Chapter Ten: The Wedding Vow

Right.

Okay.

What do I say?

I’d stopped listening a while ago, and it had a lot to do with the fact that the elder wasn’t speaking English.

The quietness in the hall gave way to low murmurs. Behind us, I could hear a few silent coughs. Varul–-who, by the way, had not said a single word to me since I walked down the aisle with two stoic guards flanking me on both sides—shifted a little on his feet. It was the most…human movement I’d noticed from him.

I pulled myself upright — or as upright as the corset allowed, which was extremely upright, it did have that going for it — and delivered what I hoped was the appropriate response to whatever had just been said, with the confidence of someone who absolutely knew what they were doing.

"Ai eth vareth, sol em brandur," I said.

I had no idea what that meant. I had constructed it phonetically from half the syllables I'd managed to catch in the last several minutes, and the rest was frankly invented. But I said it with complete conviction because conviction, in my experience, covered a multitude of gaps.

The elder blinked. The audience murmured louder.

Beside me, my groom stared straight ahead, jaw set, the picture of ceremonial composure. I had a feeling it would take a lot to faze a man like him.

The elder recovered himself and continued. More rolling, grave syllables. A pause. Then he turned to Varul, and the hall, already quiet, seemed to pull in a breath and hold it.

And Varul spoke.

I was not prepared. I’ve never been a sucker for deep voices, but wow. I now got what the fuss was about. My throat was suddenly dry. I swallowed.

He spoke the vow language with the ease of someone born to it. There was music in the velvet notes of his baritone.

The hall was absolutely, completely silent for every word.

I tried to focus my attention on the elder but I was acutely, involuntarily aware of every single thing happening in my own chest.

At the sound of a man’s voice. Ha! My inner cynic mocked me—and to be honest, I got her point.

Cold, I reminded myself. Rumoured patricide. Ranking number one on the kingdom's list of people you did not want to disappoint. The kind of man entire folk songs had been written about, according to Conny, and not the romantic kind.

So what if his voice did something catastrophic to my nether regions and made me want to swoon? It didn’t matter. He’s a murderer, Sigrun. A cold-blooded one.

I didn't think my silent pep talks were working, though.

*

After a few more painful vow exchange moments, the rings came near the end.

The elder presented them on a small ceremonial cushion — simple bands, silver, and identical. The elder spoke the words for this part more slowly, with the emphasis of the most significant portion of the rite, and I caught enough of it this time to understand the shape: binding, witness, irrevocable.

Varul turned to face me. It was like being hit in the solar plexus—his height, his scent, his lips, his eyes.

His deep-set eyes in direct light were actually dark brown. My cheeks heated with the way they trailed leisurely over my face, taking me in. His eyes swept down to the single piece of jewelry hanging on my neck, and they flared with an emotion I couldn't name.

Then, they trailed lower, over my tiny hint of cleavage and the ivory bodice of my dress. I wasn’t sure, but I thought I heard a growl. I felt heat wherever his eyes touched. By the end of his perusal, I was positive that I was on the verge of losing my mind—and the whole must have lasted not more than ten seconds.

Then, achingly slowly, he took my hand.

The frisson hit me so suddenly that I almost pulled my hand back — a jolt of something that ran clean from my finger up through my arm and into my sternum, sharp and strange, like touching a doorknob in winter except nothing like that at all.

I went still.

Varul's hand also stilled. I wondered if he felt it too.

His fingers were warm and hard. Much larger than mine, which I had known intellectually and still managed to find startling in practice. The rings on his right hand were cool where they briefly grazed my wrist. He held my hand with the particular carefulness of someone who was aware of their own strength and had made a considered decision about how much of it to apply.

I had sudden flash visions of those hands, torturing my body in the most sensuous places. Heat pooled low in my belly. What the hell?

His eyes held mine as though he could tell exactly what I was thinking. I thought I caught the hint of a smirk on his full lips, but I couldn't be sure.

He slid the ring onto my finger and paused, the pads of his fingers circling my wrist in a way I could only describe as…possessive.

One beat. Two.

Then he released my hand. Faced forward. And the spell was broken. The hall seemed to come back alive again. Or maybe it was just me.

I risked a glance at him. He'd gone back to his default stoic setting. Okay...Did I just imagine the entire thing? Have I gone crazy? Maybe I have.

The elder continued.

I stared at the ring now sitting on my finger, silver and warm and settled there as though it had been waiting to be placed, and tried to attribute the lingering electricity in my hand to static, or nerves, or the general atmospheric instability of this strange world.

I kept my eyes forward and my face composed and my hand very still at my side, and I did not think about his voice again for the remainder of the ceremony.

Not successfully. But I tried.

Our wedding night was going to be…interesting.