Chapter 5: The Bloodstained Vows
The bath was a hurried, lukewarm affair in a cramped, stone alcove. Servants she didn’t know scrubbed her skin with rough cloths until it tingled, the scent of harsh soap overwhelming the last traces of lavender from the tent. Before her hair was fully dry, they dragged her from the water and wrapped her in a sheet.
“There is no time, your highness,” a stern woman with pinched lips said, not looking at her as she spoke.
The gown they forced her into was indeed white silk, but it was not hers. It was cut in the severe Caerwyn style, high-necked and sleek, with none of the delicate embroidery she loved. It felt like a uniform. They pulled her damp hair into a tight, formal knot at the nape of her neck, securing it with cold silver pins that bit her scalp. No jewels. No veil. Just the stark white and her own pale face staring back from a polished steel mirror, a stranger’s face.
“The king waits,” the woman said, and it was not an invitation.
They didn’t lead her; they marched her. Through a labyrinth of cold, torch-lit corridors where the air smelled of damp stone and old smoke. Her soft slippers whispered against the flags, the sound swallowed by the imposing silence. The two guards flanking her wore the same expression as Finn had in the tent: a deliberate, practiced blankness.
The chapel doors were iron-bound oak, scarred and blackened. They swung open without a sound.
The chill hit her first. It was a deep, marrow-cold that the few guttering candles did nothing to dispel. The air was still and smelled of extinguished wax and dusty incense. The soldiers of Caerwyn stood packed along the walls, a forest of crimson tunics and hard eyes. Their faces were lean, weathered from campaign. They watched her enter with a flat, assessing curiosity that felt more invasive than any stare at court. A handful of nobles stood nearer the front, their finery somber, their expressions like carved stone.
And at the end of the short aisle, on the bare stone before a plain altar, stood Gareth.
He was not in ceremonial robes. He wore his full plate armor, the steel dark and dull, still bearing the scuffs and dents of recent use. In the shaky candlelight, she could see the darker patches in the crevices, clotted in the joints of the elbow and knee. Dirt, she told herself. Mud. But as she drew closer, her steps slow and measured, the truth resolved. It was dry, flaking brown. The blood of her people, of the men who had fought under her father’s banners at the border. It was on his hands.
The bishop, an old man with a voice like dry parchment, began to speak. The words of the ceremony were ancient, rolling through the vaulted space, but they meant nothing. They were just sounds. Her eyes were fixed on Gareth’s left gauntlet, where a particular dark stain smudged the knuckle. Was it from a swordsman he’d cut down? A boy from a village her family had sworn to protect? Her stomach turned.
She heard her name. “Aurelia of Valenne.”
She looked up. Gareth was watching her. From within the helm of the king who had broken her father’s lines, his eyes were just visible, dark pools reflecting the candle flames. He had not removed it for his wedding. The message was as clear as his silence on the road.
The bishop prompted her. “Do you swear to bind your life to his, in peace and in war, from this day until your last?”
The words stuck in her throat. The chapel held its breath. The silence stretched, thin and sharp as a blade’s edge. Her mother’s voice was a scream in her memory. They only want your body. This was the transaction, laid bare on an altar stone. She opened her mouth, but no sound came.
Gareth moved.
With a soft, metallic scrape, he reached out. He didn’t touch her arm or her shoulder. His gauntleted hand enveloped hers, the metal surprisingly warm from his skin. The grip was firm, steadying, not restraining. It was the same hand that had rested on her stomach in the innocent warmth of dawn, now caked in the evidence of his profession. The contact sent a jolt through her, a confusing surge that was part revulsion, part something else entirely—a recognition of the raw, unvarnished reality of him.
His eyes never left hers. In their depths, that flicker again—not triumph, not impatience. It looked like a question. Or an acknowledgment of the grotesque theater they were enacting.
The words unlocked. “I do,” she said, her voice clear and strangely calm in the vast quiet.
He didn’t let go of her hand.
When the bishop pronounced them bound, Gareth finally released her. His hands came up, the heavy gauntlets cradling her face with a deliberate, shocking care. He tipped her face up. The metal was cool at her jaw, rough with grit and stain. He bent, the armored brow of his helm brushing her forehead.
He kissed her.
It was not the claiming kiss she had braced for. His lips were gentle, almost searching. But the taste was of cold iron and the salt of dried sweat, and beneath it, the faint, coppery hint of blood. It lasted only a moment. A seal. A branding.
As he straightened, the soldiers erupted. The cheer was a raw, explosive sound that boomed off the stone, a victory roar that shook the candle flames. It was the sound of a conquest ratified.
Gareth turned, lifting a hand to his men, his armor gleaming in the chaotic light.
Lia stood perfectly still, the taste of iron and salt on her tongue, the ghost of his steadying grip on her hand, the crushing weight of the blood between them now a chain she had willingly clasped.