Marrying My Childhood Nightmare

Chapter 17: Fractured Trust

Lyra's POV

When I stepped into the hall, I walked to where I was before that attack and picked up the nearest fabric. I stared at it like nothing happened. Ryker was beside me a few minutes later. He didn’t say anything immediately, and I was grateful that he didn’t ask any questions because I was a breath away from breaking down.

He picked up a swatch, examined it before setting it down.

"Sandy brown," I said, looking at the burgundy swatch.

"What?" he looked at me confused.

"The color. It's closer to sandy brown than burgundy."

He looked at the swatch in his hand. He set it down without comment.

I set my swatch down and picked up another one. My hands were steady even though inside me was shaking. I had made them steady before I came back through the door, and I was keeping them that way through the particular discipline that eleven years of training builds in a person when they learn early that showing pain in front of people you will lead is a sign of weakness.

"I'm fine," I said quietly, when I felt him look at me.

"I know," he said, in a tone that meant he knew the opposite and had decided not to make it a conversation right now.

Good. Because I needed to function. I needed to stand in this hall and look like a future Luna who had everything managed and nothing crawling around under her skin that she couldn't name. I needed the performance to hold for exactly as long as it needed to hold, and then I could deal with the rest of it later in private where nobody could watch it land on my face.

I reached for another swatch.

That was when Marcus appeared in the doorway of the east corridor, his expression one of fear and confusion.

"Miss Thorne." He looked at Ryker. Then back at me. "There's something in the ceremony room you need to see," he says hurriedly. I told Ryker to go ahead with Marcus. I will meet them there.

I took the long route to the ceremony wing.

Not because I didn't know the way. Because the direct route went past the east terrace doors, and I was not ready to see whether Draven was still standing where I had left him or met him along my way to the ceremony room.

The ceremony room was at the end of the west corridor. The door was open when I arrived. I stopped short at the doorway when I spotted Draven.

He stood in the center of the room with his back to the door, looking at the altar where the binding candles had been. Lena was beside him, her arms folded as she spoke to one of the warriors.

I looked away from him to the altar where the ceremony candles, all twelve of them, had burned completely to nothing. The iron holders that had housed them sat empty and black, wax pooled beneath each one in hardened pale circles on the stone floor.

How could this happen? This room was locked. No other thing was burnt except from the candles. The room smelled wrong, like something ancient and something else I couldn't put my fingers on.

Draven had not turned around, but I knew he knew I was there. I felt the pull shift the moment I crossed the threshold, that immediate control of his proximity always caused whether I wanted it to or not.

I didn't move further into the room.

He turned his head slightly, not enough to look at me directly but enough to acknowledge where I stood. He turned and said something low to Lena. She nodded once and left the room. He walked towards the door and stopped beside me in the doorway. He stood close enough that his scent hit me and pulled tight.

He didn't say anything and I ignored him even though the bond pulled me to him. The pull released as he moved out to the corridor.

I let out one careful breath and walked into the room. The others filtered out within minutes, already assigned what to do, and I was left alone.

I walked close to the altar and bent slightly to observe the nearest holder.

The wax had pooled and hardened in an irregular shape, the way wax did when it melted fast and cooled faster. I looked at the next one and it was the same.

I moved slowly, and observed each holder in turn, checking each pool of hardened wax. By the eighth one, I had confirmed that whatever had burned these candles had done it fast. Too fast for any natural flame.

I reached the far end of the room where the altar joined the stone wall. There was something faint in the shadow, scratched into the wall. I leaned close and saw writing in an old dialect I had seen before. I couldn’t read most of it. At the bottom, separated from the rest by a single horizontal scratch.

A sentence in plain language that needed no translation.

He knows what you are to each other. He is still not choosing you.

I stared at the wall frozen in fear and coldness at the truth facing me. Then I sat down on the cold ceremony room floor, my back against the wall as I stared at nothing, in a room smelling of burnt candles. The mark on my neck burned while the words stayed exactly where they were without burning off.

Not going anywhere, patient. Like everything else in this nightmare.