I blinked, careful not to look at what Ollan was doing as the wet tickle of the dye brush continued to the crook of my elbow.
Kassian rubbed his thumb across mine, expertly distracting me.
“Almost finished, my lady,” Ollan said from somewhere to my right.
A few more wet brushes against my skin, and then, Ollan withdrew his hand.
“It needs a bit of time to dry. Do you want to get up, my lady, or stay where you are?”
I could still feel the wetness of the dye on my skin. The rest of me was prickly and hot, acutely aware of both Kassian and the mark that claimed me as his mate, torn between panic and a kind of slow, heavy heat.
“I’d like to stay where I am until it’s washed off,” I said. My tongue felt heavy, thick.
I opened my eyes and looked up at Kassian, and I caught him in an unguarded stare. His expression was almost stricken.
He glanced away as soon as he realized I saw. He stood, removing his hand from mine.
Was it my imagination, or did his hand tremble as he drew his glove back on?
It hurt my heart to look at him. I closed my eyes again and pictured the rock I’d described to him, the one from my childhood, how the bright green moss had looked like miniature pine trees that ants might take shelter beneath, and how pebbles of all different colors tended to congregate along the sandy spit on the right side nearest the bank. How I’d wished Kassian had been with me every single time I sat on that rock, until one day, almost without realizing, I stopped wishing, because I finally let him go. I’d felt a sense of loss that day, a quiet sadness that I couldn’t identify. Only later did I realize that I hadn’t thought of him all day.
I was fifteen when it happened.
Only after that did I begin to notice the handsomeness of other boys in the village and town. Only after I truly accepted that Kassian was not coming back did I allow Farmer Goodman’s son to flirt with me, and did I allow myself to flirt back. And then, one summer evening when we walked together on the path, Farmer Goodman’s son kissed me. And I didn’t imagine it was Kassian.
I’d moved on.
“The dye should be set now,” Ollan said, and I felt a wave of relief. I kept my eyes closed while he washed the dye from my skin with a cloth and warm water, and after he’d dried the place, I swept my sleeve back in place so the mark was covered.
Temporary or not, I still didn’t want to look at the black ink that marked me as a Sworn prisoner who bore children for the enemy.
When I opened my eyes, I saw that Kassian had left.
CHAPTER TEN
TWO DAYS LATER, I stood in Kassian’s closet, looking at the dress I was going to wear to the marking ceremony. The fabric of the gown was thin, silky, and unlike anything I’d ever worn before. The dress was strapless, probably to allow everyone to see the marks on my arm.
I swallowed hard as memories flicked through my head. Sworn soldiers shoving me to the ground. Light glinting on black wolf masks. Hands holding me down as the Chosen mark was carved into my skin.
Dog shoved her nose into my hand and whimpered as if she sensed my dark mood. I stroked her head.
A knock came at the door, and following it, a young woman’s voice called out tentatively, “My lady?”
“Come in,” I said. My hands knotted in the folds of the dress as the door opened and a girl stepped inside.
Ollan had mentioned a maid. This must be her.
The maid was human, tall and beautiful, with light brown skin and straight black hair that was pulled away from her face in a tight braid that fell down her back. She wore a garment of asymmetrical blocks of gray and black fabric, edged with silver fabric, an echo of her master’s colors.
“Hello, my lady,” she said. “My name is Elisa, and I am here to help you prepare for your marking ceremony.”
“I’m Meredith,” I said, and she smiled slightly.
“Yes, so I’ve heard.” Elisa crossed the room to the bed and stood beside me, taking me in with a long look that started at my feet and ended at my hair.
I returned her speculating look with one of my own, my stare as even as I could make it, and I didn’t miss the hint of a smile that flicked across Elisa’s mouth. I couldn’t tell if that smile was in my favor or at my expense, though.
“After we’ve finished taking silent measure of one another,” she said, “let’s get you into this gown. I need all the time we have left to try to salvage your hair.”
She said it laughingly, without malice, as if I were her sister. Her tone warmed me. I thought she might treat me with either fearful reverence or cold disdain; instead, she was bossily familiar.
If she despised me like the others, she was good at pretending she didn’t.
Right, it was exactly what I needed to calm me.
“All right,” I said. “And can you do something about my face?”
“Your face,” she repeated with an arch of her brow. “What exactly are you wanting?”
I’d seen the faces of the black-veiled women in the market. They had paints and tints on their skin that gave them an otherworldly beauty, a beauty that was almost like a mask between them and the Sworn.
If I was going to play this game, I needed to do it right.
“I want to look like they expect the wife of the Silver Wolf to look,” I said. “Something fierce.”
“Hmm,” Elisa said. She tipped her head to the side and took my chin in her hands. She turned my head one way and then the other. “Hmm, yes.”
“Come,” she said, and picked up the dress. “Let’s get you ready to pledge yourself to Lord Vixor in front of a crowd of hundreds. When I’m done with you, every Chosen woman in the room is going to wish she was you, and that this was her wedding.”
Wedding.
I blinked, and in my mind’s eye, I was back in my bed as a child, planning my wedding to Kassian. It would have a white dress stitched with honeysuckles, not this black gown of mourning. It would have my mother’s veil, not one that looked like a plume of cobwebs and smoke. I would be walked down the aisle by my father and grandmother, surrounded by family and friends, married in the sunshine with Kassian’s hands in mine. I’d carry honeysuckle and the scent would fill the air.
Tears pricked at my eyes, and I blinked them away.
That marriage was a beautiful fantasy, but a fantasy was all it was.
When Elisa had finished dressing me, combing and braiding my hair, placing the veil, and painting my face, she stepped back and clasped her hands together.
“I think I’m finished,” she said. “What do you think?”
A fresh burst of fear fizzled in my stomach. When I didn’t move, Elisa turned me by the shoulders toward a mirror.
“What do you think, Lady Rae?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE GOWN HUGGED tight at my waist and flared wide over my hips and legs before sweeping down to the floor in a cascade of midnight. The veil on my head, black interwoven with silver, flowed across my shoulders and down my back. My eyes were edged with black paint, my lashes swept away from my face like tiny ravens’ wings, and my lips were a bloom of red in my otherwise pale face. Somehow, Elisa had used her tints to sculpt shadows beneath my cheekbones and along the sides of my temples, and the face that stared back at me looked beautiful and ruthless.