Page 154 of To Touch A Silent Fury

Fear spiked, cloaked by an unwelcome anxiety. Daffinia was nervous about Lang’s state, and it didn’t seem she was one to worry for nothing.

I pulled my hand away, the answer clear enough. It was bad.

My throat tightened. Would that be the last time I would use my power? I had no idea if marrying the wrong man would Break my Fate in an instant, or if I would be this forever, awaiting the only marriage that would ever make me whole, watchingas the victor of the Laithcart Games married someone else. If he ever recovered.

He would, he had to. Lang was strong. His brother would not have killed him.

And yet, everyone who touched me ended up hurt. Perhaps I was the ghost girl after all, the ill omen the men of Eavenfold had long declared me to be. It was never Sollie who cursed the West Wing. It was always me. The Moontouch should have never come to me, and I knew it was never meant to.

But then the fanfare of trumpets started from within the room, and Daffinia told me to walk, and all of a sudden, there was nothing left to do but meet my destiny. I stumbled forwards one step, and the guards opened the huge doors.

The next person my curse would touch would deserve it. Banrillen might cage me with walls, but I had been hidden and despised before and found moments of light. I would find them again.

My breath steadied, and it was Thread Ersimmon now who came to me.Chin up, he would have told me.You’re about to become a princess.

The room was excessively splendorous, with walls so white they looked like the moon, and arcing, dark mahogany beams meeting at a point three floors above me. I could not see but for the flowers everywhere, an explosive rainbow of blossoms attached to every surface.

The doors creaked and then stopped, and when I moved this time, I did not stumble, not even as the hushed whispers of the congregation flooded me, not even as their heads turned to judge me, and not even as the arena of the flowers crowding the edge of each wooden bench overwhelmed me and I could taste the iron tang of my own blood from biting my own cheek too hard.

I walked like a princess should, my head high and my shoulders back. Even as I heard the whispers, ‘Euphon girl’ and ‘commoner’, I did not react. This was my castle now, too.

Halfway into the room, keeping my steps in the painfully slow rhythm started by the two men on either side of me, something stirred.

I clenched my hands around the flowers as I felt him. He was still asleep, but he was waking up, or he was less out of it. And he was close. Very close.

Hanin?

I scanned the room, missing the rhythm and stepping twice to catch up when I found him. Curled on a ruby-red pillow with golden tassels to the right of the altar, on a curving plinth only a few feet from the priest, my dragon slept. Chained to the wall, a gold-plated collar hanging loosely around his neck.

They hadchainedmy dragon.

I wanted nothing more than to run to him, but I knew I couldn’t.

Instead, I kept my body as rigid as the trunk, my arms the branches, my steps as light as air. Every last scrap of wisdom I had ever been taught, every shred of patience I had, bled from me as I walked those final steps up to the low dais.

When I reached it, I remembered Daffinia’s instructions. Stand on the left of the priest.

My Hanin, lying in chains on a cushion bedecked with the Sightlands’ royal crest, was on the right. I was expected to stand across from him, and wait as my brute of a husband stood beside him and claimed him as my dowry?

I paused at the bottom of the stairs as my blood heated; my mouth pursing as I held back a snarl. Then I mounted the steps, slowly, elegantly. And stood on the right of the priest, one hand falling from my bouquet to touch Hanin’s back.

The relief shuddered through me, and I met the priest’s questioning look with such ferocity he all but shrunk. He shut his mouth before he made the error of telling me to move, and I felt some of my rage melt as my fingers stroked down Hanin’s speckled and bumpy spine.

He was unharmed. He would be groggy when he woke up, and very hungry, but there was no sign of mistreatment. I had just looked back to the door when the fanfare started once more.

As a final act of rebellion, before the beads were ripped from my face and my life signed away, I looked away from the doors. I would not stare at Banrillen, I would not give him the satisfaction of my interest in his entrance.

I stared instead at the cracks in the marble at my feet, inlaid with golden paint. It was a nice symbol, to suggest that broken things may be made prettier than before, fixed and shining anew. But all the nobles I had met were not made more handsome by their breaking. They were just broken, as I might soon be.

The fanfare ended, and several members of the congregation gasped so loudly I was certain it was faked. The steps falling on the runner thundered around a near silent room.

“Introducing the groom,” a weaselly voice announced from near the door. “Prince Langnathin, second son of King Braxthorn and general of his armies.”

My head whipped as my heart lurched.

What?

A green shirt ruffled into a black jacket, perfectly tailored. Gold fell from the lapel and the pocket of his black trousers. He did not limp, but his body twisted ever so as he walked, slumping to the right as he shielded some awful pain. It was his side, it must be. My gaze trailed to his face, my shock like ice in my limbs. He wore his mask as he strode down thecentral aisle, his pace markedly faster than my own. His red eyes, though, were only for me. They did not leave me once, not as the audience began to mutter, not as the ice thawed in me and I finally comprehended the words.