13: DEFINE GOOD
766 Words
PHEEONA.
The view from this tower was about to give me a heart attack.
I peeked through the window maybe five minutes ago, just to see how things were coming along outside, and what I got instead was an entire ocean of people stretching out across the cathedral grounds like the land itself wasn't going to be big enough to hold them all.
I'd never seen that many people in one place in my entire life.
And I was a princess. Crowds weren't exactly a foreign concept to me.
This was different.
This felt like the entire realm had shown up. Like someone had sent out an invitation to every single living soul within a thousand miles and they'd all said yes at the same time. The cathedral itself sat at the center of it like some kind of stone heart, doors flung open, the grass surrounding it packed shoulder to shoulder with bodies that just kept going and going until I couldn't make out where the crowd actually ended.
I turned away from the window before I could throw up.
Again.
"Hold still, your Grace,” my stylist murmured, pinning something into my hair with the kind of patience that should've come with a medal.
I'd been poked and prodded for the better part of three hours now. Hair, skin, the dress, more hair, something to do with the placement of jewelry that apparently mattered a great deal to people who weren't me. I was standing on a little dais in the center of the room while four separate women worked around me like I was a sculpture mid-construction.
I was so over it.
"You good?" Anyssa asked, for the literal hundredth time that morning.
"Define good."
“Well, you’re not-throwing-up." She suggested.
"That's a stretch goal at this point."
She huffed, crossing her arms, watching me with that look she got when she was trying very hard not to laugh at someone clearly spiraling. "You need to relax."
"I am relaxed."
"You're vibrating."
"That's a side effect of relaxation."
She rolled her eyes, but there was warmth in it.
The stylist finally stepped back, declaring me finished with a satisfied nod, and the rest of the team filed out one by one until it was just me and Anyssa in the quiet of the room.
I stepped down off the dais.
Anyssa took both my hands, looking at me properly for the first time all morning, and something in her expression softened completely. "You look so beautiful, Phee." Her voice cracked slightly. "I'm so proud of you. For making it this far."
I tried to hold onto that. I really did.
"You're going to walk out there," she continued, "and you're going to kill it. Every single person in that crowd is going to look at you and know exactly why you're standing where you are."
I nodded, trying to let the words sink in, trying to make my body believe what she was saying even as my chest started doing this awful, fluttery thing that had nothing to do with nerves and everything to do with whatever was happening outside.
My skin tightened.
My heart kicked into a gallop.
I pulled away from her without meaning to and crossed to the window, drawn there by something I didn't have a name for, and looked down at the cathedral entrance just as the doors opened.
They walked through one by one.
Crowen first, broad and dark and dressed in something so regal that every golden thread on his tunic caught every bit of afternoon light. Then I saw Nashyn, looking unfairly good in black just as dark, that easy confidence rolling off him even from this distance.
And then—
Vizellan.
I almost didn't recognize him for a second.
My lips parted as I took him in.
He'd cut his hair. The pale silver waves were gone, replaced with a clean, flat buzz cut that sat against his skull like it had been carved there.
It changed everything about his face—sharpened it, made those pale eyes of his somehow more striking from across an entire cathedral lawn.
I couldn't look away.
“Your grace.” A maid's voice cut gently through the room. "It's time."
I turned from the window.
Anyssa was already there, pulling me into a hug that lasted exactly as long as it needed to, her hand squeezing mine one last time before she let go.
I took a breath.
And walked out of the room, toward whatever future was waiting for me at the end of that aisle.
- Writer
