Before the Vows

The champagne was sweet. Then it was bitter. Sera Wells noticed the difference only after the glass had slipped from her fingers and the whole honeymoon suite had begun to tilt, the crystal chandelier smearing into streaks of gold above her head. "Adrian?" Her voice came out as a whisper. "I don't feel well." "I know, my love." He caught her before she hit the floor. His arms were so warm. He lowered her onto the carpet as carefully as if she were made of glass and brushed the hair from her forehead, and for one wild, grateful second she thought he was going to call for help. "It's all right," he murmured. "Don't fight it." Cold crept up her arms. Her fingers stopped answering her. She tried to lift her hand to his face, the face she had loved for three years, and could not. "Why?" she breathed. Adrian smiled. It was the same smile he had worn at the altar, soft and shining and unbearably tender. "You were always so easy to love, Sera," he said gently. "And so easy to fool." The door opened. Heels clicked across the floor. "Is it done?" Vivian's voice. Her best friend's voice, high and trembling. The girl who had held her hair back at nineteen and sobbed at her wedding only hours ago. "Give it ten minutes," Adrian said, standing, and all the warmth went out of him at once. "Then we call the ambulance and cry. Weak heart, everyone will say. Poor girl. So young." "And the shares?" "Mine by morning." Sera lay on the carpet and watched the chandelier go dark, one crystal at a time. She had never been so cold. The last thing she felt was a single tear sliding sideways into her hair. I loved you, she thought. I loved you so much. Then there was nothing at all. Sera woke up gasping. Both hands flew to her throat. Warm skin. A pulse pounding beneath her fingertips. No cold. No dark. No glass. Sunlight spilled through ivory curtains. The ceiling above her bed was the one she had stared at every night of her childhood, with the little c***k near the chandelier that her father had promised to fix for twenty years. The room smelled of lavender and roses. Somewhere downstairs, a vacuum cleaner hummed. Across the room, her wedding dress hung from the wardrobe door, a pale ghost of silk and lace. Untouched. She grabbed her phone with shaking fingers. The date glared back at her. Friday. The day before the wedding. The day before she died. A sound escaped her, half laugh, half sob. She pressed her fist against her mouth and rocked forward, shaking. She turned over her hands, her wrists, the old scar on her knee. Every detail was exactly right. Every detail was alive. She stumbled to the mirror on unsteady legs. The girl in the glass was twenty-six, flushed and unbruised, eyes bright with sleep. She looked like someone who had never been hurt. She looked like someone who still believed in fairy tales. Sera stared into her own face and felt something hot and furious rise through the horror. That girl had died begging a man to love her. She would not do it twice. "Rise and shine, future Mrs. Blackwood!" The door swung open and Vivian Hale breezed in, balancing two paper cups of coffee and wearing the bright smile Sera had trusted for fifteen years. The last voice Sera had ever heard had been hers. "Whoa. You look like you've seen a ghost." Sera's eyes dropped, almost against her will, to Vivian's wrist. A thin gold bracelet caught the light. It had belonged to Sera's mother, and Sera had lent it to her only last week because she wanted her mother close on her wedding day. She's already wearing it. She's dressing up for my funeral. Her stomach heaved. She dug her nails into her palm until the sting steadied her, and then she did the hardest thing she had ever done. She smiled. "Bad dream," she said. "Just nerves." "Totally normal." Vivian dropped onto the bed and pulled her into a hug that smelled of jasmine. "Tomorrow you marry the man of your dreams. Nothing is going to go wrong." Sera made her arms close around the woman who had watched her die. It felt like hugging a warm, smiling blade. "No," she whispered. "Nothing will." A soft knock sounded on the doorframe. Adrian Blackwood leaned against it, dark hair tousled, tie not yet knotted, a single white rose in one hand. He looked like every dream she had ever had about love. "Good morning, my future wife." Her heart did something terrible. It leapt. Even now, even knowing, the girl who had loved him for three years rose up inside her like a drowning thing and reached for him. She remembered the night he proposed on the rooftop, hands shaking so hard he dropped the ring. She remembered the way he had held her at her mother's grave, silent, his coat around her shoulders, his chin resting against her hair. She remembered believing that no one had ever been so loved. All of it had been a performance. That was the cruelest part. He had been so good at it. He crossed the room and kissed her forehead, slow and gentle. His hands cradled her face. They were the same hands that had held out the glass. "I couldn't sleep," he murmured. "All I could think about was tomorrow." "Neither could I," Sera said. Her voice cracked in the middle. He took the c***k for happiness and smiled. "Only one more night, and you're mine." He pressed the rose into her fingers. "I'm going to spend my whole life making you happy," he said softly, and kissed her knuckles. Sera looked down at his bowed head. You will spend it, she thought. You will spend every day of it. His phone buzzed. He glanced at the screen, and his face changed for half a second, a flicker, cold and calculating, before the charm slid back into place. "Work. Give me a minute, love." He stepped into the hall and pulled the door almost shut. Almost. Sera held her breath. "No, she suspects nothing," Adrian said, low and flat, in a voice she had never heard him use with her. "After tomorrow night, the Wells shares are mine. Vivian will handle the rest." On the bed, Vivian studied her manicure. She did not look up. She did not look surprised. The first time, Sera had been too happy to notice any of it. She had spent this exact morning twirling in front of the mirror and texting her father pictures of flowers, so busy loving them that she never heard the footsteps of her own death crossing the hall. Now she heard everything. Something inside her went very quiet, and very cold, and very clear. She did not scream. She did not cry. She tucked the rose behind her ear, turned to Vivian with a dazzling, trusting smile, and said, "Help me pick my shoes for tonight?" "Of course!" Vivian beamed. Sera rose and let her best friend's chatter wash over her like water over stone. She was alive. She was twenty-six. She had one day, one night, and every memory of how this ended. This time, she thought, I'll let him say his vows. And then I'll make him regret every one.