ARIANA’S WEDDING DRESS. For her arranged marriage to a man she’d never met and was certain to hate.
Ariana did not want to marry at all.
“Where would I be if I hadn’t married, Ariana?” her mother had insisted. “Do you think I could run both the country and the King’s Army? The country needs two rulers. That’s the way it is.”
Ariana argued that she could rule alone with trusted advisers at her side, and that even if she did marry, she wanted to choose the man. Anyway, there was absolutely no reason why some stranger should be king just because he was married to her.
But the queen had only shaken her head. “This idea that you might not get married at all? Nonsense. You’re a royal; the land requires your marriage. The Nuptial Bond ceremony binds a ruler not only to her partner but to the land itself. A marriage contract is powerful magic, Ariana. It means you belong to someone.”
Exactly what Ariana didn’t want.
Which was why the plaintive letter from Ariana a month before her coming-of-age birthday was such a surprise.
My dearest Kitty,
The end of the world has come: my hand is being taken in marriage—against my will! But not until June. There is still time to make mother see reason. Please hasten to the palace to help me persuade her.
And to celebrate my birthday—possibly my last as a single woman.
I remain
Stubbornly yours,
Ariana
Kyra had dropped everything and rushed to Wexford. The horse couldn’t go fast enough over the ice-covered roads.
When Kyra arrived, she’d found the palace bustling with wedding preparations, even though the wedding itself wasn’t for months. Workmen with ladders and seamstresses carrying large bolts of fabric dashed through the halls in every direction, barely dodging one another.
Kyra ducked off the main halls and into the kitchens.
As soon as she walked through the heavy swinging doors, she was enveloped in the rich scents of simmering stew and cinnamon apples baking. Her stomach growled.
“Kyra!” shouted out the head cook. She wiped her hands on her apron, then reached up to kiss Kyra’s cheeks. “Thank God!”
“It’s nice to see you too, Sofie.” Kyra hugged the cook, one of her favorite people at the castle. Sofie had the red-cheeked, breathless, jovial manner of someone who cooked and ate for a living, but she was rail thin and bony—the skinniest fat person Kyra had ever met. “I got a note from Ari. She sounds desperate.”
“Insufferable, more like.” The cook shook her head. “Haven’t heard howling and carrying on like this since back before, when they locked her up ‘for her health’! Pfft.” Sofie blew through her lips. “Kid was so healthy she managed to destroy her entire bedroom. Twice. I think back then the Little Highness just needed to get rid of some extra energy.” Sofie folded her arms over the front of her apron.
“Well, try to see it from Ariana’s perspective,” Kyra said. “It’s like being locked up in her bedroom again, isn’t it? They’re forcing her into something against her will. She’s suffocating.”
“It could be worse,” Sofie said, pushing a tray of the princess’s favorite raspberry-jam cookies into Kyra’s hands. “I hear the prince they chose is from Lantana, and everyone says he’s a nice guy. It could have been Prince Pompous from Lexeter.”
“Prince Pompadou?” Kyra asked as she mounted the servants’ stair. “The one who came sniffing around last spring?”
“Pompadou, Pompous Arse—whatever he goes by.”
Kyra laughed.
What in the world could she do to make things better? She knew how stubborn Ariana could be. It didn’t matter if it was a nice prince or a puffed-up dunderhead—Ariana knew her own mind. Kyra was pretty sure that cookies weren’t going to change it.
Kyra was right to be worried.
She opened the door to find the princess pacing angrily, ripping up a piece of paper and throwing it on the floor. The mass of frizzy hair that had replaced the ringlets of her childhood bounced around Ariana’s face as she stomped back and forth across the room.
Ariana had grown up to become a strong young woman. She was athletic and tough and such crazy-unpredictable fun that the stable boys all vied to be her escort when she went riding. It hurt Kyra to see her like this—angry and disheveled with tear tracks down her cheeks.
“Kitten, you came!” Kyra was swept up in a hug almost before she could set the tray on a small table inside the door. She caught a glimpse of the words CORDIALLY INVITED on one of the scraps of paper.
The princess pulled away and sat on her bed with a thump. “This is so awful, Kitty. I swore I would NOT let them do this to me. And somehow they have. My life is over.”
“Ari, it might not be as bad as you think.” This prompted an icy blue-eyed glare, so Kyra quickly added, “Or it might. But, Ari”—Kyra brushed her friend’s hair back over her shoulders and tried for a wry smile—“never forget that your best friend is one of the world’s experts in poison. There’s not a man who can stand in your way. Not for long, anyway.”
Ariana’s cheeks lifted in a smile. “That’s exactly why I wanted you to come.”
“Wait, what? You want me to kill this guy?”
Ariana rolled her eyes. “No. Because you can make me laugh even as my life is ending.”
“Well, good. It’s nice to know I’m useful for more than just offing people.” Kyra sat beside her on the bed. “Have you considered that getting married might be sort of fun? I was a bit doubtful at first too, but I’m starting to look forward to it.”
“That’s different. You got to choose who you’re going to marry. If I hear one more time about how important my marriage is for the kingdom, or the words ‘Nuptial Bond,’ I’m going to scream.” The princess’s voice turned small. “What if he’s all proper and everything? I might never get to go outside again. Lots of royal people NEVER leave the castle except a few times a year in a carriage. Kitty, I seriously couldn’t take it.”
“I know, Ari.” Kyra knew how lucky she was to be marrying a man she loved. “We’ll just have to figure out a way—”
“A way for me not to get married?”
Just then, a knock came at the door, and at Ari’s response, in walked two dressmaker’s apprentices. They swept by the girls, curtsying as they went, hung up what they were carrying, and silently departed.
It was a dress, truly one of the most beautiful wedding dresses Kyra had ever seen.
It was obvious that it had been made with love—and with this particular princess in mind. The dress didn’t have a single puffy ornamental bit on it. It was a long and silky green, with a small pinecone clasp holding the material together at one shoulder. Slits were shaped into each side, as though the dressmakers had anticipated the bride’s need to be free and unrestricted, able to run and move easily. The long, flowy shape was a perfect complement to Ariana’s athletic frame.
It was a dress fit for the Goddess of the Hunt, running barefoot in the moonlight.
“I love it,” Kyra said, before she could stop herself.
There was a horrible look on Ariana’s face. She quietly nibbled and swallowed a bite of cookie. “Need tea,” she mumbled.
Kyra’s trip downstairs to the kitchen for a teapot took only moments.
But it was long enough: when she got back to the room the dress had been ripped to shreds.
And now here it was hanging in tatters at Gabrielle’s.
Kyra had always assumed it had been thrown out. Yet Ariana must have brought it here thinking it could be salvaged. Or looking to hide the evidence of her tantrum. Kyra lifted one of the torn bits of silk hanging off the dress and drew a line with the same needle coated in Melt elixir that she’d used on the door. The tightly woven fibers relaxed their grip and unraveled, and the strip of fabric came away.
Destroying the dress? That was just Ariana being Ariana. A tantrum.
No, what had bothered Kyra was what happened in the days that followed. Ariana changed. She’d thrown herself into the wedding preparations and avoided Kyra, refusing to talk to her. Eventually, she banished Kyra from her company altogether.
And then, a few weeks later, Kyra was brought to her knees by the second vision she’d ever had in her life.
The princess stood at the top of the castle parapet—newly married, in a hideous pink wedding gown. As she raised her arms, the gown turned a deep burnt charcoal, all of the frills burning off and crumpling to the ground, her blue eyes changing to deepest black. The darkness that was coiled inside of her spread out, cloaking the land in night.
Evergreen trees withered and died, flowers melted, grapes fell from the vine, and a blackness shrouded the buildings of the city so thickly that they cracked under the weight. And then the vision jumbled and leaped ahead to a bleak future: Prison cells filled to bursting, slaves in chains at the Saturday market. Famine sweeping the land, wars raging, and the rivers swelling with the blood of the dying.
Color had left the Kingdom of Mohr, and with it all hope and beauty.
Through the Nuptial Bond—the magical connection that bound Ariana to the land on her wedding day—she would poison the kingdom.
That was why Kyra had to kill her before her wedding.