Page 7

Lying in her room on the other side of the inn, Ophele could not fall asleep.

Any number of wild ideas were circling through her mind.

The sight of her balcony had given her hope at first, but it was hanging over a river and she didn’t know how to swim.

After midnight, she slipped out of bed and padded quietly to the door in her chemise to peek into the hallway.

Just to check.

But there was a lean, dark man with a pockmarked face sitting on the floor outside her door, embracing his sword like a lover.

He looked up at her mildly.

“Do you need something, Your Highness?”

“No.

Thank you.”

Shutting the door, she trudged back to bed.

There was no escape.

Would Lady Hurrell really write to the duke and tell him what Rache Pavot had done to his parents? If she hadn’t shouted it out before the duke left, did that mean she had given up? Forever?

That did not sound like the Lady Hurrell Ophele knew.

Sitting in the middle of a wide feather bed, she wrapped her arms around her knees.

She never thought she would wish for her tiny, drafty room back at Aldeburke, but being in this strange place with its unfamiliar shadows only added to her fear.

For the first time in days, she was warm and clean, dressed in a new linen chemise with the sweet scent of lavender wafting from her skin, a kindly attempt by Mistress Goel to help her sleep.

But sleep had never seemed more impossible.

She couldn’t stop picturing the duke’s face and the narrow spectrum of emotions she had seen from him so far: irritation, annoyance, suspicion, scorn, and fury.

Love matches were a wishing tale for little girls.

She knew better than to hope for one herself.

But the man she was to marry was infamous for his ruthlessness.

People said he might have accepted Valleth’s surrender years ago, but instead he had hunted them all over the valley, until the grass dripped red with blood.

He hadn’t shown the least consideration for her so far, other than doing what was required to keep her alive.

He was enormous.

He didn’t like her.

And he didn’t care what she was feeling.

Would he hurt her?

She was pale and red-eyed when the innkeeper’s wife appeared some time past sunrise, tapping lightly on her door.

“Good morning, Your Highness,”

she said, throwing open the drapes over the casement windows.

“There’s plenty of time for a nice, leisurely breakfast, and then perhaps another bath?”

Accustomed to the scornful service of the maids at Aldeburke, frequently accompanied by Lady Hurrell’s abuse, Ophele meekly put herself into Mistress Goel’s hands and was surprised to enjoy it.

Weddings in the Empire were conducted at dusk, and so it was a very leisurely breakfast indeed: endless courses of eggs, pastries, fruits, more food than she had ever seen, and nervous though she was, she actually ate until she was full, and then rose for her bath.

Ophele had never had a bath that didn’t hurt.

The maids tenderly scrubbed and lotioned and scented her skin until she felt as if she were effervescing, a new being made of flower petals.

Her fingernails were filed and polished until they shone like little jewels, and then they wrapped her in fluffy towels and took her to a dressing table, where a hairdresser spent nearly two hours brushing miniscule amounts of scented oil into her hair.

When she was done, Ophele’s hair fell in loose curls past her hips and gleamed with a rich, silken luster she had never seen before.

Having made her into a clean palette for their artistic endeavors, they broke for afternoon tea.

Sitting at a small table by the window, Ophele and Mistress Goel munched on sliced winter apples and oranges plucked from the inn’s small hothouse.

“I was married twenty-one years ago,”

the mistress said reminiscently.

“In the same temple, though ours was a much less grand affair.

We married in summer, and I remember I wanted nothing more than to wear a silk dress, but that day it was so sweltering, I nearly fainted on the dais.”

All day Ophele had been silently braced for some insult, some cruelty, out of sheer force of habit.

But Mistress Goel had a pleasant way of rambling without requiring any response while still making her feel as if they were sharing a conversation.

It gave her the courage to speak.

“Did you know him before?”

she asked timidly.

“Your husband?”

“Oh, my, yes.

Our families were great friends when I was growing up.

My father is a merchant in town, and he happened to supply most of the furnishings to this inn.”

Mistress Goel sipped her tea.

As if in recognition of the importance of the day, her headgear was even more remarkable than yesterday, a conical hennin that required caution when going through doorways.

“When did you meet His Grace?”

“Last week.”

“That’s the way of the nobility, isn’t it,”

the mistress said kindly.

“The Count of Dennel just married off his daughter last year, to a man of fifty-two, if you can believe it.

You’re fortunate to be matched to such a handsome young man.

The girls will be breaking their hearts over him for months after you leave.

But—and please forgive the impertinence—haven’t you a nurse or a maid on the way to attend you? All the women who love you should be with you today.”

“No,”

Ophele said awkwardly.

It felt churlish to say that her mother was dead, or that she had never had a nurse of her own, or that His Grace had dragged her out of Aldeburke with someone else’s shoes on her feet.

“His Grace was in a great hurry to get back to Tresingale…”

“Ah.

Then it will be our honor to be their hands today.”

The Mistress bowed her head and pushed the plate of sweets closer to Ophele.

“Have another cookie, Your Highness.”

After tea, they got down to serious business.

The maids dressed her from the skin out in another new chemise, low-necked and richly embroidered with gold silk flocking.

Her kirtle was a dusty pink silk, and the overdress a brocade in the pale green of new apples, slashed at the upper arms to show both kirtle and chemise.

“Are you sure it’s all right for me to wear this?”

she fretted as the maids sewed the tippets just below her elbows, long decorative foresleeves that cascaded in lacy ruffles nearly to the floor.

“I don’t have any money to pay…”

“These are gifts from His Grace.”

Mistress Goel looked surprised that Ophele didn’t know this.

“One of his men began bringing these things to the inn yesterday.

He didn’t tell you?”

Ophele shook her head, surveying the room dubiously.

She had thought all these things—oils, lotions, cosmetics, clothing, even the apple-green silk slippers—must be some sort of wedding service the inn provided.

“And this, too,”

said a voice from the door, as a tall man was shown into the room and bowed courteously.

“Sir Miche of Harnost, Your Highness, I regret we have not yet been properly introduced.

I bring a gift from His Grace.”

The songs were right.

Sir Miche of Harnost was the most beautiful man Ophele had ever seen.

For a moment, every woman in the room was too stunned to do anything but stare until he extended the gift: a shallow wooden box containing a necklace and earrings, delicate confections of pink and white diamonds on fine golden chains.

Ophele tore her eyes from his extraordinary face.

“His Grace really sent this?”

she asked, her brow wrinkling.

He hadn’t seemed to like her at all.

“Indeed.

The carriage will be arriving in half an hour.

I will have your flowers brought up.”

Half an hour.

Ophele bobbed her head in acknowledgement and stood rigid as a doll as the maids hastened their efforts.

Their cheerful chatter swirled around her without making any impression on her consciousness, and she moved stiffly to let them clasp the necklace around her neck, clip the earrings to her ears, and then dab scent on her neck and wrists.

“Too much cosmetic is vulgar on a maiden,”

Mistress Goel said judiciously, giving only the lightest touch of rouge to Ophele’s lips.

With her gown on, she couldn’t sit down, so she bent her head as the hairdresser wove a coronet of roses into her hair and pinned a lacy veil over her head.

When they held up a mirror to show her the finished result, she didn’t know herself.

“You look beautiful, Your Highness,”

said the mistress, smiling with satisfaction.

“The duke won’t be able to take his eyes off you.”

“He won’t?”

she echoed faintly.

Her mouth was dry.

“No indeed.”

Mistress Goel pressed a bouquet of pink roses, alyssum, and small white lilies into her hands and led her into the hallway.

“If my son were about to stand beside so lovely a lady, I would tell him to thank the stars for his good fortune.

Please mind your train on the steps.

Rosset, catch it before it snags.”

She hadn’t even noticed that her dress had a train; everything was so unreal, the added weight on her shoulders might just as easily have been the iron chains that bound misers and embezzlers in the Daitian underworld.

At the foot of the grand staircase in the inn’s entry hall, Sir Miche was just pinning a black half-cloak into place at his shoulder.

“His Grace is already at the temple,”

he said, before Ophele could ask, and offered another extravagant bow.

“It will be my honor to escort you.

Don’t worry, from now on you’re in the charge of the Knights of the Brede.

You fear nothing in the world, eh?”

“Thank you.”

Kind words were always welcome, but he actually seemed to mean them.

With the warm glow of sunset lighting the town, she was transferred into the carriage, and Sir Miche swung up onto the rail by the door as if he intended to guard it with his body all the way to the temple.

Through the windows she could see a sea of faces and another storm of petals, the crowd cheering and singing.

They must have denuded every garden and hothouse in the city.

With all her heart, she wanted her mother.

Somehow she was sure Lady Pavot would have known just what to say.

But the only words she could recall were dim now, and too well-worn to be much comfort.

Traditionally, both her mother and father should have driven with her to the temple, and her father should have escorted her down the aisle, to hand her to the man who would be her lord and master the rest of her life.

If she were going to be given away, it only seemed fair that someone cared enough to show up and do the giving.

This way made her feel like the duke was taking in a stray no one else wanted.

The carriage halted before the steps of the temple and Sir Miche stepped down to open the door.

As he handed her down from the carriage, someone cried that the Princess of Argence had arrived, and the crowd burst into The Maiden’s Meditation, a traditional song about a maiden’s thoughts on the morning of her wedding that bore no resemblance to Ophele’s lonely vigil.

Sir Miche arranged her train behind her.

“You look beautiful, Your Highness,”

he said, offering his arm.

“Don’t worry.

I will be with you to the end.”

She nodded, her eyes enormous.

Inside the temple, people were squeezed together on rows of wooden benches, and incensors exhaled at the end of every aisle, giving off silver-blue smoke.

Every head turned at once to stare as she entered, clutching her bouquet.

Ophele had never seen a temple before.

She knew only the most elementary facts about the Temple of the Stars, the religion based on her own divine ancestors.

Silvery starlight streamed through the crystal dome, the light of stars captured and magnified, glowing on the circular dais where the duke and the Prior were waiting.

The stars would witness this union.

Before their all-seeing eyes, she would be joined to him inseparably, unto death and beyond.

Chimes rang.

The choir sang a response.

The duke watched her approach, tall and stern, his black eyes inscrutable.

His immaculate doublet and jerkin were silver shot with green, undoubtedly styled to match her own ensemble, as if he were a sturdy tree and she its leaves and flowers.

A black fur-lined cloak hung over his immense shoulders and made her think of a particularly elegant bear, and his black hair had been neatly trimmed and brushed back from his high forehead.

Sir Miche offered him her hand and moved to stand with the other knights, leaving her alone.

There was nowhere to run, no protest she could make, no hope of an appeal.

Ophele squeezed her eyes shut and drew a shaking breath, then squared her slim shoulders, to try and face this with grace.

“Greetings to His Grace Remin, Duke of Andelin,”

she said.

Her voice was soft, but came out unwavering and clear.

“Greetings to Her Sacred Highness Ophele, Princess of the Empire of Argence,”

he replied with a low bow, and then straightened to lift the veil from her face.