanted her to march downstairs, shake her finger in Olivian’s face, and tell him she wouldn’t marry filth like Kyven if her life depended on it.

But she wouldn’t, of course. So I would do it for her.

“This is madness.” Her voice quavered. “I know my father would see reason.”

For all of two seconds, I wavered, but despite Olivian’s tenuous grip on reality, he mostly behaved like an oak tree rooted in the earth. Once he made a decision, he pursued it, until he either bullied the world into changing shape or wore himself down to a nub. Usually the latter.

That was why we were still here, after all, in a dying territory that had lost its patron goddess years ago. Zephyrine had fallen asleep. Abandoned Oceansgate to rot and ruin and nightmares. Yet still we clung to this failing fiefdom, to this shell of a house, for one simple reason.

Olivian refused to admit defeat. And, for as long as the seneschal stayed, Amryssa would. And if Amryssa stayed, so did I.

She curled a slender fist against her skirts. “Why don’t we go talk to him? Right now.”

I cocked a brow. Maybe she’d scavenged some spirit from somewhere, after all. “Really?”

“Yes. He wouldn’t subject me to this marriage if he knew Kyven’s true nature. And I can’t just let you sacrifice for me. I won’t .”

My chest ached at that, but if confronting Olivian would speed things along, fine. Maybe Amryssa would finally realize the truth—that her father didn’t care about her. That he only cared about himself.

And maybe not even that. From what I could tell, the man had no sense of self-preservation. Only a steadfast obstinacy that would doom us all.

“Okay,” I said. “But if... when he says no, we’ll do this my way, all right?”

“It won’t come to that. You’ll see.”

I smiled, dour. I hated that it would.

But if breaking Amryssa’s heart would save her, so be it. At least this way, I’d still be here to pick up all the pieces, afterward.

We found Olivian on the second floor, holed up in his “study,” which amounted to little more than an unused bedroom crammed with brass knick-knacks and dusty, half-filled ledgers.

The argument taking place inside reached my ears before I knocked.

Olivian’s baritone rose and fell, his words garbled by the thick slab of the door.

I hesitated, wondering who had the misfortune of being trapped in there with him, then decided , Fuck it , and banged a demanding fist. Our current mission far eclipsed the importance of anything else in this house.

Olivian went silent within. Amryssa waited with me in the dingy hallway, her fingers twining like ashen snakes.

The door opened. The leftmost half of Olivian’s hair stood at attention, as if he’d pulled at it in a fit of pique. “What?” he barked.

Amryssa flinched. The seneschal paused, forcing a smile through gritted teeth. “I mean... What can I do for you?”

“We have something to show you,” I said. “Can your guest come back later?”

“My guest?”

I glanced past him, but the curtains were drawn. Shadows lay thick in the room. “Whoever it is you’re talking to in there.”

A long pause. “I was just...rehearsing my speech. For the wedding. Alone.”

I took his measure, not buying that for a second. Yesterday’s nightmare had clearly taken its toll, but maybe that would work to my advantage. If the seneschal was so out of sorts he’d resorted to arguing with shadows, he might not put up a fight when Amryssa requested a closed ceremony.

“Can we come in, then?” I said.

The narrowing of his eyes told me he wanted nothing less, but Amryssa ventured a thin plea.

“It’s important, Father.”

Olivian grumbled, but stepped aside to let us pass.

Inside, the musk of aged paper filled my nose.

I sat in an upholstered wingback chair with too many bald patches to count.

In the corners, cobwebs glimmered, half translucent in the light of the lone candle.

As Amryssa took a seat beside me, I imagined Olivian in here alone, ranting at no one, and almost succumbed to pity before abruptly coming to my senses.

“Well?” The seneschal arranged his bulk behind the desk. “What do you want?”

Amryssa slid Eliana’s letter across his blotter.

He frowned. “What’s this?”

“Read it,” I said.

He did, though I couldn’t imagine how, given the oily dimness. When he finished, he flung down the paper and fixed me with a baleful stare. “This letter’s addressed to you.”

“Yes.”

“You asked Amryssa’s tutor to investigate her betrothed?”

“I did.”

He closed his eyes and stabbed at his lids with thick fingers. “Zephyrine help me,” he muttered. “I knew letting that woman abscond to Hightower would bite me in the ass.”

I spluttered. “ Abscond? A sweet old woman who’s served you faithfully for years finally flees the nightmares, and you call that absconding ?”

He dropped his hand and attempted to shear me in half with a glare.

I cleared my throat and folded my hands. Play nice . “I mean... I just needed to know what kind of man you were tying Amryssa to.”

“It’s none of your concern.”

“It is.” My tone turned strident, already escaping my control, and I clutched at my dagger. For the love of all that’s holy, grant me patience with this asshole . “I’ve spent the past nine years keeping her safe. Of course I needed to know who you were saddling her with.”

The seneschal glared. Silence coiled between us like a wound spring.

Amryssa leaned in, breaking our stand-off. “Father? You can’t possibly intend to marry me to this man, can you? Not now?”

His fierceness softened, if only by half. “I have to, my sweet. This union is critical.”

“But...you didn’t know, did you? What he’s really like?”

Olivian made a sound like stones grinding, then offered his hands over the desk for Amryssa to take. “I’d heard rumors, pet, but they’re only that. Rumors. And I have ways of keeping you safe. Trust me when I say we need this marriage. Oceansgate needs this marriage.”

Amryssa recoiled. I’d known this was coming, but still, the betrayal on her face gutted me. Filleted me open from neck to navel.

“But...what could possibly stand to gain?” she said.