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My father is nervous , shifting back and forth from foot to foot and clapping his hands together every few minutes. He wants to get this over with. Marry me off and bust out of here as soon as possible. My father never wears a smile. But he does now, and it’s strained across his face like an ill-fitting gown.

It shouldn’t surprise me. Despite his decree that they had formed a peaceful alliance with the witches he’s bartered me to, no one missed that he returned with less than half the soldiers he departed with, confirming that there was a hefty battle before that alliance was reached.

We’ve only been here for mere minutes, and they’re already ushering me to the spot they’ve designated for the ceremony under a lofty oak tree.

Each time one of the witches eyes falls over me their faces twist with disgust. As if something about me personally is offensive to them. Even the Queen’s face falls for a moment when she spots me. Though she quickly recovers it.

I recognize her as the Queen immediately despite her young age. Maybe her youthful face shouldn’t surprise me with the magic detailed in the texts. Age preserved by the blood of children. A shiver works through me. Confidence and authority drip off her every step, her posture straighter than the sentry’s spears that station the top of the Wall. She’s tall and captivating, midnight locks draping her shoulders. Her face is pulled into a wide grin that rings more sincerely than my father’s, her dark eyes gleaming with a strange eagerness as some of our soldiers and the enemy soldiers trickle in to watch the ceremony.

The last sliver of the sun disappears behind the horizon, and one of the witches makes a symbol with his hand, summoning those glowing orbs around the area and throughout the branches above my head. There’s nothing visible about the magic, yet I swear I can feel it heavy and crackling in the air, sprouting the hair on my arms and the back of my neck.

There are no friendly faces to obtain any solace in, only my father’s stare that seems to be screaming out don’t embarrass me more desperately with each withering second.

A clear dividing line forms between our soldiers and the enemy soldiers. The back of the crowd shifts and falls into quiet murmurs, that dividing line growing wider to allow someone to pass through. I wipe the sweat accumulating across my palms on my gown, and the dāemon shoots swift shocks through me almost as quickly as my heart hammers in my chest.

Black boots stride through the sea of soldiers and come to a halt several paces back. I wonder if he’s having that same reaction as the rest of them. I can’t bring myself to look. It feels like an eternity before they move forward at last, dragging reluctantly across the ground. My body gives a humiliating jolt as they finally position themselves across from me.

The Priest clears his throat and begins his spiel, droning something about uniting our kingdoms in peace and prosperity. I keep my eyes trained on the ground, studying those large black boots, black pants cuffed above them, and cloak draping the ground.

I’m doing this for Syra.

I repeat that line over and over in my head as if it will give me the courage to do what I need to do. When the Priest asks us to join hands I obediently stretch my arms out only for them to hang there awkward and unclasped. Slowly, I draw my eyes up to his midsection. His hands are closed into fists at his sides, a pointed display of his unwillingness.

There’s a hiss from the crowd and he complies, palms just barely grazing my fingers to avoid as much contact as physically possible.

His fingers are long and slender, although somewhat square, and his nails are clipped short. Strange symbols embellish the backs of his hands: three petals joined into a triangular shape and a circle cutting through them.

It takes everything to keep my trembling hands still. It’s not until the Priest asks him to agree to his vow that I hear the name of the witch I’m being bartered to —not just his name, but his title—Prince Sitri. They’re marrying me to a prince. I didn’t even know the witches had such societal customs.

The witch in front of me only lets out a bedraggled sigh. The moment stretches, and my curiosity gets the better of me. I peek up, eyes skirting up his large form to find his face. It’s not me he’s looking at. Instead, his face is turned, flexing jaw squared, and large, dark brows furrowed down. Like the soldiers’, his hair is cropped close at the sides, sharpening the angles of his face while the top is left long, dark curls tousled across his forehead. He and the Queen fight a silent battle, his stare hard, brooding, even bordering on pleading. Her lips turn up into a smirk, her eyes filled with smug satisfaction.

“Don’t be rude now, Nightshade,” she says in a singsong lilt.

The Priest clears his throat, voice cautious as he says, “You must say I do.”

The witch closes his eyes with another noisy exhalation. Before I can look away, he turns back, pinning me with a hard stare, eyes startlingly green and absolutely livid . I flinch, quickening pulse flushing the blood up to my cheeks that are thankfully hidden behind the chains of the Shroud.

“I do,” he snaps.

The Priest repeats the vow, and I manage to squeak out my own I do with everything in me screaming, I do not. He declares us wed, and those words send my stomach to twisting again. There’s a slow, unenthusiastic clap from the crowd, and the witch drops my hands as if the moment couldn’t come soon enough.

He makes to leave, and the Queen steps forward to block his path. “Sitri, the joining of hands.”

“She doesn’t even have magic to join to,” he fires back.

“It’s not a wedding unless you are joined,” she says, with another gleeful lilt.

The witch’s shoulders slump forward once more as he turns back to me in resignation. “Your right hand,” he demands.

I can’t bring myself to meet his gaze, but I hold out a hand, and he grasps it with his own. “In the joining of hands and the fashion of a knot, so are our lives and magic now bound.” His voice is deep yet hoarse like velvet that’s been too long in the sun. “One to another. By this cord, we are thus bound by our vow.”

A black leafy vine materializes from his hand and I yank my hand back—no desire to be under the whims of his spell, but his grip grows pointedly firmer, holding me there against my will as the vine curls and twines around our joined hands. It laces all the way up my middle finger, turning warmer as the black of the vine turns to a translucent gold that lights my skin aglow as it sinks beneath my flesh.

“May this knot remain tied—“

The dāemon responds to the infiltrating magic and shoots a series of pulses down my arm. I jolt. This time it’s the witch who jerks his hand back. The divide between his lips widens, surprise flashing in his eyes almost…as if he had felt the pulse of my dāemon, too. That’s impossible. The dāemon has never struck a person before.

When the soldiers erupt in laughter, I know that this is not what the joining of hands usually looks like. The witch looks to the crowd for a brief moment and swiftly closes the distance to wrap my hand in his grip again, lips now pulled down in a frown. “For as long as love shall last,” he continues. “May this cord draw our hands together in love, never to be used in anger.”

The last of the vine dissolves into the golden light below my skin before slowly fading away, except for three rings of black vines stamped around both of our middle fingers. The soldiers clap more enthusiastically this time. Some still bowled over in laughter.

He drops my hand, turns sharply on his heel and storms off, pushing himself roughly through the sea of armored soldiers.

I stare after him, and my father glares at me as if I’m somehow to blame for my new husband’s poor attitude.

The crowd begins to disperse, and the Queen ushers my father away with a hand ornamented with rings against his back. Soldiers procure tables and chairs out of thin air with practiced motions of their hands. All of them are symboled with the same patterns as the prince’s.

A table filled to the brim with meats, loaves of bread, cakes, and fruits appears where seconds before the ground was empty. Within minutes, the space transforms into an entire dining area, with round orb lights suspended above each table.

The Priest scuffles past me to make his way to a table where my father, the Queen, and a few of her soldiers have seated themselves. He leans down to speak in my father’s ear.

I examine the rings now ingrained into my skin, trailing a finger over them to find the skin perfectly smooth. When I glance up, my father’s furious face is pointed in my direction once more. He and the Priest exchange words before the Priest makes his way back to me.

“What are you doing?” he asks disdainfully.

“I…” I look around, wondering what exactly it is I should be doing.

“Why aren’t you sitting with your husband?” He points a thumb behind his back, and I follow it out until I land on him, seated on the outskirts, hunched over a full plate. I force a thick swallow.

“Go,” the Priest demands.

I tread forward, stumbling slightly over the hem of my gown. Heads turn and glower in my direction, not even bothering to hide their disgust.

My heart clatters along in my chest, and I pick up my pace to match it. The wooden chair he’s seated in looks as if it’s been crafted for a small child under his large form. He doesn’t look up as I approach. There are no other chairs for me to seat myself in so I come to a still some distance away though close enough that he should’ve noticed me by now.

He continues to shovel food in his mouth, eyes downcast. I take a step forward and clear my throat. He doesn’t even stir. Looking back to find my father’s furious scowl, I take another step forward, practically leering over him now. Many of the enemy soldiers, as well as ours, are watching this spectacle unfold, their amusement evident.

His eyes sweep up briefly and back down. “Can I help you?”

“I—I’ve been instructed to…sit with you.”

He picks up his glass, and the seconds stretch as he slowly tilts it toward his mouth. He takes a sip and settles it back on the table. “And, if I’d rather you didn’t?”

My mouth snaps shut under the confines of my chains as I bristle. I peer around in hopes that a hiding spot will reveal itself, only finding the furiously reddening face of my father. The prince follows my gaze out in the same direction and sighs, tapping two fingers against the table twice. A chair appears so close that I startle back and stare down at it, dumbstruck.

“It’s not a trick.”

Seating myself less than gracefully, the chains of the Shroud clink noisily and I still them under my hand. With nowhere else to cast my eyes, I take to picking at my nails as he continues devouring the hefty amount of food.

Every so often, when I’m certain he’s preoccupied with his plate, I sneak a glance, studying the shape of his jaw, long, straight nose, and prominent cheekbones. There’s a fine layer of stubble across his chin, and his eyes are so shaded that they almost appear bruised.

But I can’t deny that he’s striking. The realization twists a new fear into my gut. Something that borders on inadequacy, and seeing as I haven’t seen my own face in twelve years, I have no idea how I’ll tally up to him.

That should be the least of my concerns, I remind myself. It doesn’t matter what he looks like. He’s still a witch.

Yet I had expected someone many years my senior. As is the norm when the Shrouded are wed. Men who rubbed palms with my father, and he’d toss them a bone, one of the Shrouded, in return. His face would have me believe that he can’t be much older than me unless the texts are correct, and it’s something in their magic that keeps them looking young.

In my imaginings, the witch I was to be bartered to was eager to get his greedy hands on me. However, I hadn’t prepared for this. Hadn’t prepared for him to be just as dejected about the idea of this marriage as I am. I’m not sure if that makes it better or worse.

He finishes his plate, pushes it forward and his gaze falls over me like a shadow. “Do you eat?”

“No,” I say quickly.

His brows inch up his face, head cocking to the side.

Of course, I eat . “I mean—I’m not hungry.” I’d rather starve than make a spectacle trying to feed myself under the chains of the Shroud, though my lips have gone dry and chapped from the lack of water. For the Shrouded, eating was a dutiful affair.

“Right.” His gaze is still questioning as he rises, but he turns without any further prying. He returns shortly with another overflowing plate of food and another glass of wine. That’s a lot of food.

Many of our soldiers are finishing their plates and making their way back to the tents provided for them. I desperately wished I had my own to disappear to. For now, I’m held hostage to this table, the flickering eyes of the soldiers around me, and the grating sounds of this witch’s chewing.

A soldier appears before our table, one of ours, silver armor glinting back the glow of the magical orbed lights.

“Prince,” he addresses with a bow of his head. “The King sends his regards.” He holds out a small golden key, and my next breath lodges in my chest. The prince stares at it quizzically. Sensing his confusion, the soldier explains, “It’s for the Shroud.”

“The Shroud?”

“The Shroud,” The soldier repeats, gesturing to his own face.

The prince turns back to eye my golden chains, grimaces and distractedly mutters out a “right, thanks,” as he presses the key toward the inner pocket of his cloak.

When I look back I find that my father’s table has emptied. He and the Queen seem to have turned in for the night.

On closer inspection, all of our soldiers have, leaving me surrounded by witches-- enemies . I suck in a shaky breath, hands twisting in my lap as I adjust to my new reality.

A large fire is started on the outskirts of the tables. I’m grateful for somewhere to cast my gaze that isn’t my hands. The flickering hues of orange and red is familiar, almost calming. Every twenty-two days, I’d take my place in the tower to watch over the sacred hearth. We’re required to fast, with no food and no water, feeding the flame for a full day and night. To look away for even a moment was said to risk endangerment of our kingdom. I watch the flames with the same steadfast devotion.

There was many a time after hours and hours of staring into the flame, I could swear I’d see shapes form in them. None as vivid as the last when the flames split straight down the middle in two perfect towers. It lasted seconds at most, and I convinced myself that I’d imagined it. Looking back now, I wonder if it was some kind of harbinger of what was to come.

I always assumed I’d meet a tumultuous end. Certain the dāemon would reveal itself again, and that would be it. They’d finally be rid of me despite my high nobility. Yet I didn’t expect this . Didn’t expect that the details of what lay outside the Wall were actually real. Didn’t believe they were real. I was so certain that it was cooked up, a part of the narrative they fed us to keep us trapped in there.

They said that as long as the sacred hearth did not go out and the Shrouded remained pious of spirit and pure of body, our kingdom would prevail. But the rains quit gracing us, the crops died out, desperate poachers decimated our animal populations, and the riots began. Naturally, the blame fell on us, the Shrouded. The figureheads of our kingdom. When things were going well, we were praised, and when they were not going well, it was certainly because there was a crack in our devotion.

Margaret took the brunt of the blame, not because she was guilty but because she was the lowest standing among the twenty-two of us—a plebeian honored with the Shroud that was ultimately her demise. They accused her of breaking her vow and buried her alive in the Pits, land sanctioned from the long-abandoned theurgynate mines, a mile off so as not to taint us with their evil.

My blood runs cold at memories of what it was like in the dark, cold hole in the ground. What it must’ve been like for Margaret as she took her final breaths.

Her sacrifice was meant to bring our kingdom back into God’s graces.

It didn’t work.

The rain didn’t return, and my father ultimately made the decision to trek outside the Wall. The Grand Prioress loudly declared to anyone who would listen that the decision was a dire mistake. Allying with witches was certain to bring our doom.

The soldiers walk up and toss an assortment of items into the flames. Knives, meat, bones, and other various things that I can’t make out from this distance. The witch next to me finishes his plate and busies himself in his wine glass instead. Once his glass has emptied, he twists his fingers into position, the silent language of their magic, and it refills once more. The magic is so casual, just a simple position of his hand.

He sinks further down in his chair with each passing glass. I study the orb lights suspended above our table, one of them close enough to touch. Reaching out a timid hand, I run my fingers through it, marveling at the way it casts my hands aglow. It’s warm yet not hot enough to burn. When I look up I find him watching me and quickly snatch my hand back.

The soldiers grow drunker and rowdier as the night wears on, the table next to us buckling with laughter every few minutes.

“What do you think she’s hiding under that thing?” Asks one of the soldiers at the next table over. I stiffen as I register that their conversation has landed on me.

“Nought a great beauty, I imagine.” Their laughter climbs to a roar.

“I’m betting it’s the teeth. Or the lack of them.”

“Hey, you have to admit there’s perks to that,” one slurs as the table erupts.

I dip my head. If the prince notices the steer of their conversation he doesn’t acknowledge it, watching the flickering flames with a gloomy expression across his face as another witch walks up to cast an item to the fire. In an attempt to block out the mocking soldiers next to us, I muster up the courage to ask in a low rasp, “What are they doing?”

He looks astonished to hear me speak and stares at me blankly for a long moment. I point my head in the direction of the fire. “What are they doing?” I ask again.

“They’re…making their offerings to the Gods.”

My brow furrows. These witches have Gods? I thought the devil was the only one they worship. “Will you make one?”

“Not today,” he says heavily.

No sooner than the words leave his mouth, the fire rises up with a roar. The flames spit and crackle as they climb several feet and split down the middle, creating two towering lines of twin flames, their flickering ebb and flow mirroring each other perfectly. It’s the exact same yet larger version of what I’d seen in the tower hearth.