Inherit the Flame

Chapter Fifty

The weird thing was, Thratia didn’t even try to slip anything untoward into the marriage contract. The wording was as straightforward as you could get – the usual bindings of house and fortune, the special paragraphs detailing the split rule of Hond Steading, and how the last word ultimately fell to the blooded heir – Detan himself.

He thought it strange, until he realized the actual wording was pointless. The whole thing was a farce, anyway. She’d label him dangerous or mentally unstable – or both – first chance she got and ship him off for Aella to play with. Or worse, Ranalae. He really didn’t like the way Thratia was looking at him after his slip with the firemount. Like he was a wildfire that needed to be snuffed, and fast.

The marching music, as he thought of it, struck up, and he was proud of himself for not trembling as he took Thratia’s arm in his. Thratia wore flame red, her hair piled with vicious pins, and she’d gone ahead and stuck him in the same charcoal-and-ember style she’d filled his wardrobe with, if cut a little tighter and a little fancier for the occasion. Maybe she didn’t much like the truth about his power, but she was willing to flaunt it, for now. He thought he looked ridiculous, but then he figured even at a normal wedding the groom wouldn’t have much say in his attire.

Servants pulled the doors. They stepped into the hall. Detan’s breath caught as he took in what his auntie had done for this day, for him. She didn’t know his plans. Didn’t know that he still held out hope that he’d figure out a way to wriggle free of Thratia’s stranglehold. All she knew was her nephew was getting married, and to the pits with the reasons or the bride. She’d decorated the hall like she meant it and, in her own strange way, he knew she was telling him she loved him. Maybe even that she was sorry.

The long aisle to the altar was as red as Thratia’s dress, making her seem omnipresent, somehow. As if she could reach out and control the whole of the room with only a thought. Detan put a little saunter into his walk, because why the pits not, it was his wedding, after all, and escorted his evil little bride down the aisle with the fakest grin he’d ever mustered in his life.

The crowd was silent, polite, whispering behind their hands if they talked at all. All eyes were on him, on Thratia, and there was a tension in the room – a thickness that crawled over his skin.

He found the source in the little grey dots breaking up the guests, members of Thratia’s militia in their uniform best, but their uniforms all the same. No doubt the only people allowed weapons in the entire building tonight. Aside from Detan himself, anyway. He could never truly be denied his power. Not now that he knew the injections did not work on Aella.

Halfway down the aisle, he almost tripped.

Ripka. Ripka and that blonde-haired woman he’d last seen her with at the Remnant were in the crowd. She stood a little ways back from the aisle, angled so that he could see her, but otherwise making herself inconspicuous. She’d done a bit of fancy work with her makeup and hair, but he’d know her anywhere. Could see in the set of her shoulders, the slight wrinkle around her eyes, that she was up to something. Planning, preparing. For what, he hadn’t a clue. But if Ripka was here, his other friends might be, too. He glanced away to avoid Thratia following his eye, and scanned the crowd quickly. No sign of Tibs or New Chum that he could see, but that didn’t mean they were absent.

If Thratia noticed the sudden lightness in his step, she gave no indication.

They reached the end of the aisle, where his auntie waited with a misty look in her eye that he tried very, very hard to ignore. The altar was a simple thing, a hip-height pillar of stone with a copper basin in its center. Knowing his auntie, it was probably the same one Detan’s parents had been married with. He hoped not. They’d been through enough trouble in their lives without him sullying their memory by dribbling Thratia’s blood into their altar. The knife that matched the set was already in his auntie’s hand.

“Thratia Ganal. Detan Honding. You have been bound by paper. Do you consent to be bound by blood?”

“We do,” they said in unison.

A quick slice on the palms, a clasping of hands above the copper bowl, and it was done. Over in a flash and the faintest of stings. The audience burst into cheers and applause.

Detan stood opposite Thratia at the altar, his bleeding hand clasped in hers, dripping a mingling of their blood into the bowl, and was stunned at how simple a thing it all was.

He had married Thratia Ganal.