He shakes his head. “I forbid you to—”
“You cannot forbid me! I choose the dragon over going home with you!” I yell. Adrenaline rushes through me, and I turn to Ingvar. “And I choose the fire dragon over going home with you!” I look at the gathered crowd. “I choose the fire dragon!” I shout, my hands balled into tight fists at my sides. My mother sighs a practiced, regal sigh and turns her back on me. Diamanta is shaking her head, Harmony has fainted into her husband’s arms, and Gloriana is still as stone, her mouth gaping. Aside from a gentle breeze whistling through the trees, the cliff top has gone utterly silent as everyone stares at me. I have made my choice.
And then one voice quietly speaks above the wind. “I choose her.”
I whip around, and my white skirts whirl out in a wide circle. Golmarr has stepped forward so he is standing in front of his eight brothers. “I choose you, Princess Sorrowlynn,” he says. “To be the wife of the future king of Anthar.”
I shake my head and fight a wave of panic as the air grows so dense I can scarcely exhale. “No, I can’t marry your brother. I would rather die.”
He steps up to me and looks right into my eyes. “I choose you to be my wife, not my brother’s. I plight you my troth…I promise to be faithful and loyal to you. As your husband, Sorrowlynn.”
The crowd explodes with questions. My father steps between Golmarr and me, shoving the young horse lord aside even though he is a head taller and broader in the chest. “What is he talking about, King Marrkul?” my father demands.
“It is written in our history books,” King Marrkul explains, his voice loud enough to carry to the gathered crowd, “that the son who marries your daughter automatically becomes the heir. If…” He looks at the crone. “If the union is not one made out of greed for power.”
“I don’t understand,” my father growls.
King Marrkul puts his hand on Golmarr’s shoulder, and pride shines in the king’s hazel eyes. “If my boy’s motive in picking your daughter to wed is purely greed for the title of king, the match will not be approved. If his motivation is other, it will be approved.”
My father frowns. “And how can you tell the difference?”
“My son is a good and honorable young man, but I am not the judge of his motives. Nayadi?” King Marrkul calls.
At the word Nayadi, the crone shuffles forward. “Take her hand, Golmarr,” she instructs, pointing to me with a withered finger. Golmarr steps around my father and coils his fingers in mine. He pulls me out of my father’s shadow and holds our intertwined hands up to the crone. She takes them and runs a thick nail over our joined knuckles. My hand fills with warmth, and I don’t know if it is from the crone’s touch, or from Golmarr’s.
“Well?” my father demands, yanking my hand out of the horse lord’s. “Is this a union of greed?” He sounds hopeful. My heart sinks when I realize he doesn’t want me to marry the Antharian heir. He wants me to go home so he can whip me. The air presses harder, and all I want to do is melt into a puddle and be absorbed into the soil so that I don’t have to feel this pressure anymore.
“Or is this a union of love?” Marrkul asks, equally hopeful.
The crone shakes her head. “Not greed, but not love, either. There is a surprising amount of affection there—on both sides—but it is too soon to be love. It is a union of, shall we say, pity for the girl. He does not want her fed to the fire dragon. His motives are not spawned by greed.”
Anger fills me. I am to be a pity bride now? I look at Golmarr. His cheeks are flushed, his eyes dark with worry and something else. Maybe sorrow. Slowly, he lifts his hand and holds it out to me, and my anger melts away. By his actions, he has turned himself into an offering. He is willing to take me for a bride, to be stuck with me for the rest of his life, not because he loves me, but because he doesn’t want me given to the dragon. I look from his outstretched hand, to my father, to the cliff, and then I slowly place my hand in his. I can do this, I think. I can go back with him and be his wife.
“Do you accept?” King Marrkul asks, his voice practically pleading.