The Mate He Gave Away novel · Chapter 14 of 40

Chapter 14: The Wedding

I sat down at the servants' table.

I didn't make a face. I didn't look at the high table.

I smoothed the blue skirt over my knees and folded my hands.

The scullery girl across from me stared at me with her mouth open.

Then she leaned over the bread.

"Mistress Clem?"

"Hello, love. Is the cook still throwing ladles?"

She nodded hard. I'd counted her cook's flour every Monday for three years.

"They said you'd gone wild in the north," she whispered. "Living in a cave."

"It's a tower. Half a roof. The cook's terrifying. You'd like her."

The man beside her snorted into his ale. He was the under-baker. He used to carry my ledgers for me.

Down the table, the pot boy slid a cup of wine across to me.

Then a dish of the good eel, which they weren't meant to have.

By the time the wedding procession came in, I had a full plate and the whole servants' table on my side.

Ondine came down the hall on her father's arm.

She wore green silk sewn with a thousand tiny pearls.

The serpent brooch sat at her breast, its emerald eyes catching every candle.

My old circlet sat in her black hair.

Osric waited for her at the high table in black and gold, smiling his public smile.

Corvin stood at his right hand.

He wore his one good coat, plain black, and he looked like a man waiting for a hanging. His own.

The priest said the words.

Osric slid a ring onto Ondine's finger.

The hall cheered, and the hounds barked, and I clapped politely with the scullions.

Corvin's eyes found me once across the whole length of the hall.

I raised my cup to him a half inch.

His mouth moved. It wasn't quite a smile.

The feast went on for hours.

Swan. Venison. A sugar castle with a serpent coiled around the top.

I ate everything.

Near midnight Ondine rose with her cup, and the hall went quiet for its new queen.

"I'd like to thank everyone who came," she said. "Especially those who came a very long way."

She turned and looked straight down the hall at me.

Every head followed her eyes.

"Mistress Millward came all the way from the north to see my husband married. Three years she sat in my chair, and her belly never so much as fluttered."

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