Page 4 of A Crown of Tears and Treason
“Very well.” She smiled, but her eyes narrowed with suspicion. “One sign. One single sign and I’m interfering.”
My insides clenched. She would do it. I had to put on the show of my life today.
Allie turned, dress and hair swinging dramatically, and sneered at the guard for good measure. She flicked her fingers again, blue tendrils sparking, picked up her crimson-red bouquet and headed for the door.
At the last second, she turned and raised one elegant finger. “One sign,” she mouthed.
I waited for her to shut the door, before squaring toward the guard. “Satisfied?”
He nodded.
Good. One more step to go–actually getting married–and then I could start finding answers to the questions that had haunted me since that wretched night.
I knew why I had to marry Fabrian–but why didhewant to marryme?
Why risk his life and his Clan for a girl most of the world had forgotten about and thought dead? I wasn’t the future leader of the Protectorate. I had no title, no power, and I wasn’t exactly renowned for my beauty. So why?
And how had he found me when grandpa Constantine and my cousins hadn’t been able to?
I picked up my own bouquet, a cloud of blue, white, and silver, Protectorate colors, and ran a hand down the front of my corset. The small, almost imperceptible bump of my blade gaveme a drop of courage. I needed bucket-fulls, but I took what I could get.
I’d been raised to survive on scraps, and I could do it again.
Straightening my spine, I stepped out of the room, and toward my new, dangerous, bloody future.
One wrong move, and everyone I cared for would be dead.
Chapter
Two
EVIE
Hundreds of curious, critical eyes watched me pretend to be overjoyed as I walked toward the improvised altar, a white arch overflowing with sacred flowers Serpents used in their spells.
My pinching shoes clicked on the white and silver marble that veined everywhere on the island, even to the guards’ outhouse. Stone paths were for lesser Clans.
Many hours away from Aquila, the ancient stronghold of the Protectorate, the Sanctua Sirena island was a glistening jewel in the ocean, with its caramel beaches, bone-white cliffs, and foamy waves. The legends said this was where the great Adriana “Dria” Vegheara herself had birthed the Protectorate.
The garden was flanked with sycamore trees and perfectly-trimmed bushes, rows upon rows of silver chairs filled withguests. Everyone who was anyone in the Protectorate and Serpent Clans had come to my wedding.
They all stood andwatched.
My entire body wanted to betray me. My hands gripped the bouquet too tightly. My knees shook. Fat, bitter tears threatened to fall with each step I took on the turquoise-lined aisle. Not Serpent green, not Protectorate blue.
Turquoise. To blend the two Clans together in this beautiful, miraculous union.
This was a sham, and Fabrian and I were the main actors.
Whatever courage I had mustered up in the room slowly seeped from my skin. Thank the gods for the veil; at least nobody could see the heartache on my face.
“She looks more elegant than I expected,” a guest whispered from my left. The groom’s side. Hissing like the true Serpents they were. “Guess they washed the mountain off her before they let her back into society.”
“Anyone would look pretty draped in so many Serpent jewels, even a country bumpkin,” said another one of these lovely guests I had never met.
I didn’t bother with them. My gaze searched for the ones Ididknow. The three assassins back at the cabin who’d dared show their faces among the dozens of masked figures needed to defeat my powerful parents.
The short one with the scar that ran all the way from his top lip to his eyebrow, who had picked me up from the ground, kicking and screaming.
