27

The night before felt like yet another fairy tale: a girl spirited away and returned before her cruel family could be the wiser.

At eleven o’clock, Sinclair had snuck her into the palace. During the ride back, he’d fumed at Kit’s stubbornness—then, when he’d exhausted himself, fallen into an uncharacteristically sullen silence. For once in her life, Niamh had not minded the quiet. A plan, taken root on the balcony, began to blossom in the dark of the carriage. A stupid, impossible plan—but a plan all the same. As desperately as she wanted to, she could not involve Sinclair. If it went sour, her disgrace would not touch him.

By three in the morning, she’d finished embroidering and assembling Kit’s cloak. At six, she’d been awoken and delivered to Rosa’s townhouse, with the wedding gown and Kit’s cloak each tucked into a delicate box like a jewel in its case.

Now, she walked into Rosa’s chambers, fearing she might fall asleep on her feet. One of Jack’s footmen followed close on her heels like a fussy hound. Once the door shut behind them, he stationed himself in front of it and kept his gaze pinned on her. In it was a warning: The prince regent is watching. Do not say or do anything you will regret.

Rosa waited for her behind her privacy screen. A bouquet of roses sat on a table beside her, ready to be woven into her hair. All of their thorns had been carefully removed and their stems twirled to loosen the petals. Rosa had painted her lips Carmine red. She looked elegant, even in nothing but her thin dressing gown. But upon closer inspection, her olive skin possessed none of its usual luster. Beneath the rouge dusted on her cheeks, she was waxen.

“Good morning,” Niamh said, her voice little more than a croak.

“Indeed,” Rosa said absently. “Shall we?”

Niamh unpacked the dress carefully. The long train of the skirt tumbled across the floor like a rivulet of dark water. Rosa inspected it with an unmistakable look of appreciation. Niamh worked as quickly as she could to lace Rosa into it. Of course, she tripped over the hem no fewer than three times and almost popped a sequin or three off the sleeves. When the last of the jet buttons was fastened at the base of Rosa’s neck, Niamh climbed onto a wobbly stool to place the veil on her head like a crown. She adjusted the draping of the fabric before pinning it in place. It flowed down her back and fanned out across the floor, all of the intricate lacework on display.

“There.” Niamh took a step back to admire her handiwork. “You are ready.”

Rosa stood before the mirror. Imprisoned within its enormous gold frame, she looked like a portrait done in oils—or she would, if it weren’t for the very peculiar look on her face. She scrunched her nose as though she had tasted something quite bitter. “What an unusual magic you have.”

“What do you mean?”

“I am feeling,” she said, with equal parts disgust and awe, “quite a lot of feelings. Is this what the inside of your head is like? No wonder you are so busy all the time.”

Admittedly, the enchantments in the gown were quite strong. The gown filled her up with yearning for all the things that could have been and sorrow for all the things she’d failed to do. In hindsight, perhaps she should not have finished it immediately after Kit had dismissed her. It was rather inappropriate for a wedding, but at least it matched the elegant solemnity of the gown. Rosa could be the goddess of night herself.

“Sorry,” Niamh said sheepishly, “I may have gotten carried away. Should I—”

“No. Don’t change a thing. It’s everything I wanted.”

“There certainly won’t be a dry eye in the church,” she offered.

Rosa stared at her reflection, turning her face this way and that. “I almost feel like a bride.”

Her heart gave a painful lurch. “I’m glad. You look beautiful.”

It was only then—with the wobble of her voice and the tight burning in her throat—that she realized she was already weeping. Rosa looked utterly bewildered, even alarmed. Then, with a grave air, she pushed aside the privacy screen to address the footman lurking by the door. “You. Send for tea at once.”

“My apologies, Your Highness,” he replied. “The prince regent says I’m not to leave the girl unattended.”

Rosa drew herself to her full height and lifted her chin. In her gown of all black, she cut a striking figure indeed, and her tone rang out with regal condescension. “What, is she a prisoner? Or are you afraid I shall besmirch her honor?”

An uncomfortable beat of silence passed before he relented. “No, Your Highness. Of course not.”

“Then go, before I tell my brother-in-law that I was treated brutishly. I’m famished. I daresay I’m beginning to feel a swoon coming on.”

He paled. “At once, Your Highness.”

As soon as he vanished, Rosa all but wilted into a chaise and leveled Niamh with a flat stare. “What was that? What exactly is going on here?”

“Nothing at all!” Niamh scrubbed her face dry and pinned on a smile. “Weddings make me emotional, and the enchantments on your dress … I will do my best not to embarrass myself any further.”

“Do you think I’m stupid? That is not a rhetorical question.”

“No! Of course not.”

“Then why are you lying to me? You are stumbling all over yourself—more than usual. And you are…” Rosa gestured hopelessly at her. “… leaking.”

Rosa is quite an understanding person, Miriam had told her. And she was. Niamh envied how nothing rattled her. But somehow, she did not think even a woman as patient and pragmatic as Rosa could take I am in love with your fiancé, and if one of you does not call this wedding off, your union may very well shackle you to a financially insolvent kingdom for half a decade in stride. She couldn’t risk it.

So she sat beside her and said, “It’s the stress. I’ve hardly slept in days.”

Rosa placed a hand awkwardly on the top of Niamh’s head, which Niamh supposed was meant to be reassuring. “You have worked yourself too hard for my sake.”

“Do not trouble yourself over me. Today is about you.”

“Is it now?” she asked wryly.

Just then, Miriam nudged the door open with her hip, holding in her arms the tea service she had clearly wrested from the beleaguered footman. Her tongue poked out in concentration as she fumbled with it. But when she saw Rosa, her lips parted and the tray nearly fell from her hands. The teacups wobbled precariously.

“Rosa.” Tears glimmered in Miriam’s eyes. “God above, you are a vision.”

Rosa laughed thickly, fond and rueful. She reached beneath her veil to sweep her fingertips beneath her eyes. “Stop. Soon I will start leaking.”

Niamh felt like the greatest fool who ever lived.

She wasn’t sure how she hadn’t seen it—truly seen it—before now: the reason Rosa had endured everything like a soldier preparing for battle, the reason Rosa cared little if Kit’s heart was elsewhere, the reason Miriam had helped Niamh without question. Now, it was so beautifully, breathtakingly, heartbreakingly obvious. An invisible thread looped the two of them together.

Love.


The day on which Infanta Rosa de Todos los Santos de Carrillo and Prince Christopher Carmine, Duke of Clearwater, were to be wed was, by all accounts, perfect.

It was a bright and cloudless morning—an Avlish rarity—and the streets, from the royal palace shining on its green lawn to the white-stone Cathedral of Saint John, were lined with people. Nobility and commoners alike gathered, drinking and chattering, cheering and singing, weeping and shoving. They carried wicker baskets at their hips and tossed herbs and flower petals onto the road. Every bloom represented a wish—for health, fortune, fertility, and happiness. In Avlish tradition, the groom led the wedding guests in a parade from his home to the cathedral.

To Niamh, it felt as grim as a funerary procession. Today, she could lose Kit forever.

She followed the parade alone. The crush of people all around overwhelmed her. Her ears rang, her pulse pounded in her wrists, and her eyes felt as though they were going to leak out of her skull from exhaustion.

The dark cloak she’d dredged up from the back of her closet suited her mood and served well enough to disguise her, but she sweated feverishly in the wool. A wide bonnet—and a wispy cluster of baby’s breath tucked behind her ear—obscured her features. Still, it would not take more than a few moments’ inspection for either Carmine to recognize her. She clutched a box tightly against her chest, Kit’s wedding cloak tucked safely inside.

Out in front of her, Jack rode a white stallion that seemed perfectly at ease beside the Kings Guard in their green-and-gold livery and their muskets. Today, he wore his full regalia. His red tailcoat billowed in the wind, and the golden crown nestled into his dark hair blazed in the sunlight.

And there, just ahead of him, was Kit.

Niamh couldn’t see him clearly from here. Only the grim iron set of his shoulders. From the moment she first realized who he was, perhaps Niamh should have known it was destined that she would find herself here. Her, heart twisting itself into lovesick knots. Him, impossibly out of her reach for a hundred different reasons.

As the Carmines passed, flowers sprouted in their wake, pushing through the cracks in the cobblestones and flooding the lawns. The crowds cheered, their eyes alight with magic’s golden glow. It drifted through the air, dreamy as early-morning mist.

Niamh caught a glimpse of the cathedral’s spires as they rounded a corner. Its buttresses and towers extended heavenward like accusatory, reaching fingers. The closer the procession drew, the denser and rowdier the crowds got. They jostled and jeered like a sea whipped to madness by the wind. It didn’t take long for Niamh to realize why.

The protesters waited in the cathedral’s courtyard.

Clever, Niamh thought. Jack couldn’t oust them all without causing a scene. Besides, a massacre on the wedding day would be a most inauspicious start to a marriage.

They hoisted flags into the air and planted them in the cathedral’s immaculate lawn. Despite their numbers, the protestors stood in orderly contingents, facing down the wedding procession like an army making their last stand. And at the front of them, radiant and tall on the makeshift stage of an overturned crate, was their general: Helen Carlile.

Jack drew his horse up short. His mount pawed restlessly at the cobblestones. He stared imperiously down the bridge of his nose at Carlile. Niamh had been on the receiving end of that stare a time or two before; she knew the effect it had. But Carlile met it head-on.

“What is the meaning of this?” he asked.

“I’m here to demand an audience with the prince regent.” She gave him the most perfunctory of bows. “I suppose that would be you.”

He dismounted from his horse, his boots striking the cobbles with a decisive clack. The Kings Guard rested their hands on their sabers in unison. An anxious murmur rippled through the wedding guests.

“Good day to you, madam,” he said coldly. “You are in no position to demand a thing from me. It is my brother’s—your prince’s—wedding day.”

“I mean no offense, sir. It’s only that I have asked to speak to you a great many days before this,” she said earnestly. “You’re a difficult man to pin down. One can almost begin to suspect that you’re hiding from me.”

“Give me one reason to not have you arrested for sedition here and now.” Jack lowered his voice; Niamh had to inch forward to even hear. “What do you mean by this display? It serves no other purpose but to excite discontent and vex me personally.”

“An hour of your time is all I ask.” A pleading note entered her voice. “These good people have gathered here to have their concerns heard. If that is a crime, I do not recognize you any longer. No matter what they say about you, sir, I did not take you for a despot.”

“Meet with her.” Kit, at last, spoke. He addressed his brother almost wearily, without a hint of petulance or imperiousness. “Consider it my wedding gift.”

Carlile’s gaze darted between them.

The silence stretched on. A bead of sweat ran down Jack’s temple. But whatever he saw in his brother’s eyes must have moved him. “Very well. I will speak with you after the ceremony. You and your ilk can wait for me outside the Parliament building. I will receive you in my office there.”

Niamh could hardly believe it.

Carlile’s entire face lit up, all sunny gratitude and stunned satisfaction. “Thank you, Your Highness. Sincerely, thank you. I very much look forward to it.” She bowed to Kit. “And congratulations to you. Much happiness to you and your new bride.”

“Thanks,” he said tersely.

She turned back to the protesters, and with a single gesture, they fell in line around her. They marched toward the Parliament building, parting around the wedding procession like a river flowing over a stone. Their disciplined silence astounded Niamh. As soon as the last of them cleared the cathedral’s gates, the tension in the air dissipated.

And as if on cue, the wedding bells tolled overhead.

They gong, gong, gonged, a deep, mournful sound that resonated within Niamh’s rib cage. As the last toll of the bell shivered into the morning, the doors to the cathedral opened wide.

Niamh’s breath quickened. She didn’t know if she could do this. She couldn’t face Kit again. And if she failed, she didn’t know if she could bear to see the moment he was bound to Rosa forevermore. She would not survive that heartbreak.

But she had no time to hesitate. Once the Carmines entered the cathedral, the guests behind her all but shoved her through the threshold and into the vestibule.

The ceiling loomed high above them, supported by white columns and laced up like stays with ribbing. Flames floated and drifted through the air as though they were candles borne on a current. Flowers were woven into the pews, and garlands were draped over every alcove, all the blooms done in sumptuous white. Everything glittered, from the dust motes drifting through delicate threads of light to the gilt on the saintly icons on the walls.

But it was the altar that truly stole her breath away.

Kit stood silhouetted against the backdrop of the stained-glass windows. They filled the entire apse, from the wooden wainscoting to the dramatically arched ceiling. The light they let in enfolded him, softening all his hard edges. It painted him delicately. He wore a white waistcoat and cravat, with a golden pin in the shape of a blooming rose. He looked like a fairy-tale prince.

Sinclair stood beside him on the altar. As livid as he was with Sinclair, he hadn’t disinvited him from the wedding.

This is it.

Niamh found a seat in the back of the cathedral and tucked her chin so that her bonnet hid her face from view. Her palms were clammy in the delicate silk of her gloves. Chatter and laughter swirled around her as guests filed in. She did her best to drown them out.

A flutter of movement at the front of the cathedral snagged her attention. A member of the Kings Guard approached Jack and bent down to whisper something in his ear. Immediately, he swiveled around in his seat with a startled fury. His gaze raked across each person’s face. He was looking for someone. Looking for her, she realized.

He knows.

Jack and his guardsman exchanged a few words before the guard nodded grimly. Niamh sank down in her seat. If they found her, they would escort her out. She couldn’t go back to Machland—not until she saw this through. But there were hundreds of people in this cathedral and a ceremony the Guard couldn’t so brazenly interrupt. She’d be fine.

The harpist began to play. The song soared to the rafters, sweet and ethereal and glittery: the announcement of the bride.

Every head in the church turned.

And the doors to the vestibule opened, framing Rosa in a brilliant square of light.