A Bride for the Wrong Brother

Chapter Eleven: The Rite

(Alondra's POV)

I woke to the sound of metal.

A soft slow clink, like a coin being turned over in someone's hand. My eyes opened to a ceiling of dark wood beams. A heavy chandelier hanging from a black iron chain. The bedposts I was tied to were tall and carved at the tops.

I was not in the same room anymore.

I tried to lift my left hand. It would not lift. The chain at my wrist drew tight against the post above my head and pulled me back down. My other arm lay loose against the silk sheet that had been thrown across my lower half. My right cheek throbbed in a slow heavy pulse where his palm had landed. The taste of dried blood sat at the corner of my mouth.

This was his bed.

I did not have to be told.

The whole room smelled like him. That same dark clean scent from the staircase, pine and smoke and something colder underneath. The pillows. The sheets. The air itself. He had not slept here. I could tell from the coldness of the silk beside me. Yet every part of this room knew his body the way I had only known it in glimpses.

I had been left here alone for a long time.

The light through the tall window had moved. By the angle of it, I could tell I had lost the morning and most of the afternoon too. My throat was a closed dry channel. My tongue felt too large for my mouth. At some point in the night my stomach had stopped hurting and moved on to a quiet hollow ache that was somehow worse. I had not had water or anything else since Iker died.

The clink came again.

Turning my head slowly, I saw a young woman standing at the foot of the bed holding a pair of long iron scissors in her right hand and a folded bundle of black cloth in her left. She was small. Maybe a year or two older than me. Brown skin, dark hair pulled back tight against her scalp, eyes that did not match the rest of her face. Soft eyes.

At the sight of me awake, she lowered the scissors against her thigh.

"Señora."

Her voice was low. Careful.

"It is time."

I did not ask for what.

I had no idea what was going on.

Crossing to the side of the bed, she set the bundle down on the silk and placed the scissors beside it. Then she reached into the small basin she had brought with her, the one I had not noticed sitting on the floor, and lifted out a thin white cloth dripping with water. She wrung it once before bringing it to my face.

Gently, she wiped the dried blood from the corner of my mouth.

No pressure touched the bruise on my cheek.

"I have to dress you," she whispered. "Forgive me, Señora."

From the pocket of her apron she pulled a small brass key and unlocked the chain around my wrist. The metal fell away with a dull sound. My arm remained where it was. The muscle had gone past soreness into something numb that I did not trust. Instead of rushing me, she simply waited for me to sit up on my own.

When I could not, careful hands helped me.

The silk sheet was gathered around my body before she lifted it away and raised the black dress over my head, sliding it down my arms with the kind of quiet practice that came from dressing women too broken to move. Rough wool scratched against my skin. Heavy fabric dragged over my body in places I did not have the strength to flinch from.

A black sash tightened low around my waist.

Her eyes never once touched my body.

"Now your hair, Señora."

I said nothing.

My long thick tail of hair was gathered gently into her left hand before the scissors lifted again. I closed my eyes. The coldness of the blades brushed my nape. Then the weight disappeared all at once, and the sudden lightness afterward made my neck feel like the neck of a stranger.

My eyes opened slowly.

She was holding my hair in both hands.

With surprising care, she lowered it into the basin beside the wet cloth as if it deserved a soft landing.

"It is the rite," she said quietly. "A widow does not enter the chapel of her dead husband with the hair he last touched. I am sorry, Señora."

Still, I did not cry.

That surprised me. I sat there with my severed hair lying in a basin at my feet and still no tears came. Perhaps there was nothing left to cry with. Or perhaps there was enough left, but it understood the day had not yet earned it.

From the floor she lifted a small silver cup.

The water inside was faintly grey.

"This too is the rite," came her quiet voice. "The water that washed his body. A wife takes it into herself so a piece of him goes with her into the rest of her days. Three sips, Señora. No more. No less."

My stomach turned.

A sound rose at the back of my throat, something that did not want to become words.

"Please," I whispered. "I cannot. Please. Do not make me."

Those soft eyes never left my face.

"I cannot leave this room until you do, Señora. And the men outside will come in if I do not. They have been told what to do if you refuse."

Steady hands held the cup between us.

Silence settled.

Then her voice lowered further, soft enough that even the silk sheet around my hips could not have heard it.

"I will be quick. Three small sips. Look at me. Not at the cup. Look at me, Señora."

So I looked at her.

Slowly, I parted my lips, and she tipped the cup toward them. The water touched my tongue. Cold. It tasted faintly of lavender and salt. I swallowed once. Then again. Then a third time. Before a fourth could come, she drew the cup away.

Without looking at it, she set the silver cup back on the floor.

The wet cloth brushed softly over my lips.

"You did well," she whispered. "It is over, Señora. It is over."

Carefully, she lifted me off the bed.

My legs held me. Barely.

Thin black slippers were slid onto my feet one after the other before a long black veil was wrapped over my shorn head. The front of it fell across my face like a soft dark curtain. Through the gauze the room became dim.

Before letting go, she squeezed my hand once.

Quickly. So quickly I might have missed it if I had been thinking about anything other than the coldness of her fingers against mine. The kind of touch one girl gives another when she wants the second girl to know she is not alone.

I lifted my eyes toward her face.

Already, she stood at the door.

Without looking back, she spoke softly.

"Come, Señora. They are waiting."

The door opened.

Two guards stood outside. Their eyes never lifted to my face. Instead, they fell into step behind us as the maid guided me down the long corridor toward the east wing where the chapel stood. The slap of my slippers against the marble sounded like nothing. The heavier strike of their shoes sounded like a verdict.

We walked for a long time.

Then turned a corner.

From a side doorway, a figure stepped out.

The maid stopped.

The guards stopped.

Slowly, I lifted my head beneath the veil.

Doña Carmen stood in the centre of the corridor.

Black clothed her from throat to ankle, deeper black than my own. Her hair had been pulled into a low knot at the nape of her neck without a single strand out of place, and her eyes carried the dry hard shine of glass polished too many times.

Across the marble she moved until she stood directly before me.

The veil shifted in the small breath of air that came with her. Through the dark gauze I could see her face blurred at the edges but clear in the centre. No slap waited for me this time. The grief I had seen on the day Iker died had been locked away beneath this still hard face, and what stood before me now was a woman who had decided exactly what she was going to do with the rest of her life and had only one final piece of business left to settle before she began.

She leaned close.

Cold slow breath slipped through the veil against my cheek.

"Today," she whispered, "you will say goodbye to my son."

I could not move.

"Tomorrow," she said, "you will start saying goodbye to yourself."

Her voice never lifted.

"One piece at a time, Alondra."

Straightening, she turned away, her black skirt whispering against the marble floor as she walked.

A hand touched the small of my back.

Soft.

Steady.

"Walk, Señora," the maid whispered. "Just walk. Do not let her see you stop."

At the end of the corridor the chapel doors stood open.

Through the veil, I could already see the candles burning inside.