The Dragon God's Bride Asked for a Divorce novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Denied
She wakes alive on a lake floor, hands the dragon god her written divorce request, and he says 'Denied. Try again tomorrow.' She runs for the surface and he catches her: 'The last one cried.'
The dragon god read Shizuku's divorce request twice, and then he said, "Denied. Try again tomorrow."
She had written it herself, in his own palace, with his own brush.
He held the paper between two fingers, each tipped with a claw as long as her thumb.
He looked at it.
"Denied?" Shizuku said.
"Denied."
"You haven't even read the grounds."
"I read the grounds. 'One, I did not agree to this.' Two is about the cooking."
"I can't cook underwater."
"Then the cooking is a fair point." He set the paper on the arm of his throne. "It is still denied."
Shizuku needed a moment to remember how she had come to be standing in a drowned bridal kimono in front of a god, asking for a divorce.
That morning the village had thrown her into the lake.
They did it at dawn, on the stone jetty, with the whole village of Kuramizu watching in their good clothes.
It was the fifteenth year, and every fifteenth year the village owed the dragon god a bride.
If the bride went into the lake, the villagers said, the rains would come and the water would stay in its banks.
The village drew straws to choose her.
Shizuku drew the short one.
Nobody was surprised.
She was Shizuku Hanamura, twenty years old, with a face as broad and flat as a rice paddle.
Everyone in that crowd had known for years which girl they would be sorry about the least.
Her uncle Danjuro, the village headman, tied the white sash round her waist himself.
His hands were warm and quick and dry.
"Be brave, Shizuku," he said, in his sweet voice. "Your father would be proud."
Behind him her cousin Chiyo was screaming while two aunts held her arms.
Shizuku didn't scream.
She looked at the lake, flat and grey, with the sun coming up behind the mountain.
I am not going to give them that, she thought.
Then somebody pushed, and the cold closed over her head.
She woke on a floor of black stone, breathing.
A pearl the size of a plum hung on a silk cord at her throat, and it was warm.
As long as it stayed on her, the water went in and out of her chest.
The hall around her was as big as the village temple.
Lamps of glowing pearl hung in the water, and long silk banners drifted in a current she couldn't feel.
At the far end, on a dais, something huge was coiled around a throne.
She saw white scales shot through with jade.
She saw a gold eye the size of a cartwheel open and look at her.
Then the whole shining length of it folded in on itself, and where it had been there stood a man.
He was very tall, and his silver-white hair fell to his waist.
Two pale jade horns curved back from his brow, and his gold eyes had pupils like slits of black.
A long jade-green tail trailed behind him down the steps.
He was the most beautiful thing Shizuku had ever seen, and she wanted to hit him.
"You're awake," he said. "Good. You have been asleep three hours. I have been trying to think how to say this."
"Say what?"
"Welcome. I think. It has been fifteen years since the last time."
"I need ink," Shizuku said.
His brows rose a little.
"I beg your pardon?"
"A brush, a stick of ink, and paper. I'm going to write something down."
He looked at her for a long moment.
Then he clapped his hands.
A plump old woman in orange robes swam out of a doorway with a lacquer writing box.
She wore a smile Shizuku did not trust.
That was how the request got written.
Now the god stood over her with it in his hand, and Shizuku found out he was a head and a half taller than she was.
"Why do you want a divorce?" he asked. "We have been married for four hours."
"Because I was thrown in a lake. I don't recall saying yes."
"No one says yes."
"Then it's an easy thing to deny, isn't it? I'd like to go home."
"Home," he said, as if testing the word for rot.
He put one finger under her chin and tipped her face up.
His hand was warm.
She hadn't expected that.
His thumb moved across her lower lip and stopped on a split place she hadn't known was there.
"You bit it through when they dropped you," he said. "You didn't cry out. I was listening."
Heat went through her so fast that she forgot to be angry.
"Let go of my face."
"Of course."
He did not let go.
Something slid warmly around her ankle, and Shizuku looked down to find a jade-green tail coiled twice around it, light as a hand.
"That's also not allowed," she said.
"Is it?" he said. "Nobody has told me the rules."
She stepped back, and the tail went with her.
So she did the only thing she could think of.
She turned and ran for the nearest tall window and kicked off the floor with everything she had.
The water was cold and wide and full of light.
She swam up, up, past the carved roof and the drifting banners.
The pearl bounced on her chest, and the surface was a bright wobbling coin somewhere above.
She was going to make it.
Then a band of green wrapped around her waist, soft as a cat, and the whole lake reversed.
She was pulled backward through the water and into a hard, warm chest.
His arms closed over her shoulders.
She could feel his heart going, slow and heavy, against her back.
His mouth was beside her ear.
"Day one," the dragon god said. "You tried to leave. Good."
"Good?"
"The last one cried."
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