The Abandoned Vampire Bride Walked Away novel · Chapter 9 of 24
Chapter 9: What the Ring Was For
Nobody in the garden moved.
"Verrin," the Lord said, and his voice was dangerous. "You are not welcome on my land."
"Your land is where your son is dying," Darian said. "I would think you would want a witness."
He walked past the Lord, across the flagstones, and stopped beside the stone bench.
He looked down at Alaric, who stared up at him with glassy eyes.
"You do not know what it is, do you?" Darian said.
"What what is?"
"The ring you put on her finger."
Alaric's mouth worked.
"It's a pledge. It's an old custom. A promise."
"It is a shield."
The word dropped into the garden.
I looked at the Lord.
He was looking at the ground.
"Born vampires of the old Houses cannot walk in daylight," Darian said. "Your family has hidden that for three hundred years. You would be ash by noon on a clear day."
"I walk in the sun every day," Alaric said.
"Because your bride says yes."
I felt cold from my scalp to my heels.
"A pledge bride gives her blood and her word," Darian said, turning to me. "Not only once. Every day she lets it stand, her willingness feeds the shield. She waits, she yields, she says yes, and the sun cannot burn the man who wears her ring."
"That's not true," Alaric said.
"On her birthday you stood in the noon glare without a hat," Darian said. "Yesterday you could not stand at your own gate. Tell me what changed."
Alaric said nothing.
I looked at his raw hands and thought of every car and every sunny window and every time he'd said *sit on the sunny side, Ro.*
Every time he'd held my hand.
"My yes," I said. "You needed my yes."
"I didn't know," Alaric whispered.
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