Vows Written In Blood
840 Words
The wedding was not a celebration.
It was a declaration of war, an alliance sealed in silk and steel.
The cathedral was a fortress—vaulted ceilings and stained-glass windows depicting saints who had no place here. Ivy stood at the center, her spine straight, her face unreadable. Her dress was custom-stitched obsidian, long-sleeved, and dagger-lined in its elegance. It whispered when she walked, pooling around her like a shadow reborn.
No music played.
Instead, a low hum of silence hung over the pews, filled with De Rossi loyalists, allies, and a few enemies too careful to refuse an invitation. Ivy could feel their stares slicing across her skin, gauging, calculating. Not one soul in attendance believed this wedding was built on love. They knew it was forged from necessity and blood.
At the altar stood Luca, dark and commanding. He wore a suit so sharp it could cut glass, a black tie tucked into his vest. No boutonniere. No smile. Just the look of a man who was about to conquer—not take a wife.
As Ivy approached, arm-in-arm with one of Luca’s lieutenants—her symbolic escort since her own family had long abandoned her—she noticed that Luca’s gaze didn’t waver.
He didn’t look at her like a bride.
He looked at her like an equal.
The priest, old and shriveled like parchment, began the rites in Latin. Ivy understood little of the language, but she caught fragments—words like Sacramentum and obedient, ritual terms twisted into promises of loyalty and power.
“I vow to shield you from my enemies,” Luca said, his voice cutting through the hush. “To teach you to command, to fight, to rule beside me. To make you a queen feared even by devils.”
He slipped no ring on her finger. The blood ring already lived there, cold and heavy, seared into her skin like a brand.
Ivy lifted her chin.
“I vow to stand with you,” she said, her voice steady. “To never look away from the fire. To protect what’s mine—even if it means bleeding for it.”
Her words weren’t poetry.
They were steel.
The priest muttered a final blessing. No one bowed their heads. No one prayed.
And then the doors at the back of the cathedral groaned open.
Two guards dragged in a man—bloodied, bound, gagged. His shirt was stained red. He collapsed onto the marble floor at their feet, coughing through the cloth tied around his mouth.
Ivy’s breath caught.
Luca turned to her, voice low. “This man poisoned a bottle intended for me. He thought he could strike before the wedding.”
“Is this a message?” she asked.
“No,” he replied. “It’s a gift.”
Gasps echoed softly. But most of the guests didn’t blink. They were used to executions. To them, this was theatre.
“You want me to kill him,” Ivy said quietly.
“I want you to claim your throne.”
Luca drew a pistol from inside his jacket and offered it to her, handle-first. It was silver-plated, engraved with the same serpent-and-dagger crest as the blood ring. A family heirloom of death.
The man on the floor whimpered.
Ivy stepped closer. She saw his eyes—terrified, human. A part of her recoiled. She had never killed before.
But if she didn’t pull the trigger, this entire empire would see her as weak. And weakness didn’t live long in the De Rossi world.
Her hand closed around the gun.
The metal was cold, but it no longer frightened her.
She knelt, just enough to meet the man’s gaze. “If you wanted him dead, you should’ve aimed better.”
And then she stood, pressed the barrel to his temple, and fired.
The shot echoed like a drumbeat in a tomb.
Silence followed.
Ivy didn’t tremble. She turned back toward Luca and handed him the pistol with steady fingers. Her heart was a thunderstorm beneath her chest—but not a crack showed on her face.
Luca looked at her for a long moment.
Not with pity. Not with pride.
With understanding.
“You’re ready,” he said.
She nodded once. “I was born ready. You just gave me a stage.”
They walked out of the cathedral not as husband and wife—but as two kings of the underworld. Bound not by vows spoken aloud, but by the silence that followed violence.
Outside, the city of Florence burned orange in the evening sun.
The guests filed out, murmuring, nodding, already spinning tales. The bride had pulled the trigger. The bride had looked death in the face and didn’t blink.
Inside the limo, Ivy sat across from Luca. He poured them both a glass of bourbon.
“Any regrets?” he asked.
She met his gaze. “Only that he didn’t beg harder.”
A slow, dangerous smile crept across his lips.
And just like that, they toasted to blood.
- Writer
