PROLOGUE
AS A GIRL, not quite ten years old and just beginning to feel the bewildering stirrings of puberty, I imagined marrying my best friend, Kassian.
I’d only recently realized that the flutter in my stomach whenever he smiled at me was more than gratitude at our friendship, and that my appreciation of the dark curl of his hair across his brow went beyond an eye for handsome things. We’d invented a secret language one summer, and I kept every note he wrote to me in it, no matter how silly or inconsequential the contents. And I had no explanation whatsoever for the way his crooked, teasing smile turned my legs to jelly, or why I had begun to dream that he touched his fingers to the curve of my cheek to brush my hair away, and how warm and melted it made me feel.
I thought once of kissing him, of pressing my mouth to his in a terrified, frantic peck, but I’d blushed so hard that I felt the heat of it when I put my hands to my cheeks, and my mind quickly buried the scandalous thought as deep as I could. And anything beyond kissing, my young mind was unable to conjure up, let alone withstand the embarrassment of imagining.
I did, however, think of marrying him.
My mother and father were best friends, and they were married. His parents teased and laughed at each other, and they were married.
It made perfect sense to my young mind. And, I reasoned, if we shared a house, how much easier would it be to play games in the woods during the day and tell stories at night while the fireflies danced outside the windows? We wouldn’t have to wait until we saw each other again to tell all the jokes and ideas we’d thought of, because we’d see each other every day. We could stay up past bedtime, whispering and reading and laughing, with no need to dash home with the first hints of darkness. We could be together forever. Best friends. Perfectly happy.
At ten, it seemed like the best idea I’d ever had.
With marriages came weddings, and so, one night while I fell asleep, a few weeks before my tenth birthday, I lay abed, cocooned in the quilt my mother had made me as an infant, and I planned my perfect wedding to Kassian.
I’d previously found weddings dull as dirt—except for the music and dancing, and the cake, and the opportunity to pelt rose petals at Kassian as we stood in a line to see the couple off.
But now, thinking about it, the whole thing didn’t seem so boring after all. Not if Kassian were the one waiting to take my hands and declare himself my husband. I imagined myself as stately as Penelope, Kassian’s older cousin whom I worshipped from afar. I’d be wearing a white dress embroidered with honeysuckles that twisted up the skirt and bodice to curl around my shoulders on the tiny capped sleeves. I’d wear a veil, of course, in a gauzy cloud around my head and shoulders. My mother’s, maybe. She still had it folded carefully into a box in the attic. She’d lift the veil from the box the morning of the wedding and place it on my head, and we’d look at each other, and she’d cry, maybe.
That part made me squirm, because I didn’t like to imagine my mother crying, even if it was from happiness.
I’d carry a bouquet of honeysuckles in my hands, of course, and their sweet fragrance would fill the air as I stepped into the sunshine to take my father’s arm.
The whole village would be there, watching and smiling as I trod down an aisle of green moss with my father on one side and my grandmother on the other. That was the only way I saw it going down, for Grandmother Delphine was so protective of me that she’d probably argue with father about who should accompany me. So, I’d play peacemaker and say they could both walk me, Grandmother grumbling and my father shushing her and smiling a joyful smile unmatched only by mine and Kassian’s.
Kassian.
I pictured him so clearly in the daydream. Grown up, but somehow exactly the same, freckled and dark-haired and still a boy, because I didn’t know how else to imagine him. He’d been grinning at me as he waited at the end of the aisle with a sprig of honeysuckle in his breast pocket.
Our vows, I imagined, would be written in our secret language. We’d giggled as we struggled to translate the words so everyone listening could understand, and we’d make a few mistakes and laugh even harder. But it would only be an example to everyone else of how close we were. How perfect for each other we were.
Instead of the normal, boring vows, we’d promise always to tell each other our secrets, to protect each other against enemies, to neglect our chores and read books together, and to let the weeds grow in the garden while we played games at the kitchen table. My grandmother would roll her eyes at our silliness, and my father would laugh. And afterward, while we were eating cake, I’d declare to the entire assembly that we wouldn’t have any babies because there was no room in my fantasy for such domesticity as children.
One day, when Kassian and I were dozing in the forest after an afternoon of running and climbing, I dared to confess my daydream. His eyes were closed, and his breathing even, and I was certain he was asleep and couldn’t hear me. And so I confessed, blushing bright red as I whispered my vision of our eventual wedding.
His breathing had stayed even, and his eyes closed. I wasn’t sure if he was pretending, but I almost could have sworn a corner of his mouth turned up when I mentioned the weeds in the garden and my grandmother’s exasperation.
One day, I thought, we’d be married.
~
A few weeks later, the Sworn came, and they killed my father and captured Kassian and my mother. I went to live with my grandmother, believing my best friend was dead, and I put my dream of a wedding to my best friend into the same lockbox in my head where I kept the most beautiful memories of our friendship.
And I tried never to think of it again, for the pain of it threatened to tear me in half.
NINE YEARS LATER
CHAPTER ONE
I WOKE ALONE in a vast bed, surrounded by darkness.
For a moment, I lay in groggy confusion, baffled by the silence in the darkness and the softness of the mattress and sheets that surrounded my body. My mind fumbled to remember where I was.
Not the hard ground of the forest. Not a narrow cot in Mother Shade’s house of Chosen horrors.
For one blissful, precious half a minute, I pretended I was back with my grandmother, tucked in my trundle bed beneath a heap of quilts, and any moment now, she’d light the morning fire and rattle pans on her squat little stove. I’d rise to help her make our breakfast of oatmeal and fruit. The nightmarish memories whispering at the edges of my mind—Neil’s knife in my side, treecrawlers lurching toward me in the forest, Kassian kneeling in reverence before the Alpha, the lash of Mother Shade’s whip, my mother’s rejection—would prove to be only dark, restless dreams.
I knew I was not with my grandmother. A rich sandalwood scent laced the air, and the bedsheets were too silky.
I remembered a sword in my hand. A silver mask hitting the sand. A blade pricking my chest, and blood blooming across my white garment.
Full remembrance rushed over me like a wind. My stomach hollowed.
Behold the contender. Behold his intended. May the Alpha smile upon their offspring.
The ceremony.
The fight. Kryf’s defeat. The hilt of my sword colliding with his face, and the way he crumpled to the sand at the touch of the silver. How I’d commanded him to turn human again, and when he did, the way his blood had spilled on the sand as I’d cut him.