After My Husband Abandoned Me, I Rule All Dragons novel · Chapter 31 of 32

Chapter 31: The Wedding

Wystan came down over the lake so fast the water peeled up in a sheet behind us.

By the time we reached the shore, it was over.

A naked boy of nineteen lay curled on the shingle, sobbing, wrapped in a student's cloak.

Kneeling beside him with her arms round him was the quarry girl.

She looked up at me.

Her face was wet, and her hands were shaking.

"He was in the grey boy's rounds all winter," she said. "He knew my voice. I didn't wait for anybody. I just went."

Behind her, on the Hold wall, forty students were standing in a row.

None of them had sung.

They'd left it to her.

"Was that right?" she asked me.

I couldn't answer for a moment.

"Yes," I said. "That was right."

Three weeks later, on the first day of summer, I married Wystan Hawksley on the shore of the black lake.

The whole Greyspine came.

The clans came down from every valley in their best furs.

The Wing came up from the south, all twenty of them, in blue and silver they'd sewn the clan colours into.

The prince came, in his plain wool coat, with dung on his boots from the morning.

The King sent a cart of wine and a letter I didn't read until the next day.

Dorrit stood up with me.

She'd let Bettris braid her hair, and she kept touching it.

Bettris stood up with her brother and cried before we'd even started.

The elder married us.

He stood on a rock by the water with his staff, and his son beside him.

He asked Wystan if he would keep me.

"No," Wystan said.

The whole shore went silent.

"Nobody keeps her," Wystan said. "I'll stand next to her. For as long as she'll have me there."

The elder looked at me.

"And you?"

"I'll call him back," I said. "Every time. Out loud."

Then the whole shore sang the pot song.

The clans and the Wing and the students and the grooms and the cooks.

Not for anyone burning.

Just to sing it.

At the feast, our cook put barley in everything, including, Dorrit swore, the cake.

The quarry girl danced with the boy from the lake.

The cowlick boy and the elder's son argued about who flew better and settled it by flying round the Voice Tower, drunk.

Bettris shot an arrow past both of them to make them land.

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