The Day I Married the Fire God, Three Brothers Regretted It novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Until You're Sure

Cast out by her brothers, Helia enters the dark Fire Palace; Phlegon refuses the marriage bed until she is sure and asks why she really came.

Aethon didn't speak until the hall emptied.

Then he stood over me with Myrrha's burned veil in his fist.

"You did this," he said. "You and your cripple. Look at her arms."

Myrrha sat on the dais steps with a cloth pressed to her shoulder, crying quietly.

Eous knelt beside her.

"Helia," she whispered. "I didn't know it would hurt me. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

I almost believed her.

I would have, once, and I would have run to fetch a healer.

"The altar chose," I said. "It isn't my fault it didn't choose her."

"Get out," Aethon said. "Take your husband and get out of my father's house."

"It's our father's house."

"It will be mine soon enough."

I looked for Lampos.

He stood at the back of the dais with his hands twisted in his sleeves.

He met my eyes for one breath, and then Eous said his name and he looked away again.

Phlegon had said nothing the whole time.

He leaned on his cane at my shoulder, and when I turned he offered me his arm.

"Do you want your things?" he asked quietly.

"My gown is ash. My crown is in the dust." I took his arm. "I want to leave before I say something I'll have to live with."

"Then we'll leave."

We did not take the cloud road.

The Fire God's carriage went north through the night, over the Ember Bridge, and the snow wind came up around us.

I had never once been cold in it.

I did not tell him that.

The Fire Palace stood on a black cliff above a frozen valley.

Nothing moved on its walls.

There were no torches in the courtyard and no smoke in the chimneys.

Inside, a single steward with a single lantern bowed to us and said the hall had not been warm in twenty years, so it would not be tonight.

Phlegon led me up a long stair to a bedchamber.

It had a huge bed with black hangings, an iron bath, and a hearth with no ash in it at all.

"This is yours," he said. "The couch by the window is mine."

"We are married," I said.

"We are married in front of the gods." He sat on the couch and set his cane across his knees. "I'll sleep here until you are sure."

"Sure of what?"

"That you came for yourself, and not to spite three brothers."

I stood in the middle of the room with his coat still hanging off my shoulders.

It was cold enough that my breath showed.

His did too.

His hands were white at the knuckles, and he was holding them very still on the cane.

"You're freezing," I said.

"I've been freezing for twenty years. I'm used to it."

I crossed the room and knelt in front of the couch.

I took his hands in mine.

They were stiff, and I felt him go rigid the second I touched them.

"Helia."

"Be quiet."

I held them between my palms and breathed on them.

Heat came out of me so easy that I'd never thought of it as anything.

His fingers loosened.

He closed his eyes.

"Your hands are warm," he said, very low, as if it hurt.

"They always are."

"Yes," he said. "I know."

I looked up.

He was looking at me.

It was not the careful way my brothers did, as if I might crack.

It was the way you look at a fire after a long road.

My heart was going so fast I could feel it in my wrists.

"You said I came to spite my brothers," I said.

"Didn't you?"

"I did. For about the length of the cloud road." I turned his hand over and pressed my mouth to the center of his palm.

His breath stopped.

"Then I saw you step down from that carriage," I said, "and I forgot I had brothers."

His hand curled slowly along my jaw.

His thumb moved across my lip, and every nerve I had went with it.

"Tell me why you really came," Phlegon said.

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