The Wedding That Was Mine

Cyren sat beside the cell for a long time.

I sat beside him.

He could not see me.

I could not touch him.

It was almost peaceful, in the way unbearable things sometimes become quiet after they finish breaking you.

I wanted to ask about his bride.

Was she beautiful?

Did she know he hated sweets?

Would he remember to sleep when palace work piled too high?

Would he make her the pear tea he once brewed for me after winter campaigns?

Would he sit at her bedside when she had nightmares?

Would he give her all the tenderness he had taken from me?

“Cyren,” I said, though my voice made no sound, “be safe.”

His lashes trembled.

Coincidence.

“Live a hundred years.”

His fingers curled around the pastry.

“Be happy with her.”

For some reason, that hurt more than cutting my wrist.

I felt myself fading.

The dungeon blurred around the edges.

Perhaps this was finally death.

I looked at Cyren one last time.

He raised his head.

His eyes fixed on the air before him.

Almost as if he could see me.

“Aeron,” he said, calm and broken at once, “today was our wedding.”

Everything stopped.

No.

No, that was wrong.

I tried to breathe, but ghosts have no lungs.

He continued.

“You forgot again.”

Forgot?

The word cracked something inside me.

The dungeon trembled.

The bars bent like shadows.

The stone floor melted into red silk.

I heard people shouting.

Not guards.

Physicians.

“Blood—he’s coughing blood again!”

“Hold him—”

“Lord Cyren, please step back!”

Light slammed into me.

I gasped.

This time, air entered my body.

Pain followed.

Real pain.

Chest.

Throat.

Bones.

I opened my eyes.

The dungeon was gone.

I lay in Greyvale Manor.

Our manor.

The rafters were draped in wedding red.

Physicians and servants knelt across the room, faces pale with terror.

And Cyren held me in his arms.

He wore wedding robes.

Not for another bride.

For me.

Memory returned like a blade drawn slowly from flesh.

There had been no dungeon.

No trial.

No public disgrace.

No betrayal.

Not like that.

I had become the kingdom’s greatest general after years of war.

Cyren had stood beside me through every campaign as strategist, adviser, beloved.

Beloved.

Yes.

We had loved each other.

Secretly at first.

Then fiercely.

Then no longer caring who knew.

He wrote me a bonding contract with his own hand.

I had opened it in my study, smiling like a fool.

The words blurred after the first line because I was laughing.

I have loved Aeron Greyvale all my life.

Then blood fell onto the paper.

My blood.

The enemy’s Abyssal Venom had been inside me for weeks, hidden beneath wine, smoke, and battlefield exhaustion.

By the time it struck, it had already eaten into my lungs.

Cyren found me on the floor clutching his vow.

He summoned every physician in Valdoria.

None could save me.

So he found forbidden medicine.

Moon-silver elixir.

A drug said to hold a dying soul inside its body.

It worked.

And it destroyed me.

The elixir kept me breathing, but the venom twisted my mind.

I forgot Cyren.

Remembered him.

Feared him.

Loved him.

Hated him.

I dreamed cages and chains.

I thought his hands were shackles.

I thought his tears were lies.

I thought our wedding drums were for someone else.

Cyren had not imprisoned me.

He had kept me alive.

And when keeping me alive became cruelty, he stopped.

He let me go.

I coughed.

Black blood spilled over my lips and down his red wedding robe.

Cyren’s arms tightened.

His face blurred above me.

“Cyren,” I whispered.

“I’m here.”

“You’re crying.”

“No.”

“You always were a terrible liar.”

His mouth trembled.

I wanted to lift my hand and smooth the crease between his brows.

I hated that crease.

My fingers rose halfway.

Then fell.

“Don’t cry,” I said.

Cyren caught my hand before it dropped completely.

He pressed it against his cheek.

His skin was warm.

Real.

Home.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I should have let you go sooner.”

I wanted to tell him no.

I wanted to tell him the cage had never been him.

It had been poison.

War.

Fate.

The crown.

My own unwillingness to die.

But breath was leaving.

Words were too heavy.

So I used the last of myself to smile.

My little white rabbit.

My strategist.

My bitter sugar.

My home.

I died on my wedding day.

But not in a dungeon.

Not alone.

Not unloved.

I died in Cyren’s arms, with his vow against my chest.