Page 24

If I gouged out her eyes with my fingernails like I desperately wanted to, I doubt I would get the information I needed.

“Lyra, darling, you look exquisite,” Cerilla purred as she stood before us.

Whatever look she saw on my face made her falter, just for a heartbeat, but I saw it.

She let out a disappointed sigh, before leaning in. To anyone else it might look like she was greeting a friend, but my teeth ached with the need to rip out her throat.

“Save me,” she said on a breath, so lightly that I could have imagined it.

But I didn’t miss the way her eyes flickered to the front of the crowd were Astaroth stood, before pulling away and greeting Helion.

Was Cerilla a pawn somehow, as well? Or was this haze poison confusing my senses.

Cerilla raised her hands above her head in a slow, elegant arch.

Her masked face snapped towards the ceiling. “I call to the soil that drinks blood and keeps secrets. To the ancient roots tangled beneath kingdoms. I am your daughter; let your power coil through me.”

Her eyes seemed to glow as she looked back at us, and an unsettling power pressed against my skin.

Helion drew a slow breath and adjusted his stance, the smallest fracture in his usual casualty. He looked unsettled. The man I had known had been amused and unshakable. A man who never faltered now stood before me with tension threaded through him, subtle but undeniable, and it made my stomach churn. He had chased this outcome. Yet standing before me, he looked like a man bracing for war.

“We are gathered here to today, in the domain of Astaroth to join the two wayward souls before me.” Her words echoed through the silent ballroom.

I wanted to scream. To draw blood. How dare she stand here and marry me to another man? My heart ached for Rythos, and the pain he must be feeling.

Will he know I married Helion?

Despite the emotions clawing at me, I stood, like a statue wrapped in finery and did not speak. As if watching my own life unfold from a distance.

“Helion, repeat after me.” Cerilla’s voice echoed through me and my heart rate betrayed the indifferent mask I wore.

“I share my life with the woman before me,” she intoned. “All that I am is now bound to her. All that I will ever become shall rise and fall with her breath.”

He repeated the words with a voice stripped of all amusement. It was deeper now. Grave, with a finality that stole my breath.

My stomach dropped so violently that I thought I might be sick.

The poison, I thought to myself. Am I running out of time?

“Lyra.”

My spine grew rigid.

The world wavered, but my fear was not of the ceremony. It was of the slow, deliberate destruction of my own heart. I was choosing this.

I was going to break my own heart. To give myself to someone I didn’t want, to save the one I did.

“I share my life with the man before me. All that I am is now bound to him. All that I will ever become shall rise and fall with his breath.” I murmured the words, but they seemed to wrap around my throat and threaten to cut off my air supply.

Cerilla reached for Helion’s hand, dragging a knife across his hand. He didn’t flinch, eyes never leaving mine.

She grabbed my hand, the same one that she had cut to bind me with Rythos.

The blade dug into the wound, tearing already broken skin, and I swallowed the urge to cry.

Not from the pain, but from the realisation that this was truly happening.

Our hands pressed together, our blood mingling, dripping like ink against the white floor.