Swapped Bride: Awakening of the True Princess novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: The King at the Gate
King Torren expected Odile and accepts Marit under the treaty's wording; his steward drops a tray at her face.
The wagon crossed the ford with a Wildlands rider on each wheel.
Behind it, Casimir shouted until the river took his voice.
Marit did not look back.
She sat very straight on the bench with her veil in her fists.
She counted her breaths the way she had learned in a locked house.
In, hold, out.
The captain rode beside her, and when the bank was a hundred paces gone he spoke without turning his head.
"My orders were to bring the king's bride, my lady. I have not been told which bride."
"Your orders say a daughter of King Edric."
"They do."
"I am one."
He grunted, and she thought it might have been a laugh.
Stonefast stood on a gray cliff at the end of two days' ride, a fortress of black stone with wolf banners snapping from every tower.
Hundreds of people lined the courtyard in furs and leather.
Not one of them smiled.
Marit climbed down from the wagon on stiff legs.
She stood in the cold wind with the bridal veil still over her face.
A man came down the keep steps.
She knew he was the king before anyone bowed, because the whole courtyard went silent around him.
He was tall, broad in the shoulder, with black hair tied back and a dark wool coat open at the neck.
A pale scar ran through his left eyebrow.
He walked up to her slowly, like a man crossing a field he did not trust.
"Princess Odile," he said. "You are welcome to the Wildlands."
His voice was low and flat, and tired in a way she had not expected.
"Your Majesty," she said. "I am not Odile."
A ripple went through the crowd.
She reached up and lifted the veil herself, so no one else could do it for her.
The wind hit her face.
The king looked at her for a long, strange moment, and something moved behind his gray eyes that she could not name.
"Explain," he said.
"I am Marit Orsolen, King Edric's elder daughter."
"The treaty names the younger."
"The treaty names a daughter of King Edric, Your Majesty."
She had read it in the last life, three times, at night, hunting for a way to bring her sister home.
"It does not say which one, and it does not say the youngest."
The captain had gone very still behind her.
Torren Greymark's mouth tightened.
"Your father sent his younger girl. He wrote her name to me himself, in his own hand."
"Then my father lied to you about his daughter's name. He is not a man who tells the truth when a lie is cheaper."
A murmur ran around the yard.
Someone said a word in the old northern tongue, and someone else hushed him.
"Your sister," the king said. "Where is she?"
"Safe. She will stay safe."
"Did you hurt her?"
"I love her," Marit said. "That is why I am here."
She did not drop her eyes.
Her hands were shaking behind her skirts, but her voice was not.
A girl in a gray dress had come out of the keep with a heavy tray of bread and cups.
Behind her walked an old woman with white braids and a ring of iron keys.
The old woman stopped on the top step.
She looked at Marit's face.
Then the old woman snatched the tray and flung it away.
It hit the stones with a crash of metal.
Bread rolled.
Every head turned.
"Hild," the king said sharply. "What is the matter with you?"
The old woman did not answer.
She was staring at Marit with both hands pressed over her mouth, and tears were running down her lined cheeks.
"Her eyes," Hild whispered. "Gods. Look at her eyes."
"Hild."
"Nothing, Majesty." The old woman wiped her face with her sleeve. "Nothing. A woman my age sees ghosts."
She would not say anything more.
Marit felt the strangeness of it creep up her spine, but there was no time to ask.
The king had not taken his gaze off her.
"My clan council will tear this hall apart if I send you home," he said.
"My border will bleed if I do not wed the bride I was promised."
"Then wed the bride who came."
"And if you are a spy sent to open my gates?"
"Then lock me in a tower after the wedding and test me for a month."
He studied her.
"You are very bold for a girl who just crossed a river alone."
"I have been afraid for a long time, Your Majesty," she said. "I am done with it."
A gust whipped her loose hair across her face.
Torren Greymark stepped closer, and for the first time she smelled pine smoke and iron on him, and heard how quietly he breathed.
"You will wed me tonight, in front of my clans," he said.
"And if you have lied to me about anything, I will know by morning."
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