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My wedding gown trails behind me as I enter the throne room where the ceremony will be held, rainbow hues, transparent silky shifts worn one over the other, flaring at my wrists to hang low, enveloping my arms in blue and purple mist. The bust is stitched with golden thread in the form of a wolf’s head, the stitching continuing over my hips in the shape of long claws, but it’s so fine, the design so delicate, that it’s almost like lightning through a cloud.
This gown is breathtaking, more ethereal and exquisite than anything I’ve ever seen in the human world, the slippers on my feet so lightweight I barely feel them, and yet the soles are soft and keep the cold away. The bejeweled drops hanging from my ears are diamonds encased in golden claws.
Yes, there is a pattern here. Royal garments for the Ice Wolf Clan of the Diamond Throne. I wonder when Wolf’s mother wore these clothes and jewelry last. If it’s bad luck to wear a dead queen’s garments on your wedding day.
Whether it’s a bad idea to marry a wolf, to marry a curse. There won’t be any going back from this. I will transform, too, into a Fae. I will bind my fate to Wolf. It’s no small thing.
Then again, nothing when it comes to him ever is.
Courtiers bow and curtsy as I pass. Two maids are following me, holding the end of my train. Candles and oil lamps burn everywhere, in niches and chandeliers, in enormous candlesticks and candelabra, chasing away every shadow. My slippers whisper on the long light blue carpet leading to the throne.
Outside the tall windows, more snow is falling, dense and blinding white against a darkening sky.
As I approach, I finally focus on what lies ahead and see that there is still only one throne. It strikes me as odd. Didn’t he say I will be a queen? Where does a queen sit in the lands of Faerie?
I don’t know what to think anymore.
After Wolf’s strange claims and demands, after his strange actions—going out into the gardens to see if he would shift, insisting I do as he wants when he tells me his mysterious wish, a portentous cast to his words and his somber face, I’m not in any festive mood.
He’s right. I am scared. Not of his wolf form—though it would be something to see him fully transform into a beast of legend, an ice wolf—but of what he believes will happen with the curse, with the Empress. Deep inside, I can sense he is also scared but won’t admit it. Something has frightened him, frightened someone who’s been running headlong into battle heedless of death for decades, someone who climbed up the sheer face of a tower and then descended again with me on his back, not afraid to fall.
Something he won’t tell me.
But in the rush to prepare for tonight, I had to let him go without further demands, our paths diverging as I was put into gowns, the seamstresses working frantically to adjust them for me, as jewelry and shoes were chosen and tried on, as the ceremony was hurriedly explained to me.
Afterward, I decide. After the ceremony, when we are finally alone—man and wife, bride and groom, in our room, in our bed, and tomorrow and the day after, I’ll have all the time in the world to ask him all the questions and stroke his face and chase away his misgivings until he tells me everything, every dream and every disquieting doubt weighing on him.
We’ll bear it together. Share the burden. That’s the nature of marriage. The nature of love.
I’m jittery, though, cold and unsure. Unsure of who I am getting married to.
And then I see him.
Wolf is sitting on the lone throne, his vest and overcoat in the same hues as my gown, more blue than purple, iridescent like a moth’s wing, his britches white, his boots gray. The Diamond Crown sits on his head, pale diamonds gleaming dully on its three peaks, his silvery hair brushed back, allowing the clean lines of his handsome face to shine.
He’s so beautiful.
It’s not fair. How can I think straight when he looks like that, when I can see his smile flashing across the distance at me?
But the three sages come to stand between us, breaking the spell. Dressed in light blue—it seems to be the royal color of this court—they line up and clasp their hands in front of their chests, bowing their heads slightly. Perhaps they’re afraid that the enormous pointed hats they’re wearing might fall off. They look like beehives, made from a filigree milky material like carved crystal.
“Princess Mina,” they say with one voice, and it’s so strange to be called by this nickname instead of my full name and title I’m not even shocked that their eyes have now all turned to pale gray, “the Ice Wolf Clan welcomes you. Are you willing and ready to become a member of one of the oldest royal families in Faerie?”
“I... I do,” I stammer and wince.
“In the days of old, the ice wolves descended from the mountain tops, from their ice palaces near the clouds, to help create a new race. Humans lived among us then, but they didn’t have knowledge and magic. The Fae were supposed to be the link between the gods and the humans, bridging the two races, helping the humans rise from the mud.”
I produce a choked noise in the back of my throat. I’d never heard this version of the creation of the Fae, of their purpose before the Sundering of the worlds.
“The ice wolves were not the only Gods to create Fae,” the sages go on. “Horned tygers and lions, white stags, eagles, carps, dragonflies, egrets, leopards... Each created a Clan, a House and gave it its particular magic to teach the humans, help them. Until the Great Wars we lived in relative peace. Until the Sundering and the reversal, we lived in harmony. May you live in that way of old with the King of the Diamond Court.”
Silence spreads.
“What do I have to do?” I whisper. This is so unlike anything I’ve ever experienced I don’t know what is expected of me. “What happens next? I thought I had to exchange vows with the king.”
“You will.” They part, and as they move away, the floor where they had stood starts to rise, the tiles seeming to melt and stretch like milk toffee, forming steps leading up to a small platform. I stare, my breath knocked out of me.
Magic, yes. I know it exists, I’ve seen small demonstrations of it, but never anything on this scale. Roots of crystal wind around the platform’s edges, stabilizing it, and patterns appear on its surface, golden veins in pale marble forming rounded blossoms and jagged stars.
“This is a mirror of the mountain behind us,” one of the sages says—impossible to tell who without the different eye color to distinguish them with—for the first part of the ceremony. “For the coronation we have to go up the mountain to the ancient altar.”
I’m standing there, frozen—literally, cold spreading into the room, an icy breeze blowing in from somewhere.
The king stands up from his throne and walks to the raised platform. His presence fills the hall, his tall, broad-shouldered stature, his aura, his authority rolling over everyone like waves. I shiver, feeling suddenly too hot. He’s such a powerful male, and it’s unbearably sexy. The swagger in his steps has me burning for him, aching between my legs.
My Wolf...
I remember the fear in his eyes, in his voice earlier today. Wolf is changing more and more, from the man I met to this king who keeps secrets and gives me cryptic answers. I gaze at him where he’s standing across from me, regal and handsome as a god in his royal finery, thinking that without it, even naked as the day he was born, he’d still look as regal and powerful.
Wolf. My Wolf.
“Turn into the wolf or you turn to ice.”
“Find the Firebird and set it free, her three weapons will aid thee. According to the truth in its eyes, you turn into the wolf, or you turn to ice. Pay attention to the tale in its world and ours.”
What does it mean? How can it be solved? Has Wolf found an answer but won’t tell it to me? Why? He’s no coward, no idiot, no weakling. If he’s scared, then something about that answer has to be terrible.
His crown catches the light from the chandeliers as he climbs the steps, the gems in it flaring, and once he is standing on top of the platform, he raises his hands, palms up.
The gems in his crown light up, glowing, as lights surround him, floating on the air, forming an arch over his head.
“We,” he says, his voice sonorous as he lowers his hands and beckons for me, “are the king of the Diamond Court and we welcome Princess Mina of the human world into our clan. If she accepts the invitation.”
Is he asking me to marry him again—officially this time? Or is this something else?
Confused, sure this wasn’t covered in the explanations given to me earlier about how the ceremony is supposed to go, I gather my skirts once more and start climbing the steps to the raised platform. It’s a little slippery under my feet and I have a moment of panic that I’ll fall and break a leg, when he reaches down and grabs my forearm, hauling me up to stand in front of him.
“Mina,” he whispers and I’m caught in his presence once more, his strength, his grace. He bends his head toward me. His elegant ears jut out of his hair, topped with golden jewelry in the shape of—what else?—claws gripping his flesh. I notice for the first time a wolf engraved on the front of the crown—was it there before? The diamonds set in the gold are still glowing, the lights floating around us like stars illuminating his pretty, uptilted eyes, his sharp cheekbones, his faint smile.
“Will you be one of us, one of the Ice Wolves of the Diamond Realm?” he asks softly and yet his voice thunders around the hall, echoing against the walls.
“Yes,” I whisper.
“Will you be my mate, bound to my eternal soul for all time?”
“Yes,” I whisper again.
“Will you become my queen to rule in my stead should I fail, to use my magic should it fails me?”
I stare at him. It all sounds ponderous and final, but rituals are supposed to sound like that, aren’t they? “Yes,” I breathe. “Yes, yes, yes.”
His gaze softens. “Do you accept me to be yours?”
“Mine in all things,” I say, “mine to love and to hold.”
“Your king,” he says, his smile deepening.
“That, too,” I say, breathless, not caring if I broke a protocol I don’t know. I’m vaguely aware of the courtiers and maybe other royals I haven’t been introduced to yet standing around, the servants and the footboys and the three sages watching us, but I don’t care. There’s just me and him right now on this magical platform, making promises for a future I never thought I’d get to plan. “My king, my husband, my mate.”
He brings a hand up to my face, brushes the pad of his thumb over my mouth. “Gods, you’re beautiful, my Firebird. Beautiful inside and out. I never thought I’d be so lucky.”
I swallow hard because I never thought that, either, though some rational thought from before tries to intrude into my almost drunken state of bliss. A tear rolls down my face, a tear of joy.
He wipes it off, lifts the droplet on his fingertip. It sparkles. He blows on it and it changes, growing multifaceted, expanding, stretching. The lights dancing over us start to spin around us, making me dizzy.
Torn between awe and a sort of dim horror—Fae magic, incomprehensible and dangerous, my upbringing says, a gift from the gods the three sages said, but which gods, are all gods the same?—I watch as my tear grows into a delicate crystal crown.
Raising it, he places it on my head. “My Queen,” he says, “queen of the Diamond Throne. Wear this token of your title until you receive the real crown.”
I incline my head, smiling. “Thank you, my king.”
Applause rises from the crowd around us, startling me. Wolf takes my hand and lifts it, raising his other hand to wave. Hesitantly I do the same.
Trumpets blare, drums beat. Music starts to play though I can’t see an orchestra. The lights are spinning more slowly now around us. They make our mother-of-pearl clothes shimmer, make Wolf’s eyes glow.
It all feels like a dream. I wave at the motley crew inside the throne room, happy and puzzled, calm and worried. Something is nagging at the back of my mind, strange clues, things he has said, things that don’t add up.
“Shall we?” Wolf says eventually and starts down the steps. He releases my hand and offers me his arms. I grip it gratefully, unsure of the slippery surface beneath my feet, glancing around at the joyful faces, a feeling of disconnect gripping me again. Fae faces with their high cheekbones and exotic eyes, their animal-like ears.
I feel weird. It’s as if something is shifting in me.
Fae with eyes all black like an animal’s, or slitted like a cat’s, Fae with goat feet under their long dresses or horns on their heads.
“Lesser Fae,” I whisper. “What are they doing here?”
“They’ve always been here,” he says. “They’re part of this world same as you and I.”
“I don’t remember seeing any before...”
“The glamour has been stripped from your eyes,” he says and there’s nothing gentle in his voice now. “You’re one of us. You made your decision. These are your people now, my Queen. Are they too hideous for you?”
“Wolf...” His eyes are wolf eyes, all amber and black, his canines long. I stare at him hard, almost missing the last step down. “What’s wrong?”
“Come with me.” He pulls me down the long carpet, between tall gangly Fae with frog faces and shorter ones with their feet facing backward, green Fae with antennae on their heads and iridescent wings on their backs, Fae with noses long like twigs and skin like the crackled bark of trees.
“Where are we going?”
“The coronation.” He says it like it’s self-evident and maybe it is—the sages had said something to that effect, hadn’t they?—but I’m still reeling from this new discovery of the Lesser Fae inside the palace, creatures I had only seen from afar the night I was struck down with the Fae-shot and fallen sick. A visceral terror has gripped me, even though I understand that they can’t touch me now, that I am...
... Fae.
That’s another thing I need time to digest and figure out. I wonder what else has changed about me apart from the fact that I can now apparently see through Fae glamour. Why would the Fae use glamour among themselves?
But Wolf is making a beeline for the door and his words finally sink in.
“The coronation? Now? We’re going on the mountain now, in the dark of night?”
“It’s paramount we do this before the Empress arrives,” he says.
I had forgotten all about her for a few precious moments. “But...”
“We need to crown you properly, make sure the magic takes. The Empress is a scorpion in the sand, a snake in the grass. We need to do this quickly before she catches wind of what is going on. She will not be pleased.”
“But I want to understand what this means, what I can do, what I need to know. Will cold iron hurt me? Will I be affected by the moon? Will be easily enthralled by riddles? Will I—?”
“Not now,” he snarls, striding out of the throne room, dragging me down a corridor, and then outside into the carriage yard of the palace. “No time.”
“Wolf, wait.” Gasping, I try to yank my hand free of his grip but it’s like steel. Nobody is beside us to ask for help. Wolf has never scared me before, not even when he had begun turning into a wolf.
He’s scaring me now.
A few stableboys are waiting there with saddled horses, tall, pale and willowy creatures that seem made to hide in the snow drifts. Wolf pulls me toward them. A few servants are standing on the side with light gray mantles and Wolf grabs one and releases me to put it around my shoulders.
“Please, talk to me, Wolf,” I whisper. “This isn’t like you.”
“And how well do you think you know me, wife?” He growls, and yeah, his canines are longer than before, his eyes like yellow moons. His words sink into my like knives.
“I know you.”
“You were human up until a few moments ago. You fell for my Fae wiles. I seduced you. Don’t you know, we are experts in seducing naïve human women and carrying them off to Faerie, to make them do our bidding.”
“What are you talking about?” I step back. “You would never do that, you would—”
He throws his head back and laughs. It’s jarring. It doesn’t sound like his normal rich, infectious laughter. “You have no idea of what I would or wouldn’t do.”
The terror is spreading through me. It can’t be... how wrong could my instincts prove to be? When the seneschal turned out to be a traitor, I was shocked that I’d thought him a good, ethical person—but Wolf? Everything we have gone through together was a lie? All the emotions I read in his eyes, in his voice, in his body... was I taken for a fool?
All the girls say the same thing: they had thought the man had loved them until he’d abandoned them. I had thought them stupid. Now I’m not so sure anymore... As Wolf grabs me and lifts me onto one of the horses and swings up behind me, his strong arms around me not to protect me but to stop me from escaping, I know that the favor he’s going to ask me is one I won’t like at all...