Chapter 14: The cherimony
The weight of the silver collar was still a new sun in my sky, its presence a cool orbit around every thought. It was the next morning, and the Cheriminy Room swam in a haze of gold. Sunlight poured through the high windows, striking the lapis lazuli mosaics so they glittered like a captive river. Angela lounged on her ebony throne, a scroll half-unrolled in her lap, but her attention wasn’t on the papyrus. It was on us.
Marisa stood by the great lyre, her fingers not plucking the strings but tracing the curve of the wood. She was already adorned in the silver diadem, a slash of moonlight in the daytime room. She watched me, a silent, knowing curve to her mouth.
“Benedetta.” Angela’s voice was idle, the way one might comment on the weather. “The gold no longer suits your station. It conflicts with the silver.”
I knew what was coming. A cold fist clenched in my stomach, then melted into a strange, liquid acceptance. This was the next unfurling of the truth. “Yes, Divine One.”
“Remove it. All of it.” She gestured with a lazy flick of her wrist. “Give it to Marisa. A First Hand should carry the wealth of her household.”
The words were a sentence. The courtly ceremony was over; this was the private execution. My fingers, which felt thick and clumsy, went first to the heavy golden bands on my upper arms. They were warm from my skin. The clasp of each was a tiny, intricate puzzle I had to solve under their combined gaze. The silence was broken only by the distant cry of a hawk and the soft rustle of Angela settling deeper into her throne.
The first band came free. I held it, the metal suddenly alien. I crossed the sun-warmed tiles and stood before Marisa. Her eyes were bright, sharp with an intelligence that missed nothing. She extended her hand, palm up. Not demanding. Expecting.
I placed the band in her palm. It looked different there—smaller, yet more significant.
“Thank you, Bella,” she said, her voice a low hum. The old nickname, once a casual endearment, now felt like a brand.
I returned to the center of the room, the empty space on my arm feeling vast and vulnerable. The ankle bracelets were next. I had to sit on the edge of a low marble bench to reach them. I bent, my linen sheath pulling tight, and fumbled with the delicate chains. Each delicate chime they made as I worked them loose was an announcement of my diminishing self. Off. Off.
I carried them over, the chains pooling in my hand like liquid sun. Marisa took them, her fingers brushing mine. A spark, intentional.
“Lovely,” she murmured, as if appraising a merchant’s wares.
Back to the bench. The rings. Each finger had one, each toe. The process became a slow, meticulous undoing. A stripping away of a former life, jewel by jewel. The broad marriage of gold to my skin was severed, leaving behind pale bands of untouched flesh. I felt absurd, kneeling there, plucking rings from my toes under the Empress’s emerald gaze. Heat climbed my neck, but it was a complex flame—part shame, part a desperate, wild surrender to the ritual.
I gathered the final pieces, a small, heavy heap of vanity in my cupped hands. I approached Marisa for the last time. She was waiting, her posture easy, one hip cocked. The silver at her brow and at my throat were siblings, but the meaning was a canyon between us.
I emptied my hands into hers. The gold spilled and chimed, a discordant, beautiful sound.
She didn’t look at it. She looked at me. Her smirk was gone, replaced by something more contemplative, more absolute. She hefted the wealth, then let it slide with a careless clatter onto a nearby alabaster table. The sound was violently loud in the quiet room.
“Come here,” she said, not unkindly.
I took a step closer. She reached out and took my bare wrist, turning my hand over. Her thumb stroked the pale circle where the heaviest ring had been. “So unmarked,” she observed. Her touch was proprietary. Clinical. It sealed the transaction.
I damned myself. I damned myself for the flush that followed her touch, for the way my eyes wanted to avoid Angela’s but couldn’t, for the stark, naked feeling that wasn’t entirely horror. It was cleanliness. It was poverty. It was truth.
Angela uncoiled from her throne. The scroll was forgotten. She moved like a great cat through the sunbeams until she stood before us. She looked from Marisa’s collected hoard to my empty hands, to the collar on my neck. A slow, deep smile touched her lips, the kind that spoke of a complex plan perfectly realized.
“Better,” she pronounced. The single word echoed off the lapis walls. “Now there is no confusion. No false pretense.” She touched the silver at my throat, her nail tapping it once, lightly. A bell without a sound. “The metal you wear is the only one that matters. It speaks for me. It speaks for her.”
She turned and walked back to her throne, the moment of intimacy severed. “Marisa, have the gold melted down. Commission something new for yourself. A pectoral, perhaps. Something that reflects your refined taste.”
“Of course, Divine One,” Marisa said, her voice smooth as oiled silk.
I stood, unadorned, in the pool of sunlight. My body felt strangely light, almost insubstantial. The absence of the gold was a louder presence than its weight had ever been. Every glance at my own hands would remind me. Every step without the whisper of chain at my ankle would proclaim it.
Marisa brushed past me, her shoulder gently meeting mine. She paused, leaning in. Her breath was warm against my ear, her words for me alone, a secret sequel to last night’s vow.
“See?” she whispered, her tone impossibly gentle, impossibly cruel. “Now you carry nothing but my mark. Isn’t that simpler?”
She moved away, gathering the gold into a cloth with efficient, graceful motions. I was left standing there, the gilded room seeming to press in on my newfound bareness. Angela had returned to her scroll, but I could feel the satisfaction radiating from her like heat from a stone.
The silence stretched, filled with the hum of my own blood, the ghost of gold on my skin, and the undeniable, cooling weight of silver that now defined the borders of my life.