The day dawned far too beautiful for a sacrifice.
From the earliest hours of the morning, the marquess's servants had been rushing through the corridors like ants before a storm, carrying silver trays, arranging white lily bouquets, and lighting the church's candelabras. The butler, a lean man of precise gestures, commanded everything with the quiet authority of someone who knew that a poorly run ceremony could cost him his position.
Lydia watched it all from inside the litter.
The silk curtains kept her from seeing clearly, but the sounds reached her — the scrape of boots on stone, the voices of guests settling into their seats, the distant chime of bells that hadn't yet begun to ring. The smell of incense already filtered through the fabric, sweet and heavy as a promise no one had asked for.
Beside her, Raquel was adjusting one of the ribbons on her dress.
"It's crooked," the lady's maid murmured, without looking up.
Lydia took her hand.
"You didn't have to come."
"My lady insisted."
"And you didn't want to."
Raquel finally looked at her. Her eyes were dry, but there was something in them that seemed to have been washed many times over.
"What I want doesn't matter, my lady."
Lydia felt her throat tighten. She wanted to say something — anything that might restore the world to its proper shape. But the words didn't come, and Raquel had already released her hand to smooth the skirt of the dress with an almost devotional care.
"There," said Raquel, stepping back. "My lady looks perfect."
*Perfect*, Lydia thought. *To be handed over.*
When the litter's curtain was drawn back, the entire church held its breath.
The temple was an imposing structure, its walls in shades of blue-gray and silver that seemed to have been carved from moonlight itself. Golden details wound along the columns like living veins, and on the ceiling, a colossal painting showed the Moon God and the Sun Goddess entwined in an eternal embrace — his lips touching her brow, her hands cradling his face. The divine couple. The symbol of justice and sacred marriage.
Lydia looked up at the painting and felt a pang of something she couldn't name.
*Even the gods need someone*, she thought. *I just needed more time.*
According to the tradition of the Church of Tretx, the bride's feet could not touch the ground from the moment she left her father's house. Only upon reaching the Bridge of Union — a small carved wooden walkway at the center of the nave — did her steps receive sacred permission to continue to the altar.
Four servants carried her.
Lydia hated every second of it. Not out of pride, but because she despised depending on the arms of strangers. If she could have, she would have walked alone — barefoot, if necessary. But here, in this church, before these people, she was a tradition dressed in silk.
Her feet touched the Bridge of Union.
The first step echoed.
The dress had belonged to her mother.
The bodice was adorned with delicate shells — the common people — interwoven with pearls — the nobility. Together they formed a mosaic that said: *this marriage unites more than two people*. On Lydia's head rested the gold circlet, symbol of royal authority. In earlier times, brides had worn crowns of flowers, but after Cawpember's gold mines transformed the kingdom's wealth, tradition had been swallowed by metal.
Lydia thought the circlet was beautiful, but she would have preferred the flowers.
The full, pleated skirt held within it the blessing ribbons — strips of fabric sewn inside the hem, each one carrying a promise written by one of the bride's family members. Blessings. Wishes for happiness. Words that were supposed to be true.
That morning, while dressing, Lydia had read one of the ribbons. The handwriting was her youngest sister Cecilia's.
*"May you find someone who loves you the way Mama loved Papa."*
Lydia didn't read the others.
The sleeves reached to her elbows and ended in ruffles that trembled with every step. The neckline was high and closed, as tradition required — the bride's body belonged to the marriage, not to the eyes of the guests.
She walked slowly.
Not out of solemnity, but because her legs didn't want to obey.
Loui saw her before he was ready to.
He stood before the altar with his hands clasped behind his back, shoulders rigid beneath a dark velvet coat. The priest, a long-faced man with a voice like a pipe organ, wore the long gray robe of the order of Tretx, embroidered with the symbols of the Sun and Moon in threads that shimmered beneath the stained glass.
Loui was trying to look bored. It was easier than looking terrified.
Then he saw her.
He hadn't expected the dress to be so beautiful. He hadn't expected *her* to be so serious. There was something in the way Lydia walked — no smile, no wave, no concession whatsoever to the guests — that made him think, involuntarily: *This woman did not come here of her own free will.*
The thought unsettled him, because it was exactly what he would have said about himself.
He looked away.
And in looking away, he found another gaze.
In the front row, King Danuel was watching him.
The king's presence had caused a stir from the moment he arrived. Danuel rarely attended noble weddings — his schedule was dictated by wars, alliances, and the moods of a man who slept little and trusted even less. The whispers still moved through the pews like an underground current.
*— The king himself came...* *— I've never seen this happen...* *— This marriage must be very important...*
Loui knew why he had come.
And he knew he couldn't hold the gaze for more than a second.
Danuel was magnificent, as always — the heavy purple mantle across his broad shoulders, the simple crown he wore to smaller events, the trimmed beard that concealed the scar on his chin. But what no one else saw was what Loui saw: the way the king's fingers pressed into the arm of the improvised throne. The locked jaw. The unblinking stare.
Loui turned back to face the altar.
The priest began to speak, and his voice was mercifully loud enough to drown out the dull thunder inside Loui's chest.
Lydia reached the altar.
The two of them stood side by side, facing forward, not touching.
She noticed that his hands were trembling. He noticed that she was breathing like someone counting the seconds.
The priest raised his hands.
"Before the Moon God and the Sun Goddess, I ask you: Lydia, daughter of the Count of Avellar, do you accept this man as your husband, to honor him in light and shadow, in justice and in grace?"
Lydia opened her mouth.
No sound came out.
For a moment — just a moment — her eyes swept to the side gallery, where the servants and household staff stood watching, pressed together between the columns. That was where those without seats stood, those without names, those without the right to set foot in the main nave.
Raquel was there.
Still among two footmen, hands folded over her apron, her face so controlled it might have been carved. She shouldn't have been there at all — her station was too low even for the gallery. But Lydia had insisted. Had pleaded, in fact, though she would never use that word.
Their eyes met.
Raquel didn't move a muscle. She didn't nod, didn't smile, didn't look away. She simply held Lydia's gaze with that quiet devotion Lydia knew so well — the same devotion with which she straightened the ribbons on her dress, brushed her hair at night, stayed awake when Lydia couldn't sleep.
Lydia swallowed what needed to be swallowed.
"Yes," she said, her voice steady.
The priest turned to Loui.
"Loui, Marquess of Beaumont, do you accept this woman as your wife, to honor her in light and shadow, in justice and in grace?"
Loui didn't look at the servants' gallery. He didn't look at the front row. He looked at the altar, where the flame of a white candle trembled as if it, too, were nervous.
"Yes."
The priest smiled — the only genuine smile in that church.
"By the blessing of the Sun and the Moon, I now declare you husband and wife."
He paused solemnly. Then he raised his voice so it reached even the farthest corners of the temple:
"May justice flourish between you, for the ancients say that when the Sun and the Moon were joined in matrimony, Justice itself was born."
The bells began to ring.
The sound filled the church like a flood — deep, inevitable, beautiful in a way that asked no one's permission.
Lydia and Loui turned to face the guests.
No one expected them to smile, and they didn't disappoint.
They walked side by side down the central nave, their steps falling in sync by chance, not by rehearsal. The guests applauded. Some tossed lily petals. A child was crying somewhere, and the crying seemed like the only honest thing in the room.
As they passed the front row, Loui felt the king's gaze like a warm hand pressed against his back.
He didn't turn around.
As they passed the side gallery, Lydia looked for Raquel among the servants' faces.
Raquel was already gone.
Outside, the sun of Cawpember beat hard against the white stone courtyard.
Lydia and Loui stopped on the church steps, side by side, as the guests began to file out behind them.
He spoke first, without looking at her.
"The banquet starts in an hour."
"I know."
"Would you like to change?"
"No. This dress was my mother's."
Loui was quiet for a moment.
"It's a beautiful dress," he said, and for the first time he didn't sound like someone pretending to be someone else.
Lydia glanced at him sidelong.
"Thank you."
The silence returned.
The bells were still ringing.
Inside the church, King Danuel remained seated in the front row, alone, while everyone else rose to leave. An advisor approached to offer his arm, but Danuel dismissed him with a brief gesture.
He sat there a few seconds longer, looking at the empty altar.
Then he stood, adjusted his mantle, and slipped out through a side door — and no one noticed which direction he took.
In the servants' gallery, now deserted, only the smell of incense remained, and a set of nail marks pressed into the wood of the railing — where someone had gripped too hard, for too long, without making a sound.