Chapter 5: The Wedding

Lyra and Dorian were married nine days after the Moon Rite, in the Merrow lodge, under a ceiling of white lilies.

My father insisted on it.

He said a wedding would settle the pack after the shock of the Rite.

He sat in the front row in his good suit, gray in the face, with a cough he kept hiding in his handkerchief.

I sat across the aisle from him, next to Ronan.

Ronan wore a dark suit that was slightly too tight across the shoulders.

He had said, in the truck, that Wynn picked it out.

He had not said anything else all morning, and he had not touched me.

I had noticed that. I had noticed it about nine hundred times.

The fever had faded after three nights, the way Wynn promised.

The wanting had not.

It sat low in my body and hummed whenever he moved.

Lyra came down the aisle in white lace, glowing.

She looked so happy that for a second I forgot.

Then I heard her.

Look at them all. Look at what I get. The lodge, the seat, the husband, and she gets to go live in a hole in the woods.

I bit the inside of my cheek.

At the altar Dorian held her hands and smiled into her eyes.

The vows were pretty. He said "I will cherish you" with perfect warmth.

Underneath it ran his real voice, dry and bored.

The first dose tonight. A week and the old man is in his bed. Make it look like grief.

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