Taming the Thorny Rose novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: The Wedding
She weds the king at dusk before a hostile court and bites his lip in answer to the kiss; on the wedding night she raises a dagger over him.
They married me at dusk in a cathedral with no windows.
Candles burned along the walls, thousands of them, and every pew was full.
The Night Court had come to watch the Thorn get leashed.
I walked the aisle in a black gown that someone had cut to fit me overnight.
My thorned wire was gone from my belt, and so was my braid's silver pin.
Astrid had sewn the gown's last seam while I stood on a stool and said nothing.
She was twenty-six, short and stubborn, and she had volunteered to come with me.
"I'll be your maid," she'd said.
"The Guild gets a pair of eyes inside the keep, and you get someone who isn't a vampire."
Now she stood at the back with the other humans, her face tight.
I kept walking.
Aldric waited at the altar in black, with the burn on his palm wrapped in white linen.
He watched me come the whole way and didn't smile once.
Beside the altar stood a thin man with silver streaks in his hair and a long black coat.
He looked about forty-five, and his pale blue eyes were pleased.
"The king's uncle," Astrid had whispered in the dressing room.
"Osric Venn.
"Six hundred and forty years old.
"He runs the court when the king doesn't."
Osric bowed to me as I reached the steps.
"The Thorn," he said softly.
"What a lovely thing to see you in a gown.
"Are you armed under it?"
"Not yet," I said.
His smile widened.
The priest was a vampire so old his skin looked like paper.
He spoke the vows in a language I didn't know, and Aldric repeated them without a pause.
Then he turned to me and said it plainly, in mine.
"Kestrel Harrow, I take you as my wife and my queen.
"I will not break your treaty.
"I will not lie to you in this house."
I didn't believe a word of it.
"Your turn," he said, so quietly only I heard.
I looked at the hundreds of faces behind me.
I thought of three thousand people waiting under the stars in Ashby Cross.
"I take you," I said, "because I have to."
The court murmured.
Osric made a small, delighted sound.
"Honest," said Aldric.
"I'll take it."
The priest bound our wrists with a black ribbon.
"You may seal the vow," he said.
Aldric stepped close.
He was a head taller than me, and he smelled like cold stone and clean winter air.
He put one hand under my jaw.
I hadn't been touched by a man in two years.
I hated that my skin noticed.
"Look at me," he said.
I did.
His eyes were grey as a river in storm light, and they weren't cruel.
That made me angrier than anything else had.
He kissed me.
It was slow and careful, and his mouth was cool, and then it wasn't.
Something low in my stomach pulled tight.
So I bit his lower lip, hard enough to draw blood.
The court gasped.
Aldric went completely still.
A drop of his blood, dark as wine, ran down his chin.
I thought the guards would drag me out and the treaty would burn.
Instead the corner of his mouth moved.
He wiped it with his thumb and looked at the red on his skin.
"Good," he said.
Then he turned to the crowd and raised my bound hand.
"My queen," he announced.
The cathedral thundered with clapping.
I stood in it, shaking, with the taste of him in my mouth.
I had been trained for eleven years to hate that taste.
It tasted like cold iron and something sweeter underneath.
They fed me at a long table, and I ate nothing.
They danced, and I stood by a pillar.
Osric toasted the king's good fortune three times, and each time he looked at my throat.
Later Astrid took me up a spiral stair to a bedchamber the size of my whole house.
A great bed stood in the middle, hung with black velvet.
A fire burned in the grate.
"There's a dagger under the left pillow," she said quietly, and checked the door.
"Silver.
"I put it there myself.
"Crane's orders."
"Crane doesn't give orders in this house," I said.
"He gives them to me," said Astrid.
"And you know what they are."
She squeezed my hand and left.
I stood alone in my wedding gown, listening to the keep breathe.
At midnight the door opened, and Aldric came in without knocking.
He closed it behind him and leaned against it.
For a moment neither of us spoke.
I took the dagger from under the pillow and crossed the room.
He didn't step away.
I pushed him back onto the edge of the bed, put my knee on his thigh and raised the blade over his heart.
He looked up at me in the firelight.
Then he opened his shirt with one hand.
"Go on," said the vampire king.
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