Dark Lord's Wedding (58 page)

“I do.” This woman wore a giant snail shell for a hat, with the elegance of its spiral painted in striking colors.

“And me,” a man said.

“Yes, she did. She did.”

“Heard the Feaster say it five times, and that she was sorry for what she done.”

“Six! I heard six.”

Memories were ever so gelatinous and shapeable. Hiresha said, “I am gratified you’ve remembered.”

She had built a meager connection between the treachery and the Bleeding Maiden. It might give her Feasters doubts. It would have to be enough. Hiresha had time for no more.

“Now I must away to my wedding, yet I’ll be certain to return on my honeymoon procession.”

A scattered cheer went up, which turned to a roar when Hiresha soared. She burst through the forest canopy with a snapping of twigs, a splash of rain droplets, and a scattering of pink nymph bugs with turquoise-bright legs.

Kill the Bleeding Maiden.
The three voices of the lord bellowed within Celaise, shaking her insides against her ribs and spine.
Don’t let her cast. Don’t let her Feast. Leech the last drop of black wine from her veins or I’ll do the same to you.

He couldn’t mean it. Celaise couldn’t fight her eldest sister. Celaise knew she couldn’t win, couldn’t do anything but die.

The Bleeding Maiden sat facing the Bright Palm and the lady, but that wouldn’t help. Wounds opened on the back of the sister’s head and neck. They made oozing mouths, and they spoke with a single a bubbling voice.

Has the lord father sent you to die, little sister?
Celaise heard her, couldn’t shut her out, couldn’t hide. Covering the ears did nothing. The Bleeding Maiden could speak into minds. She was already as strong as the lord father.
Watch out. Come any closer and my blood may spill on you. And you know what that’ll do.

Celaise stopped. How could she escape? The Mimic watched her from among the veiled slaves. Celaise’s arms were crossed tight against her chest, but she bent one hand toward him for help. The Mimic didn’t move. Nobody would help her, except Jerani.

Only he shouldn’t, he shouldn’t. Behind him loomed a shadow of the lord father, and black fangs Jerani couldn’t see were reaching their spine points around him like a caiman turning its head sideways to strike.
Obey,
the lord father said,
or watch him die.

Celaise took another step. She was sweating so much fear that she could even smell herself. Then she had to wade into the aroma of the Bleeding Maiden, and all else was gone. Old rose petals choked Celaise. Too close to her sister, too close. Something wet and red flopped down from under the Bleeding Maiden’s skirt and began wriggling to Celaise, to strangle her with its rubbery pulsing coils.

“Minara,” the lady said, “show us what was found clutched by Mother Pepperfire.”

The other bridesmaid did as she was told, maybe. The lord wasn’t threatening her.

The lady asked, “And did Mother Pepperfire say anything before she died, Minara?”

Her eyes darted to the Bleeding Maiden. Minara hid her face behind her mirror, but her fountain of fear answered for her.

Had the Bleeding Maiden really gotten their sisters nailed? Celaise forced another foot forward.

“The Feaster spoke to us,” the Bright Palm said in her dead voice. “She told of the caravan, how many of you with how many swords, when they’d be there. She was certain because she’d been told by the Lord of the Feast.”

“What?” The lady’s chin twitched toward the Bright Palm. Dread exploded from the lady like spiced fruit chunks from a burst cornmeal wrap. Her jewels lined up above the Bright Palm and spun. “What did you say?”

The Bright Palm stayed slumped in her chair, looking helpless and unafraid. “The Feaster told us the Lord of the Feast had commanded her to come, that he’d betrayed her.”

“How could you, father?” The Bleeding Maiden turned on him, and so did everyone. Good, when they joined together to eat him, Jerani would be safe.

The Bright Palm wasn’t finished. “And that he smelled of dead roses.”

Oh no, it had been the Bleeding Maiden. She had stolen his shape, pretended to be the lord father. She’d broken every rule.

“Brother killer,” a Feaster knight said.

“Why would you believe that?” The Bleeding Maiden’s scent sweetened to freshly uncorked rose wine. “They all want me dead.”

“For good reason.” The lady was beaming. She lifted a hand alight with gems.

The gold key amulet tightened around the Bleeding Maiden’s throat. It cut into her. She choked, couldn’t breathe. Still, she could speak into everyone’s mind.
Can’t you see they’re all lying?

No, it was her. Celaise spread the wings of her cape. Her feathers sliced through the air. “Traitor.”

Save me.
Blood sprayed from the choker clamped around the eldest sister’s neck.
Or the lord father and his glowing friends will kill us all.

“You’ve been a bad guest,” the lady said. The key snapped from its chain and flew into her hand. “You’ll have to leave early.”

The Bleeding Maiden’s skirt folded upward. Her slipper and one bare foot lifted from the sleekness of the glass ceiling. She began to fall.

She started to cast. Her lips parted, and out sprayed boiling blood and a scream to melt souls. Celaise knew this would be her sister’s last Feast, and she would eat everyone.

Celaise plugged her mouth with feathers.

The falling Maiden twisted. Her skirt split. Her blouse soaked with a rose pattern of blood. It steamed from her in a red mist that would seep into Jerani’s skin and leave him mad.

Feathers of Celaise’s dress folded around the Bleeding Maiden. The quills locked together, hiding her. Their softness muffled her screams. Celaise wouldn’t let her be heard again. Never seen. Never felt.

Never. Never. Never.

The blood spraying from the sister turned black.

Celaise blanketed her with dark wings, constricting smothering killing. A pendulum of candles swept past, chopping at Celaise’s cape feathers. Below, guests dove out of the way. Celaise tipped the Maiden head down.

Blood erupted and smashed through the feathers, to shred, to rip, to ruin. But the dress was empty. Celaise wasn’t inside, and she was safe back on the ceiling. She had shadow-stepped away and left the Bleeding Maiden in the last twist of her fall.

She mind-shrieked.
You’re all—

The Bleeding Maiden hit. The sound was a wet crackling, then the roar of released black wine.

Celaise’s True Dress reformed around her. She dove down. She pooled the power in the bowl of her new wings. She drank, and she tasted the vast, the bottomless. It was too much to swallow, so she breathed it in. Her lungs filled with black wine. She drowned and was reborn. Again and again, for years, for a moment of ringing time. The lands stretched around her. She pulled away, beyond the reach of mortals. She was in paradise.

Rose petals rained around her like a gentle autumn. They caressed her skin and soaked inward, blooming inside her as warm friendship, sweet passion, and cooling peace.

Celaise drank the last drop.

She opened her eyes, and she was back on the ceiling. The strength to topple nations frothed inside her.

“In the end,” the lady said, spinning downward on her strand of spidersilk, “the Bleeding Maiden was neither.”

A woman lay broken on a splintered table. In death she was forgettable. Her skull had cracked and splattered, but any blood was lost amid the grey gore. Slaves were already sweeping up her mess.

“Deliciously done, Lady Celaise,” the lord father said. He nudged a youth toward her.

The young man said something. Who was he to speak to her? He stank of common fare. Celaise could tell his fears were meager. He still caught her eye. The red in his hair itched her memory. Oh, he was Jerani.

Why had she ever bothered with him? At best, slaughtering him might frighten the Feasters. She didn’t need to ferment fears anymore. She could guzzle black wine straight from her brothers and sisters. They couldn’t stop her. Their minds were too little and too frightened. Much like children.

“Lady Celaise,” the lord father said, “as you are the most perilous dressmaker in the lands, the Lady of Gems will have need of you for her last wedding gowns.”

“Three more,” Celaise said. “One to freeze, one to summon, and one already made.”

“Savory! For now, do have a seat. This place was always reserved for you, Princess of Plummets.”

Slaves lifted up the Bleeding Maiden’s table setting of a wilted rose. They replaced it with one with a new design, a dress of open sky and sunset clouds. Celaise’s first dress.

She plumed downward on the pillow across from the Talon. Her black feathers faced his fiery greens and burning blues.

“What a scrumptious menagerie,” the lord father said. “Do be unkind to each other. Everything in life can be borne except politeness.”

“Feasters care for nothing.” The Talon mashed ice treat into his mouth. His hasty eating would give him a cold headache. His eyes teared. “You kill without spilling any precious water. You dim the sun.”

“Now you flatter us,” the lord father said, “and flattery is never welcome, except when it’s insincere.”

Beneath the lord father was an underground lake of black wine. Celaise might kill him to get it, someday. For now, she had all she needed, and he had been the one to urge her to greater appetites. He had saved her. He’d named her. The lord was a good and terrible father.

“Once the body cools,” the Talon said, “once the heart stops, blood becomes worthless.”

“The dead would sadly agree.” The lord father rested a fanged hand on the frill of Celaise’s shoulder. “Might we lessen the Talon’s fears? As meaty as they are.”

“We won’t kill your slave folk,” Celaise said to the Talon, “only frighten them. Us in shops, you blood soaked on your temples.”

“Why have you ruined the evening, Lady Celaise? Now it’s clear our interests don’t conflict with the Talon’s. We’ll have not the least to argue over, and the rest of the night will be a dreadful bore.”

The Talon cupped his knife between his hands and tapped fingers together on both sides of the blade. “You’ll keep your own from striking down the gods’ people?”

“Yes,” Celaise said. She’d had some reason for it, not killing people. The lord father had forbidden her to, but it was more than that, something she was forgetting.

“Then the days of future dawning might not be doomed,” the Talon said.

“As long as I rule the night,” the lord father said, “or Lady Celaise does.”

The points of his fingers sent her feathers shivering. What bliss she might feel to mix her vintage with his. She had tasted the sharp gust of his wine before, but just a sip, glittering and potent. A full swallow would be worth more than a thousand screaming souls.

“Celaise.” His shadow slid over her, slipping between her gown and her skin in a soothing smoothness. He was close. His words were only for her. “After the ritual, I will have one final task for you. Only a single last duty for the sake of the wedding. Nothing at all, really.”

The lady came to glint beside him. Her gems looked cheap. She would overhear.

“You must take my place as the lord of nightmares,” he said.

Darkness thudded through her, spreading its silky peace from her chest to her fingertips. Yes, the title would go to her. The lord father would step down. Jerani had told her something about purging power with wild magic.

“You will rule the Feasters,” he said, “to the end of your nights.”

She would.

“Your every evening will be a banquet, and your table will span the world.”

It would.

“Do you desire this?” He asked it, but he had to know.

She did.

Something in Celaise pulled the other way. It was nothing. No more than a twinge from the stomach settling around a great meal. Each night had built her toward this, ever since she had almost died but been saved by her hunger for another chance, for new life, for flavors few could imagine.

“There’s my plum pudding,” the lord father said. He cast a glance to the lady. What was he whispering into her mind?