Chapter Text
“Some bloodlines are blessings. Some are more like a tide, dragging us back towards grief, no matter how far we ran inland.”
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Princess Rain Veridian had always known her father would marry her off to some loathsome man. She had known it in the same way women had to learn the ugliest truths far too young. By watching men speak over them as if they were furniture, by hearing alliances discussed at supper in the same breath as horse races, and most importantly, by understanding, long before anyone said it plainly, that a princess’s womb was another piece of statecraft.
A ribbon to be tied where it best pleased the Crown.
She had simply never imagined the man would be Sodom.
If she had ever let herself picture it properly, in those wretched hours before sleep, Rain had imagined someone else entirely. An ageing warlord from the northern hills with a missing leg and a fondness for sour brandy. A disgraced border noble with a threadbare title and a mother desperate for royal blood in the family line. A brute. A fool. A bastard.
But not Sodom.
The High Priest of the the Feathered Host, the man who had known her since she was a child. Rain thought she could have borne almost any other humiliation with the grace expected of Arcadia’s heir. She could have endured age, ugliness, stupidity, even cruelty, if it had been asked of her. That was her duty. But not this. Never this.
And yet here she was.
The whole kingdom seemed drunk on joy for her wedding. Beyond the high windows of the Citadel’s great hall, Windward burned with celebration. Lanterns, garlands and banners hung from every street that sloped down towards the Endless Sea. Every balcony sagged under the weight of onlookers. Every tavern had thrown open its doors. Loud music spilled up from the city in bright and vulgar bursts. The bells of the churches rang and rang and rang until Rain thought the sound might crack the pearl buttons down her spine.
Inside the hall, things were no better.
Rain stood beside Sodom and received congratulations.
“May the Host bless your union eternally, Your Holiness.”
“May your womb quicken before midsummer, Your Highness.”
“May death never touch the royal family ever again.”
Rain thought she might be sick.
Her face gave none of it away, of course. Her cheeks had been powdered enough to hide the truth, that she had cried until dawn while her maids bathed her in rosewater.
The princess turned her head, just slightly, and looked towards the tall windows thrown open to the salt air of Windward. The capital clung to the cliffs where Arcadia broke away into the Endless Sea, and even here, high within the Citadel, the water still reached her. It touched her overheated skin, slipped beneath her veil and stirred the fine edge of the tulle, making the tiny diamonds in her hair whisper together with the faintest little chime. For one stupid heartbeat, Rain imagined throwing herself straight into the sea.
Let the city have its spectacle then.
Let them all ring their bells for that.
Windward roared with celebration. The great hall of the Citadel had been decorated within an inch, long tables groaning beneath the weight of luxurious meats glazed in honey and spice, sugared fruits, dishes bright with saffron and pomegranate, silver platters hauled from every corner of the kingdom and beyond. Plum wine stood in enormous crystal decanters, dark and gleaming like blood beneath the candlelight. Someone had even thought it a delicate touch to set out small enchanted cupcakes that could sing. One of Rain’s former tutors had made them, no doubt pleased to have lent a bit of magic to the future queen’s wedding feast.
All of it was perfect.
All of it was wasted on this cursed wedding.
Then a duchess from the western orchards swept forward and took Rain’s fingers in her own. She bent and kissed the princess’s knuckles as if she were a saint.
“You look radiant, Your Highness,” she said. “Truly radiant. The Host has favoured you.”
Rain felt her hands tremble beneath the woman’s grip.
“Thank you.”
The duchess leaned in a little closer, perfume thick enough to choke on. “And what a match. What a divine match. His Holiness will guide you well.”
Rain nearly forgot how to breathe.
Her dress weighed like penance. It was a masterpiece, everyone had said so. Layers of soft silk the colour of cream and gold spilled from her waist in heavy folds, edged in hand-beaded thread that dragged over the floor. The fitted bodice had been stitched through with so many pearls that it bit into her ribs every time she drew a proper breath. Her fawn-coloured hair had been twisted and braided and pinned into some elaborate monument to maidenhood, threaded through with diamonds so clear they looked like rain frozen on branches. The veil attached at the crown fell to the floor, stitched with glittering crystals and shimmering gold.
Her head ached beneath the weight of it.
Her neck hurt. Her shoulders hurt.
Her smile hurt worst of all.
“Blessings on you, Princess Rain,” cooed another woman whose name Rain didn’t know and wouldn’t remember. “May the Feathered Host grant you many sons, Your Highness.”
“Your words honour us,” Rain replied, hearing at once how distant her own voice sounded, as if someone else had been trained to speak through her mouth. “You are very kind.”
And so it went on.
An endless procession of congratulations, each one fouler than the last. And every blessing, in the end, circled back to the same thing. Her womb. Her sons. Her usefulness.
Rain accepted each wish with the same graceful smile she had practised since childhood. She inclined her head when required. She thanked them. She even let them kiss her cheeks.
Rain wondered why no one thought to wish her joy, or peace, or even simple happiness. Only sons. Always sons. Sons for the Crown. Sons for the Church. Sons for the gods. So Rain only smiled and smiled and smiled, standing beside her husband.
Sodom looked pleased. Of course he did.
He was handsome, if one were blind in the soul. His hair was still mostly dark, touched at the temples with silver. But there was always something foxlike about him, something lean and watchful and sly. His eyes were the colour of cheap amber, bright, hard and shallow, just like a grave in winter. His smile always seemed a heartbeat away from curdling into a sneer.
“Straighten,” Sodom murmured at her side. “You’re slouching like a commoner.”
Rain’s spine went colder than the sea beyond the windows.
“I apologise, Your Holiness,” she said quietly.
The words tasted foul.
She couldn’t think of her husband without feeling unclean.
Rain remembered being six years old, peering from behind her mother’s skirts in the council chamber and seeing him there. His eyes had settled on her in a way that made her step more fully behind her dear mother without knowing why. She had hated him from that day onward.
Rain kept her smile fixed and looked across the hall.
King Pellon Veridian sat at the high table beneath the largest banner, crowned and radiant and terrible to behold. His face was bright with a feverish sort of joy she hadn’t seen in him since before her mother died. It made him look younger, almost.
There had been a time when Rain had thought her father unshakeable. A stern man. A distant man. Never tender, perhaps, but still her father. Then the Feathered Host appeared and what remained wore her father’s face, but the man himself had long since gone to ground.
Sodom’s hand tightened at her waist.
“Smile,” he murmured without moving his mouth. “People are looking.”
Rain’s smile brightened at once as she imagined smashing every crystal goblet in the room.
She knew the history of Arcadia better than most of the prattling nobles offering their empty blessings tonight. She had been made to learn everything about her kingdom, after all.
Before the war of the Seven Old Gods of Arcadia, necromancy had been one of the rarest and most tightly governed magics, belonging only to Mourn and to His chosen vessels. That kind of ancient magic couldn’t be taught like arithmetic or swordplay. And because the dead had rights of their own, the craft had been bound in law as hard as iron. A necromancer required a royal licence, sealed and witnessed, even to perform the smallest lawful rite. Improper raising was a crime. Unsanctioned binding, a greater one. To drag back the dead against Mourn’s will had once been considered among the filthiest magical violations a person could commit.
Then the War Of Gods came and bodies piled faster than graves could be dug. And as if rot itself had found a tongue, the priests of a new god began appearing across Arcadia, speaking of return. Of reunion. Of preservation. Of love stronger than the tomb.
Such lovely words for such ugly work.
All that for a matter of coin.
Rain had watched the kingdom change like fruit left too long in a warm room. At first only a sweet smell. Then softness. Then collapse. Necromancers became priests. Laws that had once seemed immovable suddenly bent with surprising ease whenever gold or power leaned hard enough on them.
And her father had changed fastest of all.
House Veridian saw the opportunity in the horrors of the war. They had been healers once, respected founders of the Healer’s Guild of Arcadia and trusted advisors of the royal family. They had stood close to power, yes, but not upon it. Then the old line died out during the war. That was when Pellon Veridian, Rain’s father, had promised stability. Renewal. Protection. He had promised alliance with the rising Church of the Feathered Host, whose priests could return beloved commanders to battle and beloved heirs to succession.
By the time anyone thought to ask what had truly happened to the royal family, the Veridians had already been crowned and anointed. Convenient, that. Now the true line lay mouldering beneath Windward’s oldest crypts and House Veridian wore the crown. Now the Host had tucked itself into every law court, every nursery, every deathbed, every marriage bed too, like a parasite warm and fat from feeding.
Rain knew, with a certainty that lived deeper than proof, that her father had died the night the Feathered Host came to him in a dream. Pellon Veridian died when he woke up convinced he had been chosen. The truth was, he didn’t love the Host at all. The king loved the idea of himself seated on Arcadia’s throne forever, beloved and feared beyond the reach of history. Pellon Veridian wanted no heir to threaten him, no illness to weaken him, no old age to bend him, no god to take him. He wanted eternity so badly that he had given his only daughter to the man who promised it.
Rain had grown up beneath portraits of Veridian ancestors who had never once expected their descendants to wear crowns. When she was young, Rain used to stand beneath those portraits and wonder whether they approved of them. And tonight, crushed beneath silk and pearls and diamonds, she thought they must be ashamed enough to claw their way from the walls.
“You are very quiet, Princess.”
Rain went rigid when Sodom’s hand pressed more firmly against the small of her back.
“I’m simply listening to everyone’s blessings,” Rain muttered, then, because he would expect it and punish the lack of it later, she added in a lower voice, “Your Holiness.”
Sodom smiled without showing teeth.
“You will have to grow accustomed to blessings, my love,” he murmured. “They will follow you everywhere from now on.”
Rain kept her face still with effort.
At last, while Sodom turned to acknowledge another cluster of dignitaries, Rain shifted half a step away, pretending to adjust her skirt. She found herself near the open balcony doors. Cool salt brushed her cheeks. The diamonds at her veil stirred softly. The princess drew one breath too deep and nearly shuddered from gratitude.
Then she looked down.
A strange ensemble had been set up in the outer courtyard below the balcony. That surprised her. They didn’t look like court musicians at all. If anything, they looked as though they had been dragged in from some deadbeat inn near the docks, the sort of place respectable women were warned away from. Their clothes missed proper court fashion by a mile.
All of them wore masks.
Their visible skin had been painted black from throat to temple, from wrist to knuckle, so that what showed of them seemed less like flesh than shadow given shape. The singer stood at the centre. Even from the height of the hall he seemed tall. No, not merely tall. Impossibly so, all long limbs beneath an emerald shirt, with gold jewellery catching now and then at his throat whenever the light found it. His mask was white, gold and green, too smooth by half, pierced with six eyeholes arranged in a way that made Rain’s gaze snag and stick.
Then the singer’s voice drifted upwards, dark and deep and rich enough to make Rain’s chest tighten. No human voice ought to have sounded like that. Like dark honey through a wound. That was what it sounded like. Sweet, but with something split open at the heart of it. The melody rose and fell like breath, like tide, like the slow drag between waking and dreaming, and grief clung to it so elegantly it became almost hypnotic.
Good gods. He had to be a siren.
Rain stood there like a fool, listening.
Perhaps that was why her father had allowed such a bizarre lot to play at a royal wedding. The novelty of them. The little thrill of seeming eccentric and grand at once. King Pellon had always loved a spectacle so long as he remained master of it.
The princess knew she had lingered too long. Rain turned her head just slightly, meaning only to glance once more before returning to her place, and in that split second she saw that the singer was already looking straight at her.
Then Sodom’s hand closed around her wrist.
“There you are.”
His tone was bright enough for anyone listening. Warm. Indulgent. Fond, even. To the room, he sounded like a husband teasing his bride. To Rain, he sounded like a snare tightening.
“I didn’t marry you so you could stand about gawping at vagrants,” he said, still smiling for the crowd. “You owe me a dance.”
Rain turned her head slowly. “I would rather—”
His grip tightened.
“You owe me a dance,” he repeated, more firmly this time.
Around them, the guests shifted obligingly aside. The crowd parted like water around the will of magic. Someone signalled to the musicians and the music changed at once, abandoning its aching little lament for something slower, sweeter, softer, fit for the ceremony.
Sodom drew her into his arms.
Rain felt like a caged bird throwing itself at iron.
To anyone watching, they must have looked splendid together. The High Priest and the heir to Arcadia. A perfect and holy union. The sort of pairing old women would weep over and bards would make insufferable songs about. Only Rain could see the sick lust in Sodom’s eyes.
“To the Host, you’re trembling,” he hummed, guiding her through the steps with maddening ease. “A bride should not look so frightened on her wedding day.”
“A bride should not be handled like livestock,” Rain said, low enough that only he could hear.
His smile sharpened without widening.
“Mind your tongue, wife.”
He spun her beneath his arm. For one sickening second the hall tilted into a wash of gold and sugar and faces. Then he caught her again, one hand settling possessively at her waist.
“You do like to make a fuss,” he said. “You should be grateful, Princess. Arcadia envies you tonight. A royal line joined to the Host’s chosen. Most women would kill for less.”
Rain kept her face composed with effort. “Most women are not born to inherit a throne.”
“No,” he agreed. “Which is why you ought to have the wit to understand your value.”
“I understand it perfectly well,” she said, her teeth barely parting. “I understand that I’ve been bartered, Your Holiness.”
Sodom’s gaze flicked to her face then, assessing, pleased in some private and repellent way that she had finally said it plainly.
“Everything is bartered, Your Highness.”
His thumb pressed once into her side through the silk and boning.
“Land. Loyalty. Whores. Armies. Faith. Even death, these days.”
Rain’s throat tightened so suddenly she nearly missed the next step. Because her husband was right, and that was the vilest part. Death itself had become negotiable in Arcadia. Bought, sold, bent, dragged about on a lead by priests in cream and gold.
She knew that this was forever. The princess had thought of killing herself more than once since the betrothal was announced. The thought came with regularity, like the tide outside Windward’s cliffs. But even that had been taken from her. Because if she died, they would drag her back from Mourn’s realm, nail her soul into her own flesh again and call it duty. She couldn’t even die honestly. There was nowhere left to run, not into life, not into death, not even to the gods.
Rain wanted to be sick.
Sodom drew her closer still. “You ought to stop looking like a martyr.”
“Then perhaps you should stop gripping me as though you’ve bought a mare at market.”
His jaw shifted. “You are testing my patience.”
Rain let out the smallest breath of laughter, bitter and sarcastic. “How dreadful. I should hate to discover you had any.”
For the first time, something flickered beneath his expression.
“You will learn,” he said like a promise. “In time.”
An hour later, when the press of guests thinned just enough for propriety to loosen its claws, Rain finally slipped the noose a little. Two palace guards in gold-trimmed livery stood at the side doors with their hands clasped behind their backs.
Both straightened the moment she approached.
“Your Highness,” one said, bowing his head. “Shall we escort you?”
“Only to the garden,” Rain replied. Her voice came out steadier than she felt. “I need a breath of air. It’s… really hot in there, isn’t it?”
The older of the two glanced past her into the hall, where the feast still swelled as if no one in Arcadia had ever been miserable a day in their life.
“As you wish, Your Highness.”
The royal guards escorted her through the side passage and into the rose garden beyond, then stopped at the arched entrance, merely far enough to offer the illusion of privacy. The Citadel gardens were immaculate with clipped hedges, white gravel, fountains, lemon trees, and roses bred only in colours the Crown approved of. But now, under orange light of the lanterns and a bruised sky, the whole place looked sadder. The rain from earlier still clung to the petals. The air smelled of wet stone, salt, and crushed blooms.
“Wait here,” Rain said without turning. “If I am wanted, I shall return.”
The younger guard hesitated, clearly not keen on letting the newlywed heir out of sight on her wedding night. But then the music from within shifted, and the hall roared with another burst of laughter, and whatever argument might have formed in him died there.
“As you say, Your Highness.”
As Rain walked on, the roses brushed her skirts and caught in the embroidery, leaving bruised petals snagged in the beading. Crimson. Blush. Deep wine. Their colours glowed dimly under the hanging lanterns. The princess didn’t know what she meant to recover out here.
There was nothing left for her to recover.
At the centre of the lower terrace stood a fountain of pale stone, its basin full of black water that reflected lanterns in trembling gold shards. Rain reached it and sat hard upon the edge, gathering the heavy silk of her skirts in one fist as though she might wring some order out of them if she gripped tightly enough. She bent over her own lap, gathering another handful of silk as though fixing the skirts of her wedding dress might somehow fix her life.
Rain didn’t know when she began to cry.
Her reflection broke and blurred in the fountain water beneath her, face dissolving with every drop as her tears spilled down her face in a helpless stream.
Behind her, the wedding went on. Music drifted through the open doors. Goblets rang. Guests laughed. Windward bellowed beyond the Citadel walls. Farther still, the Endless Sea battered itself against the cliffs with the patience of something that would outlive every one of them.
Rain pressed a fist against her mouth.
She thought of Sodom’s cruel hands. Of the bridal chamber. Of her wifely duties that would be expected tonight, tomorrow, every night after. She thought of sons. Of carrying them. Of birthing something touched by the Host’s foul magic. Could evil live in the blood before the child had even drawn its first breath? Would Rain even know it if she held such an infant to her breast? Would she feel revulsion before love? Or nothing at all?
Her stomach turned so violently she nearly retched into the fountain. She didn’t want to be an heir. She didn’t want to be a wife. She didn’t want to be a mother. And most importantly, she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life serving as broodmare to the Church and the Crown.
She wanted—
“Are you alright?”
Rain gasped. She spun so quickly that the diamonds sewn through her veil flashed like stars. For one dreadful second she thought some drunken guest had followed her out from the feast. Some lord’s son grown bold on wine. Some priest with poor boundaries and worse intentions. Then the torchlight shifted through the hanging branches, and she saw the mask.
It was the singer.
He was standing beneath the giant willow tree, so tall that the branches brushed his shoulders and caught against the line of him as though reluctant to let him pass.
Rain’s first thought was that no one should have been able to get this close to her. Her second was worse. The guards hadn’t appeared to see the stranger beneath the willow.
Rain rose too fast, nearly catching her heel in her skirts. She wiped at her cheeks with the edge of one glove and drew herself upright.
“I’m perfectly well,” she said. Her voice was too thin. She hated that he heard it. “You should not be here, sir. This is the royal garden.”
“I imagine not.”
His voice was the same as his singing voice, only quieter now, lower, with a curious curl of accent in it that brushed oddly close to her own. Warm, too. Far too warm for a stranger in a mask who seemed to have stepped straight through common sense.
“You should really go,” she repeated. “If the guards find you alone with me, they’ll hang you by dawn. If they’re feeling generous.”
“That depends.”
He said it so mildly she almost missed the insolence of it.
“On what?”
“On whether you tell them I’m here.”
Rain stared at him before glancing back at the guards.
The sheer nerve of him, speaking to the heir of the throne like this—
Then Rain realised that she was alone in the dark with a masked man. A musician, perhaps. A criminal, perhaps. She was a princess, a bride, a woman whose reputation could be gutted by a rumour. And her husband was exactly the sort of man who would punish scandal whether or not she had any hand in causing it.
She should scream. Rain knew she should. That was what sense demanded. A strange masked man in the royal garden on her wedding night was not an amusing little oddity. It was danger. Scandal. Ruin. However, when Rain opened her mouth, she pictured Sodom coming out into the garden. His foxlike face. His greedy hands. His cruel smile.
She shut her mouth.
“Your performance was lovely,” she said, with all the brittle dignity she could gather around herself. Etiquette hadn’t abandoned her, even if every other form of divine mercy plainly had. “I’m sure it brought great joy to the wedding party.”
He hummed. “Everyone but the bride.”
Rain’s chin lifted. “I beg your pardon?”
“I saw you from the stage.”
Rain’s face went hot from the vile intimacy of being read so easily by a stranger when every person who claimed to love her had chosen not to see. She wondered what sort of expression sat behind the blank mask, and was annoyed to find the thought less frightening than it should to have been. The princess let out a long and deep breath as she watched him.
“What’s your name?” she breathed.
The singer shifted, the willow branches whispering against his emerald shirt. “Ves.”
“Just Ves?”
A pause. Then the dark line of his mouth moved faintly beneath the lower edge of the mask, as though he had smiled. Rain, to her own surprise, smiled back.
“I am Princess Rain of House Veridian.”
“I know.”
Of course he knew. Every loyal subject of Arcadia knew their princess’s face. Still, there was something irritating in the ease of it, in being known by someone who hadn’t earned the right.
“Then you have me at a disadvantage, Ves.”
“Seems you are at several tonight,” he hummed thoughtfully.
Rain frowned and said, “You are very bold for a man trespassing in royal grounds. I suggest you remember who you are talking to, commoner.”
Her warning drew a small tilt of the head from him, amused enough to make the princess even more aggravated. The willow leaves stirred then, as somewhere beyond the walls, the sea battered itself against the cliffs. Behind them the wedding feast went on, muffled now by distance.
Then Ves said, “Why aren’t you happy on your wedding day, Princess?”
Rain went still.
“As I said, I saw you from the stage,” he continued, and his head turned slightly, as if he were still listening to music. “You looked like you’d rather throw yourself into the sea than go back inside. And please, don’t try to deny it. I always notice sad women.” Ves smiled. “That’s my specialty. Or so my partner tells me.”
Rain folded her hands tightly before her because they had begun to shake.
“You should return to the hall.”
“So should you.”
The princess gave a short, helpless laugh that was more pain than humour.
“You sound like a court tutor.”
“I have been accused of worse,” Ves shrugged. “So?”
Rain glanced towards the guards again.
Still nothing. Still no sign that they saw him. Every lesson ever hammered into her by tutors, ladies-in-waiting and councillors screamed at her to stop. Do not speak ill of your father. Do not confess weakness to strangers. Do not tell another man the truth of your marriage. Do not show division within the Crown. Do not. Do not. Do not.
She looked back at Ves from beneath wet lashes.
He was a stranger. A masked musician covered in paint, standing where no man should stand, speaking like he had no proper fear of anything. Everything about him should have told her to be careful. But carefulness had brought Rain here. Carefulness had laced her into this gown. Carefulness had taught her to bow her head at the right moments, smile at the right people, hold her tongue when her father bartered her life away and called it duty.
Carefulness hadn’t saved her from a damned thing.
She took a few slow steps beneath the willow, away from the fountain, as if one more foolish decision could scarcely make the night worse. Rain wrapped her arms around herself, careful not to crush the bodice.
“Sodom is the Head Priest of the Church of the Feathered Host,” the princess said at last, the words barely louder than the rustle of the willow. She spoke as though there were any chance at all Ves didn’t know this. “He’s one of the wealthiest, most influential, and most dangerous men in Arcadia.”
Ves leaned one shoulder against the willow trunk. “And?”
Rain looked down at her hands. The rings glittered there, fat and shining and grotesque.
“And he is—” She swallowed. “Unpleasant.”
Ves let the word sit between them for a moment.
“Unpleasant how?”
Rain laughed again, softer this time. More bitter. “You ask very direct questions.” She should have stopped then. Instead she said, “He has known me since I was a child.”
Ves went still. “Did he hurt you?”
Rain’s mouth tightened. “Not in a way anyone would count.”
That seemed to sharpen the silence.
“Sodom never much bothered to hide that he wanted my hand,” she went on. The words were coming now, and she had the sinking sense that if she stopped speaking she might drown in them. “My father knew it. Encouraged it, perhaps. Or found it convenient, which amounts to much the same thing.”
Rain looked up at him then, properly. The mask still frightened her. The strangeness of him still frightened her. But not half so much as the hall behind her, or the man waiting inside it.
“You asked why I’m not happy,” she said. “There’s your answer.”
Rain knew that there were old laws still, buried deep beneath new decrees. Sedition. Treason. Blasphemy. A princess could be tried for all three if the wrong ears heard the wrong words.
And yet, she still continued.
“He frightens me,” she said, and the admission loosened something raw inside her. “Sodom is not a patient man. He isn’t gentle. He angers quickly, and he likes power for its own sake. He likes using it and likes being seen to use it. And I’m—” Her voice wavered for a second. “I’m afraid of what he will be as my husband. I’m afraid of what he will do to me.”
The willow leaves rustled overhead and the princess could feel tears gathering again, hot and humiliating. She was too tired to stop them now.
“I’m afraid of his temper,” Rain confessed, her voice barely audible over the salty wind. “I’m afraid of bearing his children. I’m afraid of what those children would be, raised between the Church and the Crown. I’m afraid I would hate them before they ever drew breath. I’m afraid this marriage will outlast death itself because death is no longer allowed to—gods, that’s the point of all this, isn’t it? Forever. Church and Crown woven together until the end of time, if my father gets his wish, and me stuck in the middle to breed heirs into the arrangement.”
Rain sucked in a shaky breath.
“I never even wanted children,” she sobbed. “There. The Host help me, there it is. I don’t want to be touched by him. I don’t want to lie down beside a man for the rest of my life who looks at me as if I were a whore already bought and paid for.”
She scrubbed angrily at her face.
“They’ve taken everything from me. Do you understand? Even death. Even that.” Her hand rose to the golden chain at her waist, to the glittering little symbols of ownership stitched into it. “I’m not trapped until death.” Her voice dropped. “I’m trapped beyond it.”
When Ves spoke, his voice was quieter than before.
“I understand more than you think.”
Rain laughed mockingly through her tears, and the sound came out sharp. “How could you possibly understand?” Her lips trembled. Then, with a scoff that sounded unladylike even to her own ears, she added, “What, were you married too?”
“No.” He looked towards the hall. Through the willow branches, wedding light flickered gold across the white of his mask. “But I was once in a place not so different from yours.”
Rain sniffed. “I rather doubt that, Ves.”
For a moment Ves said nothing. Then, when he spoke, some of the performer’s silk had gone out of his voice. What was left sounded older and rougher round the edges.
“There was someone,” he said slowly, as if choosing each word cost him something, “who loved being worshipped far more than He ever loved me. He was… someone vain enough to call hunger devotion and cruel enough to call obedience love. Beautiful, when it suited Him. Violent, when beauty failed. He could turn tenderness into punishment if I wanted anything beyond what He allowed.”
Rain said nothing as the sea hissed against the cliffs beyond the wall.
“I kept thinking,” Ves went on, “if I endured a little longer, if I worshipped properly, perhaps one day I would be loved in return.” He let out a small sound that might have been a laugh. “Turns out centuries can slip by while you’re waiting for someone to change.”
Rain stared at him for a seemingly endless moment.
“Centuries?” she repeated faintly.
His painted fingers brushed the word away with an elegant gesture. “A figure of speech.”
Rain wasn’t fully convinced, drowing her eyebrows together.
“And how did you get away?”
“With help.” His gaze drifted somewhere beyond the willow, into the dark, as though he were seeing another place laid over this one. “My family dragged me out before I could mistake suffering for devotion forever. After that—” His shoulders shifted slightly. “I found the only life that ever made sense to me and the people who truly cared about me.”
“The men on stage?”
He nodded once, smiling lightly. “Them.”
Rain’s chest ached with envy, with the sudden and impossible pain of imagining such a thing existing at all. A real family. People who stayed because they wished to. People who would choose you without title, duty, or blood forcing their hand.
“You are fortunate, then,” Rain cleared her throat then because she hated how raw the words sounded. “I have never had people like that in my life. I’m constantly surrounded by people, and yes, some were kind within the limits they could afford. But… everyone in the Citadel either obeyed me or watched me. No one would choose me if duty didn’t demand it.”
She laughed once, quietly, at herself.
“What a pathetic thing to say as a princess.”
“It isn’t,” Ves shook his head slightly.
“It is if one says it aloud.”
Ves didn’t argue with her and that, more than pity would have, nearly undid her.
“Well, thank you for the story,” Rain said, voice tightening back into politeness, as if the mask of her own had slipped back on. “It’s kind of you. But whatever it is you think you understand, I cannot do what you did. I cannot leave this life.”
“Why not?”
Rain nearly smiled at the innocence of it.
“Because I’m the Princess of Arcadia,” she stated coldly. “I’ve lived in Windward all my life. I’ve stood at the harbour and watched ships leave and imagined myself aboard every last one of them. I know the tax yield of the southern fields, the treaty terms of the western orchards, the names of the noble houses, the burial customs of the Ashlands, the lineages of families I’ve never met—” Her voice caught. “I know all of it on paper. I have read histories of towns I will never see. I only know what the hills beyond the western pass look like because someone painted them for me. And the truth is, I don’t know anything or anyone. Not really.”
Rain stopped dead. The longing had carried her too far.
At once, training returned like a door slamming shut.
“But that’s childish,” she said quickly. “Foolish. A woman of my station doesn’t get to yearn for such silly things. Being a wife and mother is the greatest honour a woman can achieve. I should be grateful. I would be blessed to bear a son for my husband. And—yes, I am blessed. The Host favours me, I am blessed by a god. I truly am.”
The words fell dead between them.
Ves said nothing at first, but Rain felt him hear it. She saw it in the slight tilt of his head. Felt his attention settle over her like the weight of a hand at the back of her neck.
“Are you?” he asked quietly.
Rain turned her face away so sharply that the diamonds on her veil gave a soft little hiss.
“That’s not your concern, commoner.”
She hated that her throat ached.
Hated even more that part of her wanted him to ask again.
“I cannot leave,” Rain snapped, impatient now. “Whatever your family did for you, whatever courage you found, whatever grand revelation you had beneath some hedge or in some gutter, that’s not my life. I’m the heir of Arcadia. I’m a married woman. My father owns my name, Sodom owns my body, and the Host owns my soul. There’s nothing of me left to take. So tell me, where, exactly, would I go?”
Silence. Ves was quiet for so long that she almost thought he had stepped back into whatever shadow he had come from. Long enough that she almost wished he would say nothing at all.
Then Ves said, very simply, “Come with us.”
Rain stared at him.
For one dreadful second her mind emptied itself clean. Her heart struck once, hard enough to hurt. It felt as though the whole world had shifted half an inch sideways.
Then sense returned, and with it came a laugh, brittle and disbelieving.
“You can’t be serious.”
“I am.”
“My father would have you all executed,” Rain’s voice sharpened with every word. “Do you hear me? Executed. Dragged before the inquisitors, tried for treason, and hanged high enough for the gulls to peck your eyes out. That’s what would happen for the suggestion alone.”
Ves didn’t move at all and that eerie stillness of his was beginning to frighten her more than any threat could have. The garden seemed suddenly too small for the two of them.
“We would keep you safe.”
Rain let out a breath that was almost a laugh and almost a sob. “Would you?”
“Yes,” Ves stated as if there were no doubt in his mind about that.
“You don’t know me.”
“I know enough.”
“No.” Her voice cracked like a whip. “You know nothing.”
Ves held her gaze as Rain took another step back from him. Her pulse was running too hard now, beating everywhere at once. In her throat. In her wrists. In the backs of her knees.
“You know that I loathe my husband,” she snapped. “Oh, well done. So do half the women in Arcadia. That doesn’t make you a—” Rain made a sharp, furious gesture to herself. “What is your plan, then? You tuck me under your arm and smuggle me out beneath your shirt? Hide me in an instrument case? March me through the city gates in this dress?”
She dragged one hand down the side of her gown in disgust.
“By morning every road in the kingdom would be crowded with royal soldiers searching for the stolen bride. Do you have any idea what you are suggesting?”
He pushed off the willow.
“You could travel,” he said. “You could see the world. You could be free.”
“See the—” She laughed again. “By the Host, you are mad. You really don’t understand, do you? There’s nothing out there for a woman like me.” Her chest rose sharply. “You speak as if freedom is just there for the taking. As if I could pluck it off a tree. Gods, you must be joking because the only other explanation is that you’re that simple. Or cruel. Or both.”
His answer came simply. “I mean it. Come with me.”
Rain’s mouth parted. For one hideous second, the words struck too close to her heart. He had found the exact shape of the wound and put his hand straight into it.
“If you truly mean it, that makes it worse,” she hissed. “I cannot simply run away with a group of musicians.”
Ves was still beneath the willow tree, half in shadow, so unnaturally calm it began to feel like mockery. “Well, we’re not precisely musicians.”
“You arrogant—” Rain caught herself, then failed to care because his words chilled her more than she liked. She had known, of course she had known, that there was something off about Ves, something too deliberate in the way he spoke, in the way he moved, in the way he had simply appeared in the royal gardens as if walls and guards and titles meant nothing at all. But hearing him say it plainly made the danger in front of her change shape.
“Then whatever you are, the answer is no,” her voice sharpened, though fear made it thinner than she wanted. “Now leave me alone. That’s an order. Get out of the royal garden this instant before I call the inquisitors myself.”
Rain meant it to sound like a threat. She meant it to sound royal, cold, untouchable. Instead, it came out edged with panic.
Ves only inclined his head, polite as a courtier, and muttered, “We could get you out of here. It would only be for one small favour in return.”
Rain went still. “A favour?”
The veil still stirred faintly with her breathing. Her hand still gripped the fabric of her skirts. But inside, something seized hard and fast.
A favour.
And just like that, the whole conversation rearranged itself in her mind at once, every strange kindness, every careful question, every unsettlingly gentle word. A trap dressed up as sympathy.
Rain’s mouth went dry. Her mind was racing now, turning over possibilities so quickly they became more feeling than thought. Blackmail. Leverage. Extortion.
Her court ladies had warned her since childhood that men rarely offered help without wanting something uglier in return, and the Church had taught her the same lesson in holier language. A favour could mean anything. Information. Gold. Power. Access. Betrayal. Her body. Her title. Something done in secret that could be held over her later like a blade at the throat.
Rain’s heart was hammering so violently it made her ribs ache.
“What favour?” she breathed. “What exactly have you been after all evening?”
Before Ves could answer, another voice cut through the garden.
“Ves, what the fuck are you doing?”
A second figure emerged from the shadows beyond the willow, shorter than Ves, moving with the hard steps of someone perpetually annoyed by the world’s existence. Rain recognised him as the drummer. His formal musician’s jacket had been stripped away, leaving him in a dark fitted shirt, sleeves rolled, a strap crossing his chest. He took one look at Ves, then one look at Rain, and swore again, sharper this time.
“Oh, brilliant. Just fucking brilliant.”
“Two—” Ves began.
“No, don’t ‘Two’ me.” The man slashed a hand through the air. “Don’t you fucking start. The guards are sniffing round our papers, we’ve got maybe ten minutes before someone realises Master Cael of the Southern Conservatory has been dead for over a decade and therefore didn’t, in fact, recommend us for tonight’s royal fucking wedding.”
Rain’s breath caught at the profanity as she took a step back, then another, her wedding skirts dragging over the grass, diamonds whispering against gravel.
“What papers?” she demanded weakly. “Who are you?”
At that, the shorter man finally looked at the princess properly. His eyes were a cold, startling blue, and whatever irritation had been in them soured at once into something worse.
“Oh, lovely,” Two muttered. “You’ve been chatting. Five will be thrilled.”
“We can’t leave empty-handed.” Ves said, quiet but warning.
“Bollocks to that,” Two snapped impatiently. “We can leave alive, which I’m rather attached to, cheers.” His icy gaze flicked back to Rain. “Tell me you haven’t told her anything.”
“I haven’t,” Ves murmured as if he were ashamed.
“Good. Then we’re leaving.”
“We don’t have what we came for.”
“We got half of it.”
“Half will not be enough.”
“Half’s better than getting dragged before the fucking inquisitors.”
Rain backed another step from both of them. Something ugly and immediate moved through the air between the two men. Planning. Disagreement. Urgency.
The inquisitors of the Feathered Host were nothing like the royal soldiers. They had honour. They answered to captains, captains answered to generals, and generals still answered to the Crown. However, the inquisitors answered only to the Church. They questioned the enemies of the Host beneath the Citadel, in rooms where even noble status couldn’t guarantee mercy. They were said to know how to separate the soul from the flesh without killing either.
“Ves,” Two said tightly, stepping closer. “Listen to me for once in your life and stop making this worse. Please.”
But Ves didn’t even look at him when he answered.
“We should take her with us.”
Rain felt the bottom fall out of the world. “What?”
“Oh, absolutely fucking not,” Two snapped at once. He turned fully to Ves now, fury all over him. “We’re not kidnapping the bride from her own bloody wedding, you mad bastard.”
Rain didn’t think. She only moved.
Her hand gathered her skirts as she turned to run. She could still hear the feast from here, still see the distant glow of lanterns through the rose trellis, still picture the guards at the entrance to the garden. One scream. That was all she needed. One scream and the guards would return her to the Citadel, to her father, to Sodom, to the wedding bed waiting upstairs.
Rain’s breath caught on the thought and for one cursed heartbeat, she hesitated. And that tiny heartbeat doomed her because Ves was on her before the cry fully left her throat. His hand clamped over her mouth, swallowing the scream into a muffled, frantic sound. His other arm caught her round the middle and hauled her back against him.
Rain’s whole body convulsed in panic. She thrashed with everything she had. Her nails raked his wrist. Her veil slipped sideways. Diamonds flashed wild in the dark. She kicked backward and felt her heel glance off his shin.
Two swore viciously. “You stupid, sentimental lunatic—”
“Help me,” Ves hissed.
“Fuck no,” Two scoffed.
“If we leave her here, we leave with nothing.”
“If we take her, we die.”
Rain bit hard into Ves’s palm and he immediately made a rough sound through his teeth. His hand slipped just enough for air to get in.
“Gua—”
Two lunged with a curse. His hand caught her wrist and yanked it so sharply that pain shot up her arm. Before she could hit at any of them again, Two had twisted her arm behind her back, pinning it there hard enough to make her gasp.
“Shit,” he snarled. “Shit, shit—for fuck’s sake, Vessel—”
Rain bucked against them, half blinded by terror now as Ves’s hand crushed into her lips. The scent of crushed roses rose sick and sweet around her. Her shoes slid on the gravel. Her heart was battering itself to pieces.
Two got his face close to hers then, voice low and furious and frighteningly steady despite the panic underneath it as his cold gaze snapped to Ves. “If we die because of your decision, I’m gonna piss on your fucking corpse, swear down.”
As Princess of Arcadia, Rain had never fought a grown man in her life. Never mind two. The realisation of that came over her all at once and humiliatingly late.
Two had her arms twisted behind her back, hard enough that her shoulder burned, while Ves’s hand crushed over her mouth and half her jaw, his long painted fingers biting into her cheeks until the bones ached. Her lungs ached and ached and ached for a scream that wouldn’t come properly. Panic rose so fast it turned her hollow.
She twisted, kicked, nearly tore herself loose once when Two’s grip slipped for half a breath, but the rose bushes along the path hid the struggle from the guards at the arch. Silk snagged on thorns. A spray of red roses tore loose and scattered over the gravel. One of them—Two, perhaps—caught in her veil and ripped it half by accident.
Then the guards finally shifted at the archway.
Rain saw it happen through a blur of tears and loosened hair. One of them straightened, head turning slightly, as if some spell had broken. Ves moved at once, hauling Rain deeper behind the drooping body of the willow, his own frame turning to shield the shine of her skirts and jewels. She stumbled with him, choking on air and terror, her shoes slipping in the wet grass.
One of the guards looked toward the fountain.
“Your Highness?” he called.
Hope hit her so hard it hurt.
Rain tried to scream again. She forced her jaw open against Ves’s palm, made a tiny, broken sound, and for one glorious, desperate instant she thought she might manage it—
—but Ves’s hand tightened, just enough, and the sound died wet against his skin.
A faint shimmer clung to the lantern light around the guards, so subtle Rain must have missed it before. She realised then, that the air tasted metallic. Bitter. Old.
Magic.
Then, from somewhere above them, a pebble dropped onto the path near the opposite hedge. Then another. The guards turned sharply towards the noise.
A cat yowled in the darkness.
One of them snorted. “Bloody palace cats.”
The other did not sound convinced. “Still, we should—”
He was cut off by the great wedding chorus, sudden and thunderous, flooding the garden with the anthem of Arcadia. Voices swelled through the night, rich and ceremonial, devout enough to drown smaller things. Rain had heard that anthem all her life. Heard it at births, funerals, victories, feast days. She had never hated it until now.
Ves seized the moment instantly and began dragging her backwards.
Rain thrashed like a trapped animal, shoes skidding in the damp grass, her ribs already aching from how hard she was twisting. The torn remains of her veil blinded her. Pins ripped loose somewhere in the struggle and her hair began to come down in painful strands. She clawed at Ves’s hand until black paint smeared beneath her nails. She drove her elbow back and caught him in the ribs hard enough to feel the impact jolt through him.
He made a rough sound through his nose, more irritation than pain. Rain hated him for that. She hated his calm. Hated the gentleness of his voice from minutes before. Hated that she had told him truths she had never once spoken aloud, only for him to betray her.
Two glanced at the torn veil still hanging from one fist and for one absurd second, something like guilt crossed his voice.
“Sorry, Princess.”
Then his gaze dropped to the diamonds sewn into the lace.
He paused. “Actually—”
“Two,” Ves said sharply. “We don’t have time for this.”
“What?” Two hissed back. “It’s evidence if we leave it, and we’re already nicking the bride. I’m not also leaving a fortune in a hedge like some charitable fucking idiot.”
He bundled the torn veil under one arm and seized Rain again. She tried to stamp on his foot. Missed. Tried again. Two didn’t seem to care about her failed attempts.
They moved through the garden by a route Rain had never noticed before.
That frightened her nearly as much as the abduction itself. She was the princess, she knew the Citadel. Or thought she did. Rain had lived within its walls her entire life. She knew the grand staircases of the royal wing, the painted galleries, the chapel passages, the terrace walks, the balconies, the long hallway that lead to the summer apartments. She even knew the servants’ ways she had been forbidden to use, but memorised anyway. And yet Ves and Two dragged her through spaces she had never known existed, along the rear of the lemon trees in the glass house, where the warm surface reflected nothing back but leaves and darkness.
Rain realised then, that these were not random entertainers making desperate decisions on the fly. They moved with the confidence of prior planning. How did a band of masked musicians know the Citadel like this? How did they pull this off?
They only stopped when patrols passed. Once, Ves pressed Rain behind a statue while three Feathered Host initiates hurried past them, carrying trays of empty wine cups. The boys were laughing breathlessly over some noblewoman who had fainted inside. One mimed the fall so badly the others almost dropped their tray.
They didn’t see Rain at all.
But how could they not? She was their princess, Rain thought furiously. She was their future queen. Their duty. Their failure, if she vanished. At the service yard, the plan of her abductors became painfully clear for the princess too, because from somewhere near the stables came a crash, followed by a man shouting, “Fire!”
Servants burst from one door. Guards ran from another.
Smoke drifted overhead, thick and grey, but wrong somehow, smelling of spoiled herbs rather than true flame. The commotion dragged attention from the stable and the upper terraces alike. Bells began ringing somewhere. Horses stamped and snorted in alarm.
“Shit,” Two muttered, peering through the haze. “Three’s overdone it, as usual. Improvisation is fucking contagious in this family.”
“It will cover us, though,” Ves whispered back.
“It will cover our corpses if the horses panic and kick someone’s head in.”
Rain twisted savagely, trying to dig her heels into the gravel.
Ves bent close to her ear. “Please,” he said, low enough that only she could hear. “Don’t make me carry you.”
She kicked at him with everything she had left.
He sighed. Actually sighed. Then he lifted her. Rain gave a muffled cry of outrage and terror as the world tipped sickeningly sideways. Two was on her instantly, winding the torn strip of her own veil round her mouth and knotting it hard behind her head before she could manage so much as a breath. Ves hoisted her over his shoulder with humiliating ease, one arm locked firm behind her knees, the other bracing her securely.
Rain couldn’t do anything except choke into silk and breathe in terrified little bursts through her nose. Her legs kicked in the air like a child’s. Blood rushed to her head. Smoke thickened. Shouts echoed across the yard. A bell clanged again and again and again.
They crossed the yard and slipped into the shadow of the stables.
The smell hit her first. Hay. Horse sweat. Damp leather. The rich smell of piss of a place long lived in by animals and men. It flooded her senses, mixed with the lingering smoke until her stomach turned. Rain beat both fists against Ves’s back but he barely seemed to feel it.
The stable storage room opened onto the wider yard beyond, lit by two lanterns and the cold blue wash of moonlight through the high windows. Horses shifted uneasily in their stalls, ears pinned and eyes rolling white. A simple carriage stood near the service doors, its wheels thick with mud. Some travelling guild’s crest had been painted on the side, respectable enough at first glance to pass without comment. Instrument cases were stacked behind it. Drums. String cases. Rolled carpets. Wooden trunks bound in iron.
Rain’s heart gave one long, sickening drop.
Because there were people waiting beside it.
Two men and a woman. At first they were only shapes in the gloom. Then the lantern light caught them properly, and Rain recognised the men from the stage.
The lanky one was waiting by the carriage, lounged against it with a kind of theatrical delight that seemed to vibrate through his entire body, all sharp joints and twitching wicked energy. His mask had been knocked slightly aside, as if even the disguise bored him, and his painted fingers kept tapping against the knife at his belt in a restless little rhythm.
The shorter one stood beside the horses. He was broader through the shoulders than the others. He moved with efficient grace, every move of his elegant, checking buckles and straps, murmuring quietly to the horses as they stamped and tossed their heads at the smell of smoke. When Ves came in carrying Rain like a sack of potatoes, he was the first to look up.
The woman stood between them and the carriage.
She was dressed like a stable boy in rough brown trousers, boots, and a linen shirt beneath a groom’s vest, though there was nothing manly about her, not really. A cap had tried and failed to hide her hair. Several strands had escaped and curled near the base of her neck. She wasn’t adorned like the court women, yet there was a magnetic presence to her, a pressure like the moment before lightning. Seeing her struck Rain harder than anyone else in the room.
For one maddening second the princess forgot to struggle.
Her frightened mind reached for the only word it knew.
Holy.
“Fuck no,” the woman snapped. “No. No, absolutely not. Ves, what have you done?”
At the very same moment the lanky man straightened, sickening joy bursting out of him like laughter. “No fucking way,” he said. “You kidnapped the bride. From her own wedding.” He sounded as though all his birthdays had arrived at once. “Oh, mate, that’s low, even for my standards, and that’s saying something.”
“Shut up,” Two snapped, dragging the stable door partly closed behind them. “Help.”
“Put her down,” the woman ordered.
Rain felt Ves tense beneath her before he lowered her to her feet.
Her knees nearly gave. The silk gag cut into the corners of her mouth as she looked around. Her hair was half falling down. Her shoulder burned where Two had twisted it. She staggered the moment Ves let go and would have hit the straw if he hadn’t caught her elbow again.
The woman saw that and something murderous crossed her face.
“Don’t you fucking touch her.”
“Love—” Ves began.
“What the actual fuck is wrong with you?” she snapped.
The lanky man let out a soft whistle. “Oh, you’re dead, brother.”
She rounded on him so fast he actually leaned back.
“Not. Now.”
“I’m only saying—”
“Three, shut the fuck up. I’m serious.”
The man named Three lifted both hands in mock surrender, though the grin never left him. If anything, it widened beneath his crooked mask. He looked like this was the most entertaining catastrophe of his entire life, his eyes following the woman joyfully.
The fourth man by the horses turned then, gaze moving from the woman to Ves to the stable doors. When he spoke, his voice was low, calm, and clean enough to cut through the chaos.
“We don’t have time for this shit.”
“Cheers, Four,” Two barked, hurrying back into the room. “Get the horses ready. Now.”
Four didn’t answer, only moved, though his eyes lingered once on the woman in their group before he turned back to the carriage tack.
The woman didn’t move from where she stood, staring at the princess with an expression so complicated it took Rain a moment to understand it. Horror. Sympathy. Rage. Urgency. And beneath all of it, something worse, similar to recognition. She seemed somehow illuminated from within, as if even moonlight favoured her.
Rain’s breathing turned shallow again as she watched her.
Who in the Host’s name were these people?
The woman stepped closer. “What are you doing?” she demanded, looking up at Ves. “Don’t even try to rationalise this. Tell me what the fuck you’re doing, like actually.”
“Fixing a mistake,” Ves answered simply.
She laughed once in disbelief, harsh and joyless as she clicked her tongue. “By committing treason? Oh, don’t be clever with me now.”
Rain made a desperate sound behind the gag and tried to wrench herself loose again, but Two caught her wrists at once. She recoiled from him with a panicked gasp.
“Five—”
“Untie her right now, Vessel. I’m not asking, I’m telling you.” Five’s voice sharpened enough that one of the horses jerked in its stall. “You promised me. You fucking promised me that nothing will happen. You said we were getting in, getting what we came for, and getting out. So let her go, right now.”
Ves turned sharply. “We cannot do that, beloved.”
“We can, actually,” Four said. “We leave through the smoke. Ditch the carriage. Split before the gates close. The papers bought us enough time to vanish if we move now.”
Rain made a muffled sound of agreement, jerking against Ves’s grip but Two came forward with a length of rope taken from a saddle hook. She lurched backwards so hard she nearly tore her arms from his grasp. A broken noise forced itself out behind the gag. Her chest seized.
Five stepped between them instantly.
“Don’t you fucking dare.”
Two stopped. Rain couldn’t see his whole expression beneath the mask, but she saw enough. The change in him. The hesitation. The way he looked at the woman before him was not the way he looked at the others. Not the way any of them looked at each other, exactly.
“Move, sweetheart,” he said, and though his tone was rough, there was something else under it. Pleading, maybe. “Ivy’s right. We really don’t have time for this.”
Five’s jaw tightened. “I said no.”
Three flung one hand toward the stable doors. “Right, brilliant, love the moral stand, really moving stuff, but the inquisitors are going to be on us any second and I’d rather not have this argument with a spear through my fucking arse. Remember them, pet? The inquisitors.”
Rain blinked through tears.
Sweetheart. Pet. Love.
Her gaze flew helplessly from one to the other. What was this woman to them? The confusion hit so hard it almost displaced the fear in Rain for a second. There was anger between them, yes. Disagreement too, plain as day, sharp enough to cut. However, there was something else beneath it, and that was what turned her stomach. Something intimate in the way they moved around one another. The looks. The interruptions. The ease of old habits. The instinctive way they watched each other even while arguing. The care tucked inside the bickering, so normal for them it barely needed thinking.
It was wrong.
Deeply, nauseatingly wrong.
Rain looked at Five and then at the men orbiting her and felt her stomach turn. Were they all hers? Was she theirs? The thought hit her like filth. Rain already felt disgusted by one man’s claim over her. The idea of belonging to several, of being passed hand to hand made bile rise hot in her throat. She gagged around the silk, nearly choking on it as fresh tears spilled fresh down her face. These people were lunatics. That much, at least, was clear.
Ves said then, “Tie her hands only. She might be the only leverage we have now.”
Five stared at him.
“Leverage,” she repeated, like the word itself offended her.
Something passed between them then. Rain clocked it even through panic. Five wasn’t angry because she feared Ves, but because she loved him enough to expect better. And Vessel stood like a man who knew he deserved the fury and still believed the sin necessary.
“If you were me,” Ves said, and his voice had lost all its earlier silk, “what would you have done, love? Left her in there? She’s my descendant.”
The words landed in the stable like a blade dropped on stone.
Even the mule in the far stall seemed to go quiet.
Rain stopped fighting. For one disbelieving second she could do nothing but stare at Vessel. Then outrage tore through the fear and Rain made a strangled, furious noise behind the gag, lunging forward so suddenly that Two had to catch her by the shoulders.
Descendant? His descendant?
Yeah, right.
The claim was so offensive and so utterly absurd it nearly burned the terror out of her. Rain knew the line of House Veridian better than she knew half the prayers of the Host. She knew the marriages, the alliances, the acknowledged bastards, and even the ones quietly buried in account books and whispered gossip. She knew the cousins drowned at sea, the aunts sealed into the crypt at Windward, the dead healers and child brides stretching back generations.
Blood was inheritance. Blood was destiny.
Vessel was lying. He had to be.
Five looked as though the admission had made everything worse rather than better.
“Oh, fuck you,” she hissed at Ves. “There it is. There’s that bloody saviour complex of yours kicking in again. You swore to me this wouldn’t interfere with the plan. You fucking swore to me she wouldn’t mess with your head. And yet, here we are, just like I feared.”
Rain stared from one to the other, chest rising too fast, the silk at her mouth damp with tears and spit. Four let out a long and deep sigh as if he were fed up with this whole ordeal. Three had gone oddly still, long arms folded now, watching Ves rather than Five for once. Two kept glancing toward the yard gates and the stable arch. With a fresh stab of terror Rain realised he was the only one truly measuring how near danger was.
But Five wasn’t done.
“I thought you’d learned, Ves,” she stomped like a child. “I genuinely did. I thought after all the shit we’ve been through, after the dream world, after our grand fucking adventures with that motherfucker Sleep, you’d finally got it through your thick skull that blaming yourself for every bloody thing under the sun doesn’t help anyone.”
Ves’s posture changed by a fraction. Rain wouldn’t have seen it had she not been staring so hard. His shoulders went tighter. His silence turned inward.
“That’s not what this is,” he murmured.
Five scoffed, harsh and unbelieving.
“No?” She spread one hand toward Rain. “Your fucking descendant is the heir to Arcadia, oh, and the newly wedded wife of the High Priest of that disgusting Church. If she vanishes, they won’t just search the roads, Ves. Gods no, they’ll turn the whole bloody kingdom inside out. The inquisitors will start pulling servants apart finger by finger. They’ll question every guard, every stable hand, every drunk fool who looked our way tonight. They’ll flay confessions out of mortals who don’t even know what they saw. Do you truly want that on us because you felt responsible for a complete fucking stranger?”
Rain, bound and gagged and shaking in her wedding gown, didn’t know whether to feel more insulted by being called a complete fucking stranger as the only Princess of Arcadia or more horrified that no one in the stable had disputed any of it.
“She wasn’t safe there,” Ves said, and there was iron in the softness now. “You know that.”
“Neither are we,” Five shot back, “if you keep doing shit like this.”
Ves dragged in a slow breath through his nose, and Rain could feel his patience fraying by the second. “Come off it, love. Please. You know what they are. You know what they do.”
“Yes,” Five snapped, scrubbing both hands down her face as if she could physically hold her temper in place. “I do know what they are. And I also know what we are, which is precisely why I’m not bloody happy about this.”
Four, still at the horses, tied off the final strap with swift economical movements and finally looked up.
“Five’s right,” he stated clearly.
The stable seemed to still around the words.
Ves turned to him. “Ivy—”
“No.” Four’s tone stayed level, but the refusal in it was absolute. “She’s right. We had a narrow window and an even narrower purpose. This destroys both. Now, we’re fucked.”
Three, however, tilted his head and gave a shameless little shrug. “To be fair, the princess really is Ves’s relative in a thoroughly fucked up way. I wouldn’t have left you there, pet, if I’d had the choice. Or any of you, if that’s any fucking consolation. So let’s give our martyr some grace, yeah?”
Five grimaced. “So you’re siding with him? Really, Three? Really?”
“I’m saying he’s not wrong to hate the outcome,” Three stated, flicking a glance at Rain before looking back to Ves. “Even if the method is an absolute load of shite.”
“Thrilled we’ve reached that consensus,” Two muttered annoyedly. “Now listen to me,” he went on, his voice low, deadly calm in a way that frightened Rain more than shouting would have. “You can all have the family row later, when we’re not standing in the bloody stable court of the Citadel with the kidnapped bride in the middle of it. I don’t care whose side anyone’s on, alright? You all get one argument, and then we decide whether we’re taking her, leaving her, or slitting our own throats and saving the inquisitors the fucking trouble.”
Two stepped between them all then.
“We can debate morality later. Right now, decision.”
Rain knew it then, that her life was hanging by a single fraying thread, and she was already in their hands. No, not hands. Claws. Teeth. Jaws. She was in the palm of five animals who only wore the shape of humanity. They were decadent, filthy, and profoundly unholy barbarians. They lay with one another like a den of beasts, calling each other family, tangled together like mere animals.
Four’s head turned towards the back wall before anyone else could speak.
“Shit,” he hissed. “Outer patrol in the lane.”
For a second, everyone went still.
Rain heard it then too. Boots on stone. Muffled voices drawing nearer.
Three moved first. He sprang to the carriage and yanked open the doors. Inside, chests were stacked on top of each other. One larger trunk stood open, and beneath the false lining was a cramped hidden space, only just big enough to force a body into.
Rain understood at once.
Terror hit so hard it made her stomach lurch.
She fought so hard that one of the diamond pins tore from her hair and fell into the straw. She tore at Two’s grip, bucked, twisted, nearly got an elbow free. Her breath came hot and ragged through the gag, the silk at her mouth soaked through but Rain tried to scream anyway. The sound came back into her own face, wet and useless.
Outside, one of the guards said, “Smoke started here.”
Another answered, “Check the stable.”
“Now,” Two hissed.
Four or Ivy or whatever his name was, snatched up a folded horse blanket and climbed to the front seat. Three reached for Rain’s shoulders, ready to manhandle her into the false compartment, but Five slapped his hands away with a crack.
“I will sit with her,” she hissed.
Two frowned. “Five—”
“I said I will sit with her.”
There was no arguing with that voice.
For one sharp second, it looked as if Five might strike the next person who challenged her. Instead she made a strangled noise of disgust and climbed into the rear of the carriage herself, folding herself among the instrument cases to make room.
Rain thrashed harder but it didn’t matter. She was shoved into the hidden space anyway. Her shoulder slammed against the wood and her knees buckled. She cried into the gag and heard the sound come back to her, hot and trapped and shameful. Three climbed in after them, long limbs folding up with unnatural ease into the remaining space. Two followed, settling by the rear panel with one ear turned to the world outside. Five knelt near Rain, visibly furious and unwilling to be anywhere else now that the princess had been dragged into this.
Up front, Ivy gathered the reins.
Ves vaulted onto the bench beside him.
Rain heard the horses stamp, bits jangling, leather pulling taut. Then somebody tied her to an iron ring fixed into the rear wall of the carriage. The rope bit at once.
Five winced. “I know. I know. I’m sorry.”
Rain wanted to spit in her face.
“She doesn’t care, pet,” Three murmured, settling back against a crate. “I mean, would you? I fucking wouldn’t, that’s for sure.”
Suddenly, the carriage jolted into motion. Rain was flung sideways so hard against the timber wall that pain instantly shot down her arm. A muffled cry tore from her throat. The horses, already spooked from the smoke and the argument, broke into a quicker step.
Outside, the stable doors opened.
Voices. Close now. Too close. Rain twisted wildly and tried to kick the instrument cases hard enough to make noise. Three saw it coming and caught her ankle.
“No, don’t do that,” he cooed, and for the first time there was no mockery in him at all. Only warning. “If you force my hand, Princess, I’ll cut a finger off, and none of us wants that. Be a good girl, yeah? Sit fucking still.”
Rain went really still at that.
She bowed over her legs and prayed. First to the Feathered Host, out of habit and terror and the drowning instinct of someone who had never learned what else to do. Then, with shame burning hot through her, to the old gods too. To the Espera. To Mourn. To the Hollow Star. To anything that might still be listening.
Let someone see.
Let someone hear.
Let her father’s men tear open the doors and drag these lunatics out by the throat like the animals they were, right before the inquisitors and ask them under knives what madness had brought them into her life.
But the wheels kept turning. No miracle came.
But then—
“You there,” a guard barked outside. “Halt. Papers.”
The carriage stopped so sharply Rain’s heart leapt into her mouth.
Inside, Two raised one finger to his mask, warning her. Three grinned in the dark like a man who lived for the moment death leaned close enough to kiss him. Five’s hands hovered near Rain’s shoulder, but didn’t touch her, she only listened.
From the front came Ves’s voice, transformed into something brighter. “Easy, mate. Horses are skittish from the smoke. We were told to clear the yard before the whole stable goes up.”
“Papers,” the guard repeated.
Ivy answered this time, smooth and mild. “Already showed them at the inner gate.”
“Show them again.”
Leather creaked. Paper unfolded.
Rain heard the guard mutter. “Southern Conservatory?”
“That’s us,” Ves hummed, feigning lightness. “We’re musicians.”
The guard outside murmured to someone else.
Rain stopped breathing. If she could make one sound—
Another voice said, “Seal looks odd.”
Rain’s heart leapt. This was it. This was rescue.
This was the Host answering. Her father’s guards. Her father’s walls. Her father’s kingdom.
And then, as quick as lightning, another thought followed. Sodom waiting inside the Citadel. Hope twisted into something sick and unrecognisable. Rain shut her eyes and for one mad, impossible moment, she didn’t know whom she wanted to win.
Outside, Four laughed softly. “Odd? That’s because your lantern’s shit.”
Silence.
The guard said, “What did you say?”
Ves cut in at once, warm as honey and twice as slippery. “My companion said the weather’s shit. Wind keeps knocking the light about, doesn’t it? Sorry, friend. Long night, am I right? Wedding crowd. Noble bastards wanting sad songs while they stuff themselves with sugared birds. Does a man’s head in, you know.”
A beat. Then, unexpectedly, the guard laughed.
“Tell me about it. Been stood here since noon.”
Another guard walked around the carriage. Rain heard his boots crunch through straw outside the rear doors. He stopped right there. Two’s hand moved, slow as thought, to the knife at his belt, mirroring Three’s earlier movement. Five’s eyes flashed at him in warning.
Two mouthed, What?
Then suddenly, the guard outside said, “Go on, then. Off with you before the next patrol clogs the lower road.”
The wheels lurched into motion again. Rain counted the turns by feel because it was the only thing she could do. Out of the stable yard. Left over cobbles. Pause at the inner gate. Voices. Papers again. Laughter from the city beyond. The salty air growing stronger. Another gate. A longer pause. Her pulse beating so hard she thought the whole carriage must hear it.
Two leaned close to her. “Not a sound.”
Rain glared at him.
The final gate opened with a groan so deep it seemed to come from the bones of Windward itself. Then the carriage passed out of the Citadel. Rain felt it.
Then the city opened in a blaze of festival light, all of Windward roaring with joy for a bride who was no longer there. Fireworks burst over the rooftops, scattering gold and ruby across the Endless Sea. Bells rang. Drums rolled. Somewhere, people were singing blessings for her marriage, her fertility, her eternal union with the Church. The whole city was celebrating her while she was carried away like a mere cow, as if she wasn’t the heir of Arcadia.
Rain bowed her head and sobbed again. Her shoulders shook. The tiny diamonds still caught in her hair trembled with every breath. Five watched her with an expression so full of guilt it looked dangerously close to grief.
After a while, even Three seemed to find the silence uncomfortable.
“Well,” he muttered under his breath, “that went better than expected.”
Two turned and stared at him.
Three spread his hands. “What? We’re not dead.”
“Lovely,” Two said flatly. “Fantastic. We’ve just abducted the heir to Arcadia.”
Five’s voice came out like ice over glass. “Don’t talk as if this is funny.”
“It is a little funny,” Three cooed. “In the grand scheme of things.”
Five looked ready to slap him, then let out a long and deep breath.
“Just… stop talking. Please.”
Three obeyed, which told Rain more about Five than any endearment had.
Two peeled back a corner of the canvas and glanced through a slit in the carriage wall, likely speaking to Ves and Ivy at the front.
“We’ve got one patrol behind, but the city crowd’s thick,” he said. “If we take the fishmarket road, we can switch horses and dump the carriage before dawn.”
“When we stop,” Five said immediately, “the gag comes off.”
Two scoffed. “We’ll decide whether she can be trusted not to bring every patrol between here and the fucking hills down on us.”
“She’s terrified,” Five complained.
“She should be,” Two pointed out. “We kidnapped her.”
“Two!”
He turned on her at once. “We can’t bloody coddle her, sweetheart. She’s one fucking scream away from putting every soldier in Windward on our arses.”
Five held his stare. “Alright, then we should let her go in the city.”
“And then what?” Two sighed, clearly getting bored of Five childish tactics. “She runs to the first guard she sees, tells them five lunatic pinched her from the royal wedding, and every gate in Windward slams shut before we reach the lower road. Yeah, not a chance.”
“I still don’t like this,” Five sulked, pushing Three away when he wanted to pull her close by her shoulders. “No, not now. I’m fucking mad at all of you.”
The princess felt angry too.
Rain wanted to demand right then and there what kind of people planned a thing like this at all. What kind of choice led to abducting a princess from her own wedding and then arguing over it like she was the inconvenience and not the fact that they took her from her home by force. Instead she could only breathe through cloth and cry.
Either these five were brazen criminals with the arrogance to lie about anything, or they were something worse, dragged loose from older and darker corners of the realm of Arcadia. False papers. Hidden passages. Probably stolen horses. And old magic.
A perfect plan wrecked by one decision under a willow tree.
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“The shore is infinite because grief is. Because duty is. Because blood remembers what the body begs to forget. But the shore kept going. So did I.”