They lace me into a gown the colour of a bruise, and I bite down on the sound that wants to rise from my throat. The fabric is silk, yes, but silk pulled from shadows, shot through with a dull sheen that only reveals itself when torchlight flickers. The seamstress keeps her eyes lowered as she tightens the stays, as if my spine were a hinge she is afraid to break.
"Breathe," she whispers, and I do, though the breath catches on the sharp ridge of a thought: I am being dressed for the slaughter.
The mirror in front of me is no simple glass. Nothing in the Crimson Court reflects without a reminder. Its surface has been steeped in moonlight and bathed in blood, so when I look, I see more than myself. My face, twenty-four and pale from sleepless nights stares back, then flickers, as if another self stands just behind me, waiting to take my place.
I hold my chin steady. "Enough," I say, and the seamstress scurries back, hands pressed together in a quick, fervent prayer.
Aunt Mara comes to stand at my shoulder, carrying the veil folded over her arm. It is long, heavy, trailing like a funeral shroud. When her eyes meet mine in the mirror, they shine with unshed tears and the brittle sharpness of bargains struck in desperation.
"You look… strong," she says softly. "Strength will be required."
"No," I reply, bitter as iron. "Only silence. The contract requires that."
Her mouth tightens, but she does not argue. She knows the terms. We all do. The Lex Tenebrae hangs in the antechamber on black parchment nailed with silver pins. I have read it until the words coiled in my skull like serpents.
I marry Castiel, King of the Crimson Court, before the Oathstone.
My brother will be freed.
Our village spared.
The levies withdrawn.
Any failure voids the covenant, and the Court will take blood in place of coin. It doesn't say whose blood. It doesn't need to.
My blonde hair has been braided into a crown so heavy my scalp throbs beneath it. The veil will drag on the ache until the pain is a map across my skull. Small things. I catalogue them to keep from thinking of Elias, chained in the cell beneath this palace, wrists raw where the irons gnawed him with every tug.
He is twenty-three and has our father's hands; hands that fix broken things. Two months ago, he tried to mend a border gate after the storm came early—silver rain and black wind that stripped the trees bare. The lashes were supposed to be ceremonial.
The vampires of the Court do not perform ceremony. They do cruelty as if it were ritual. Thirty strokes for stepping too near the border line. Twenty more for speaking in defence of the coughing children he carried. They broke him because they couldn't break the storm.
And I offered them something else to break.
A knock at the door makes me jump. Two guards melt from the shadows, their pale eyes unblinking, their movements too smooth to be human. Their armour glimmers faintly, dulled silver etched with the sigils of their lord. Fangs catch the light when they incline their heads.
"Lady Temperance," one says, voice smooth as ice. "The King's Hand awaits. The Crimson Court is assembled."
The corridor beyond is a cavern of dark stone polished until it gleams. High vaults are painted with constellations that no longer shine in the sky. Tapestries whisper as we pass, woven with hunts and feasts, their threads shifting as if alive. The air tastes faintly of copper and roses left too long in the vase.
At the southern stair, the King's Hand waits. His name is Varus, and his face is carved with care, but worn thin by centuries of service and yet, appears no older than forty. His hair dark brown, though his eyes remain quick, sharp, and searching. A ring of bone sits on his thumb, carved with the sigil of binding.
"Lady Temperance," he says, bowing his head. Courtesy, a shield he extends to us both. "Before we descend, the king requires me to examine the seal."
The mark lies under the skin at the base of my throat, a thin crescent of cooled fire. It shows itself when summoned, a reminder that my silence is not choice, but law.
"Observe, then," I say.
Varus murmurs a word, half breath, half command. Heat stirs beneath my collarbone, then cools into a shimmer of light. A faint crescent glows briefly, etched into my flesh before fading back into skin.
"Intact," Varus says quietly. His eyes soften for a heartbeat, and then harden again. "Are you ready?"
"Readiness is a word people use when they want to pretend they chose," I answer.
He inclines his head. "Sometimes it is that. Sometimes it is the only thing you own."
"Then yes," I whisper.
We descend.
The southern stair is long enough for doubt to grow wings, but mine do not. I count each step and name them like prayers: Elias. Mother. Father. The river at thaw. The pear tree in our garden that never bloomed without bruising itself.
The Hall of Ember swallows us whole.
It earns its name from the light that smoulders in the walls. Glowstone veined with old fire, never fully quenched. The floor is obsidian streaked with pale veins that gleam faintly red, as if lit from beneath by embers. High balconies ring the chamber, filled with courtiers draped in dark splendour. Their skin is pale as frost, their eyes too sharp, too hungry. Whispers ripple through the hall like dry leaves in wind.
At the centre waits the Oathstone: a slab of pale granite, veins running through it like dried blood.
The priest of the Covenant stands nearby. His skin is parchment pale, his eyes filmed, and when they clear, they are the bright amber of a predator.
"Lady Temperance," he intones. "Do you come to bind of your own will?"
The question is a formality, but still dangerous.
"My will is my family," I say steadily.
The priest's thin mouth curves faintly. "An answer old as rain."
The great doors swing open.
The sound in the hall dies in a rush, and silence blooms like frost on a window.
Castiel, King of the Crimson Court, enters without crown or fanfare.
He doesn't need them.
Some men inherit thrones. Some men are thrones, and the world bends itself to their presence.
Tall, sharp-lined, and clothed in a coat stitched with sigils of silver thread, Castiel moves like a shadow that chose to take form. His hair is black as midnight, his eyes the colour of dusk over still water. When he passes beneath the braziers, the flames bow lower. He doesn't look much older than twenty-something, but I know he's far older than that. Much older.
And though I loathe him, though I should think only of Elias and the chains breaking beneath this bargain, my pulse stumbles as if my body recognises something my mind refuses.
He ascends the dais, and when his gaze sweeps the court, it stills them utterly. When it touches me, it lingers.
I keep my chin high and do not look away.
"Proceed," he says, and even his voice carries hunger.
The priest cuts my palm. Blood spills bright, stark against pale stone. It seeps into the veins of the Oathstone, and faint red light flares beneath my hand.
"Speak," the priest orders.
I recite the covenant. My voice does not waver. My name echoes across the chamber, carried into every listening ear.
Castiel offers his hand without hesitation. The cut made in his flesh bleeds darker, slower. His blood joins mine upon the stone, and when our hands are pressed together, the binding takes hold.
Heat shudders through me, a pulse like a second heartbeat. The Oathstone hums. The veins blaze crimson. Something ancient and sharp threads between us, weaving bone to bone, blood to blood.
Not romance. Not choice. Geometry, completed.
Still… it feels like recognition.
When I pull back, the cut is gone, the skin whole. But I can feel him in me now, a shadow coiled beneath my pulse.
The priest lifts the bowl of mingled blood and pours it into the brazier. A hiss. Smoke curls upward, shaping briefly into a ring before dissolving.
"The fire remembers," he declares. "So too must the courts."
The hall exhales as one.
Castiel steps close, lowering his head until only I can hear him.
"Your brother is free."
The words almost undo me. Almost.
I do not fall. I incline my head. "By your law."
"By our law," he corrects, and I feel Varus tense beside me.
The murmurs of the court swell, scandal and intrigue rippling through the balconies.
I force myself to stand still, though every part of me screams to run to the western door where Elias appears, pale and staggering, chains freshly broken.
"Temp—" he breathes, and my heart cracks.
I go to him, veil trailing, the whispers of vampires following like smoke. I kneel, cupping his bruised face through the fabric. He laughs once, raw and desperate.
"You always look like trouble," he rasps.
"You always are," I whisper back, before the guards take him to the healers.
When I rise, Castiel is watching. His eyes are fathomless, but I know, with a certainty that chills me, that he has added this moment to a ledger.
Not of debts. Of proofs.
The marriage vows are spoken, the Oathstone sealed. The court erupts in applause, the sound like a thousand wings.
Castiel leans closer, his breath cool as night.
"Walk with me," he murmurs.
And though my pride burns, I walk.