The Dragon's Blood Bride

Chapter 4

"You're staring at the mountain again." Cassian's voice pulled me back before the palace gates had even finished opening. "You'll have plenty of time for sightseeing after the wedding, Lady Liora. Tonight you should be looking at your new home."

"I was curious what it's called."

"Kaelspire." He said it lightly, like a word that meant nothing. "Every kingdom has a mountain nobody climbs. Ours is simply taller than most."

I did not believe him, but the gates were fully open now, and there was no room left to press him before a steward in Veyrith blue stepped forward to greet us with a bow so deep it nearly touched the stones.

"Lady Liora of Thalmoor. His Majesty awaits you in the throne hall."

"Already?" I glanced at Bastian, still mounted behind me, his hand resting a little too close to his sword hilt for a formal welcome. "I've been traveling for eleven days. I hoped for a moment to change first."

"His Majesty was quite insistent," the steward said, and something in the careful way he said insistent told me refusing was not truly an option.

The throne hall was larger than every room in my father's keep combined, its ceiling painted with a mural I did not have time to study before King Alaric rose from his seat to greet me. He was older than I expected, softer somehow, a man who looked like he had spent more years wearing a crown than earning the right to it.

"So this is the girl who's going to feed my kingdom's newest alliance." He smiled, but it did not reach his eyes the way his wife's had not reached hers either. "Welcome, Lady Liora. I trust the journey wasn't too unkind."

"It was long, Your Majesty. But I'm here."

"You are. And you'll find Veyrith grateful for it, in ways I suspect you don't yet understand."

"What ways would those be?"

He glanced, just briefly, toward the far end of the hall where the Queen stood watching us both, and whatever answer he'd been about to give dissolved into something safer instead. "Ways a new bride shouldn't concern herself with on her first night. Rest. There will be enough time for questions before the wedding."

"There will be time for exactly the questions I have time for," I said, keeping my voice pleasant even as my patience thinned. "Everyone in this kingdom seems very certain there's nothing for me to worry about, and yet no one will answer a single direct question I ask."

The King's smile faltered, just slightly, before Cassian stepped smoothly between us. "My father meant no offense. Come, let me show you to your rooms myself. You'll feel steadier once you've eaten something that isn't road rations."

I let him lead me out, mostly because staying would have meant pushing King Alaric further than his composure could hold, and I wanted to know what he was hiding more than I wanted to win an argument in front of his entire court.

"Your father looked like he wanted to tell me something," I said once we were alone in the corridor.

"My father looks like that most days. It's mostly indigestion." Cassian's grin was easy, practiced, the kind that had probably worked on every girl who'd ever doubted him before me. "You worry too much, Liora. May I call you that?"

"You're marrying me. I suppose you've earned it."

"Then trust me when I say there is nothing waiting for you here that should frighten you." He stopped at a set of tall doors and pushed them open onto a chamber richer than anything I had ever slept in. "This is yours until the wedding. After that, we'll share the west wing."

"Cassian." I stayed in the doorway instead of stepping through. "What happens at the top of that mountain?"

Something flickered behind his eyes, there and gone so fast I almost doubted I'd seen it at all. "A blessing rite. Old tradition, older than my grandfather's grandfather. Every Draven bride completes it before the marriage is considered whole in the eyes of the kingdom."

"What kind of blessing requires a mountain?"

"The kind that's more ceremony than substance, I promise you." He reached for my hand and pressed a light kiss to my knuckles before I could pull it back. "Sleep well, Liora. Tomorrow the court will want to meet you properly, and you'll see there's nothing here worth all this suspicion."

He left before I could ask him anything else, and I stood alone in a room larger than my father's entire hall, trying to decide whether I believed a single word he'd said.

I did not get the chance to decide before the door opened again without a knock, and a girl no older than fourteen slipped inside, dark haired, dressed finer than any child I had ever seen, studying me with open, unguarded curiosity.

"You're the new one," she said.

"I'm sorry?"

"The new bride." She wandered further into the room, trailing her fingers along the edge of a dressing table like she owned everything in it, which perhaps she did. "I'm Sabine. Cassian's sister. I like to meet them before the wedding. Mother doesn't know I do it."

"Meet who, Sabine?"

"The brides." She said it the way another child might mention meeting a new tutor, entirely without weight. "You're prettier than the last one. She cried a lot before her wedding too. I told her it wouldn't help."

My whole body went still. "The last one. What happened to her?"

Sabine tilted her head, and for just a moment the childish curiosity in her face slipped, replaced by something far older and far more careful, as if she had just realized she'd said more than she was supposed to.

"You should ask my mother that," she said. "Or don't. Nobody who asks ever seems to like the answer."

She was gone before I could stop her, the door clicking shut behind her, and I stood alone in that beautiful, borrowed room with my heart hammering against every reassurance Cassian had just fed me, certain now of only one thing.

I was not the first bride to stand in this room.

I needed to find out what had happened to the others before I became one of them.