heard, Holies keep her.”
“Yes, Holies keep her,” the first man replied gravely.
“If you see anything suspicious, let the royal guards know,” the other said. “There are four stationed in every village.”
Sev nodded dutifully.
“Blessings,” the first forester said with a wave at me. I waved daintily back with a gloved hand, holding my breath until they disappeared.
We journeyed on. Before long, Enturra appeared at the horizon. Though hardly bigger than Sev’s village, it seemed more affluent, with newer buildings and broader streets. I tensed on the saddle as we crossed a river bridge and passed royal guards stationed at the other end.
The atmosphere of festivity felt unmistakable, yet subdued. A few girls wore coronets like mine, sadly deprived of flowers, and vendors flaunted discounts on vegetables whose limp leaves had browned in the frost.
We passed another bride and groom escorted by a whole wedding party that smiled and waved at us. “May Orico bless you with many children!” a drunken member of their party yelled our way.
As in Sev’s village, the domed edifice was at the center of the square, but this one had a courtyard with rows of towering hedges and cypress trees. A crowd had gathered to watch a priest pray in monotone over a couple at the altar.
Sev clenched my waist to help me dismount. I felt unsteady and surrendered my weight to his sturdy grip, relishing the momentary relief of trusting someone besides myself to be strong.
“I’m going to see if Father Frangos is in the parish,” Navara whispered, standing on tiptoe to point to a stone outbuilding covered in ivy. Before I could hiss a warning to be cautious, she had slipped through the crowd and hurried off.
“I don’t like this,” I whispered to Sev as he passed off Orfeo’s lead to an altar attendant in gray.
“It will be fine,” the huntsman said near my ear. He caught my hand and brushed a kiss on the back of my glove. This affection came mysteriously naturally to someone whose behavior ranged from surly and wry. “Everyone adores Navara, especially the clergy. They’ll do whatever she asks.”
I nodded and watched the other couple leave the edifice to cheers from the crowd. It was strange, not knowing whether the bride was grinning beneath that veil or mourning her former life.
The crowd shifted. Newcomers arrived to watch the next modest spectacle while others wandered off. The priest waved us inside with a liver-spotted hand. If he was the young one, Father Frangos must have been a true antique.
When I reached the threshold, I couldn’t force myself to go any farther.
Suddenly, it felt like midnight again. Shadows filled the sacred place. The carvings of the Holies, removed and cold and unhelpful, made me want to smash the chipped marble altar.
“No,” I whispered aloud, struggling to breathe, ready to rip apart at the seams.
Sev smoothly turned my Nisseran protest into a Perispi explanation for the priest: “Nontrus eggigaris ta incini tis nedo, pre ti vitero,” he said. We wanted her mother to be here, but she died recently.
Only Sev’s firm grip kept me from remembering Perennia’s weight in my arms, rocking her while the Holies slept through a violent starlit night.
I forced myself to enter the edifice by imagining that those marble faces were hers, at least the soft ones: Lovingkindness, Honesty, Generosity, Humility. If anyone lived as a deity of virtues in the heavens, it was Perennia. If anyone could brighten that velvet-black expanse, it was she. People had tended to lump Perennia in with the rest of us Lorenthi siblings—scathing-witted and spoiled. But there hadn’t been a haughty bone in that girl’s body. She had deserved more, deserved better. She had deserved happiness we could never attain, malcontent as we were. She had been like Mother, someone who grew and helped things; if Mother ever restricted us, it was for the hope of trying to steer us true, like training wild ivy to climb a trellis. Perennia had been the same way, always drawing out the best of us.
Both of them were gone.
As Sev and I stepped before the altar and faced each other, a raw, bitter wind arose from nowhere, swirling through the edifice. It tugged at my veil, but Sev caught it between two fingers and stared intently into my eyes.
“This again!” the priest cried as the crowd gasped in dismay.
The huntsman interlaced the fingers of his other hand with mine, and even through the leather glove, I felt warmth to counter my cold.
Perennia would want me to