Page 155 of To Touch A Silent Fury

General.Not the Crown Prince. Not heir.

Just the second son once more.

Lang reached the stairs, and some element of his mask cracked, knowing his face was, for this short moment, only between me and the priest. He climbed the first step. I saw the pain he had so carefully hidden now ripple at the edge of his mouth. Pain he would let me see, pain he trusted me to not exploit.

Any facet of animosity I had left for him crumbled then, and I let my hand drop from Hanindred as I descended the steps to him. I offered him my hand, and the audience behind us hushed once more.

Lang stared at me, and I didn’t need his touch to know that feeling I had so rarely experienced and coveted so much. There was something profound in acceptance. He had risked so much to come here. I saw what it had cost him, and I would never rebuke him for the consequences he had suffered for me.

He took my hand, and I felt his weight shift as he allowed me to help him. Resolve, pride, anger, and desire swelled through our touch.

“General?” I pulled him up the second step, knowing his hearing was keen enough to discern my whisper. “What have you done?”

He squeezed my hand. “I ruined your Fate once. It seemed a fitting punishment to ruin my own.”

My body felt as if it had been plunged into the Ramelon River in Domin. Something heavy and ill, a guilt I never thought I would bear, pulled at my stomach. “You stepped down as Crown Prince?”

He glanced at me as we mounted the final step. “It was the only way.”

Lang did not grimace, and yet I felt the flicker of his own uncertainty, quickly overshadowed by his righteousness. It was clear to me that he had done what he felt was right, and more than that… he could live with no other outcome.

At the top of the stairs, Lang naturally moved to the left, allowing me to stand back next to Hanin. This small kindness was a knife to my gut as our hands fell apart, and I lost my connection to him.

He leaned over to speak to the priest. I was so preoccupied with my barrelling change of Fate I hardly thought to listen.

I was about to marry Langnathin. The victor of the Laithcart Games stood before me, ready and willing to marry me, and he was about to discover I had been omitting a key fact.

This was the precipice of getting everything I had ever wanted for five years. The edge of claiming my power, my destiny, my threaded Fate sealed in my blood. Yet I was entirely terrified, because the man I had hoped to fool, to win through the might of a dragon, had somehow become something else. Something dear and fragile, something I was about to shatter when he discovered I was never Broken.

Lang stepped back before me, and gave me a smile. The priest cleared his throat as the guards closed the doors. A final fanfare of gleaming golden trumpets played, and my heart thudded so loudly in my chest it may as well have been the accompanying percussion.

My groom leaned over to me, and even with Plonius’ careful tending, I could see a swollen cut on his right cheek and the hint of bruising around his left eye. His nose looked crooked.

He licked his lower lip and shook his head faintly. “You look…”

“So do you.”

I watched his throat bob as he murmured under the clanging noise of the trumpet. “Tani— This wasn’t how I wanted this to happen. I don’t deserve you, but I promise I will protect you.”

“Lang.” My throat tightened, and I fought the urge to cry. He had meant every word, and I knew he would hate me once this was over. “I’m so sorry.”

His eyes tensed. “What happened yesterday was not your fault.”

I grimaced. “That’s not—”

The fanfare ended abruptly, and before we could say another word, the priest spoke. “May Edrin watch over these two bonded souls.”

Lang leant back, giving me a confused smile as the priest started to read the marriage rites. I tried to smile back, but it wobbled.

I had always intended to snub the Marriage path, so I had skimmed any learnings of couplings and marriages. As the only woman, I wanted to give them no reason to think of me as a simpering lady who only cared to get a husband. I knew the bare bones, and the closing rite.

The priest spoke solemnly of Edrin, and how as he watches over us now, we must also look out for each other, likening our marriage to watching over a precious flock. I assumed from his phrasing it was Lang’s role to watch over me, and mine to watch over our bouncing infants.

By my blood, children. Someday Lang would expect me to bear his heirs. Knowing my bond with Hanin, and the fear I had for him every day, I could not imagine having the same fear, or even an amplified one, for my own flesh.

The reality continued to strike me, repeatedly, as the entire event swarmed around me. None of it felt real.Ididn’t feel real. How could I be standing here, only feet away from Langnathin, only minutes away from completing my Fate?

After some archaic words on the sanctity of this new bond, the priest held out the knife. This part, I knew about, and I was relieved to see how modest the knife was. The long-handled red object bore a small sharp pointed edge only the length of the last joint of my thumb, and barely wider.