Page 53 of Her Cruel Redemption

‘It’s not their fault,’ Gwin hurried to add, visibly reacting to my cursing with a furrowed brow. ‘People are curious.’

‘They should never have opened the service to the public,’ I snapped. ‘There was no need for it.’ Except to subject me to public humiliation. I supposed there was always a need for that when there was a woman who overstepped her place.

‘Esario thought it would build trust in you and boost morale to see someone so close to the Usurper renouncing him.’

‘Or he wants to prove he’s in control and show us we’ll be subjugated to his will,’ I retorted, irritated that she was so set on believing in his good intentions. A habit she couldn’t seem to break. I wondered if that would change if I told her about the cream laced with stolen magic he’d had Vic Gedelli deliver.

Gwin wrung her hands together, wrinkling her white gloves. She was dressed all in lilac apart from those gloves, the fabric glossy, hems trimmed with creamy lace. ’You’re not going to go through with it?’ She looked so… disappointed. I wondered how much of her faith in me had become tied up in this formality, thisannulment.

‘Of course I’ll go through with it. But for you, not for them.’

‘And for you,’ she said. It was almost phrased as a question.

‘Yes, and for me.’ I flicked the veil I’d insisted on wearing over my face. Black. Like I was going to a funeral for my marriage. I was going to clash spectacularly with Gwinellyn, in her youthful pastels, a fact I was sure the spectators would love. But the veil was to keep their curious eyes off my face. I was going to be enough of a spectacle without baring my scars for them to gawk at. Vic’s cream had blurred and softened them a little, but they were still very visible. If Gwin had noticed the change, she hadn’t mentioned it, though I’d caught her studying me when she thought I wasn’t looking.

‘It won’t take long,’ Gwin assured me, though I was certain she and I had very different definitions of the wordlongas far as worship services were concerned. ‘And when you walk out of here, you’ll be free of him. If you face him again, it won’t be as his wife.’

I didn’t reply. The comment was absurdly optimistic, as though some priest flicking soil at me and muttering some verses would somehow wipe me clean of all the memories, all the tumultuous feelings and regrets and wishes and needs entangled with my marriage to Draven. But Gwinellyn clearly needed to believe it, so I wasn’t going to dissuade her of the notion.

I tried to gather the nerve to walk through the door but it was difficult to take that step knowing how eyes would be on me, ready to weigh and measure, to declare me a traitor or a victim. I didn’t much like the idea of either label. I reached for that comforting fizz of magic in my blood, growing more and more familiar to me, a reassuring reminder that I was powerful in ways they could only dream of. Spreading a hand before me, I watched sparks crackle along the lengths of my fingers.

‘Rhi!’ Gwin admonished in a gasp. ‘Someone might see.’

My fingers curled into a resentful fist as I was forced to hide the only part of me I wanted them to see. Then I pushed through the door.

The cavernous space beyond was shot through with bright light, shafts of it cutting into the smoke of incense burning around the room. I could have done with a lot more smoke and a lot less light as hundreds of pairs of eyes turned to me, the talk dying away slowly, leaving behind a brittle silence in its wake. My heartbeat was hardly a beat at all, more like a fluttering rush as the nerves I’d been battling rose up and consumed me. I was frozen with the stares. I couldn’t put one foot in front of the other.Move, you idiot, move!

Then Gwinellyn was beside me, her head held high, thick dark hair glossy in the white light, upright and elegant and gleaming, and she took my hand. ‘I’m right here with you’ she said softly. And my astonishment muffled my nerves as this quivering teenager led me forwards like she was born to walk before a crowd, so unaffected and graceful in her sure-footed steps, her smile kind, but still above it all somehow. Almost like she was unaware of the whispers beginning to break around the room like the hissing of a pit of snakes.

… killed her husband after he rescued her…

… bold as brass…

… the living curse…

… doomed her country….

… the Blood King’s whore…

… thinks she’s entitled torefuge…

We found a space on the floor near the front of the room to kneel, a place reserved for those who wished to ask favour or clemency from the gods. Empty today except for us.

Unlike the clandestine beginning of my marriage, its end was a full service in a packed room. The room was a circle divided into seven sections, one for each of the sacred helper animals who had assisted Aether in his rise after the fall, and at each section a priestess rose to her feet, dressed in white robes and holding bowls of soil. Row by row, the worshippers stood and made their way to the priestess closest to them, plunging their hands into a bowl and then passing their hands through the smoke from one of the many incense cones, paying homage to Aether, god of sun and sky and Madeia, goddess of the earth, at once.

‘Come on,’ Gwin urged when it was our turn, and I joined the line reluctantly. The priestess’s face was cold and unsmiling when I approached her, and I got the whole business over with as quickly as possible before returning to the floor, secretly cursing Aether and Madeia in my head as I did, which I was sure would have made Gwinellyn blanch pale as a sheet if she knew. For some reason, it made me feel better. Perhaps it was the challenge I was issuing to gods I wasn’t even sure I believed in. If they had an issue with my unholy thoughts, let them step forth and make themselves known.

Perhaps they might take on more than they bargained for.

When Paptich Carrick stepped before the altar, I was too busy imagining a future where I had full control of my magic and could wield lightning with enough precision to smite the altar to pay attention to his lecturing. So it took Gwinellyn nudging me before I realised it was time for me to stand. I didn’t want to do it. I felt sick to the stomach to do it. But I did. Any murmuring that had begun to creep into the quiet room cut out, and I had the sense that every eye in the building was trained intently on me. Carrick gave me just the barest of smiles, and for a moment I felt stupidly grateful for even that whiff of kindness in this hive of hostility.

‘State your name, child,’ he said.

If I was on the edge of utter panic, I wouldn’t let them know it. ‘I am Rhiandra Soveraux,’ I said without even a waver, my voice clear and loud. ‘I come seeking the annulment of my marriage to the King of Ashreign.’

Several gasps popped behind me, followed by a buzz of furious talk. The paptich cast a stern glare across his audience, and the buzz settled into a low hum.

‘On what grounds?’

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