The Council certainly didn’t waste time scheduling the wedding, as I found out from a servant first thing in the morning when she arrived with a dressmaker in tow. It would be the night after next at midnight, right in the middle of the quarterly festival. The location—the largest public chapel in the city—surprised me, but I guessed they were making an exception to my imprisonment to make a spectacle of me.
The dressmaker’s face was taut as she took my measurements. She’d have only a day and a half to make a wedding dress worthy of the imperial bride and a few hours to make any adjustments. I didn’t envy her that. All I had to do was show up.
After the dressmaker left, more servants arrived to fuss over my hair, arguing over how best to style it for the wedding. I sat in a daze as they tugged and pinned the strands only to undo their work again and again. Finally, they settled on braiding my hair along the scalp, tucking the braid’s end underneath at the nape of my neck. It was a simple style, but there was only so much they could do with the shorter length. As soon as they left, I pulled the braid out and let it fall loose to my shoulders again.
Then Yesida and I were called on to rehearse the ceremony in the castle’s sanctuary, then to select the dishes to be served at the celebration, then to decide where and how our wedding portraits were to be taken. I allowed Yesida to take the lead on all of it, because I couldn’t care less.
I just wanted to get this over with. Maybe the Council would release Mother and Ranine if I continued to cooperate, but I couldn’t bring myself to fake enthusiasm.
Yesida needed to attend a meeting, so we parted ways, and I returned to my room with nowhere else to go. I sat at my desk, opened my sketchbook, and readied a pen, but paused. All of my drawings so far had been still lifes, portraits, random objects or landscapes, but the thoughts that filled my head now were of blades and fangs and blood. If I drew what was on my mind, someone was bound to snoop and report it to the Council. If only it were winter and my fireplace was lit, then I could have burned the evidence.
I flipped through the pages until I found the secret portraits I’d made of my mother and sisters. They’d known about the formal portrait I’d painted at one point, but they might have lost their tempers if they’d known about these. Mother’s fakest smiles. Jesun’s glares. Ranine’s pouting, exaggerated quizzical looks, or the pure delight on her face the time the cooks had surprised her with a gigantic chocolate cake on her last birthday.
What had the Council done with her? I slammed the sketchbook shut before my tears could drip onto the pages. I wanted to slap myself. Crying wouldn’t help anything.
But maybe Gasni had learned something. He was alone up in his office, so I blinked to join him.
He didn’t even look up from the tablet he studied. “What can I do for you, Chosen?”
“Do you have any news on Mother and Ranine?”
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“Even if I did, I wouldn’t inform you until after I could take action.”
I snatched the tablet to get his attention. “Are you even trying?”
He gestured to the tablet. “There are more pressing matters at hand.”
I glared at him but looked over the page on screen. A photo of Yesida—one that he didn’t look aware of—stood out. “Why do you have a profile on Yesida?”
“Read it.”
The profile covered what I already knew: that he’d been born into a poor family like I had, but somehow a wealthy merchant recognized his genius and funded schooling for him and Nesia. He founded Usten Industries at age seventeen with his sponsor’s backing, and though the man passed away a year later, Yesida had made so much of a profit off his inventions that he was able to expand the company and fund his and Nesia’s attendance at university. And so on.
A table at the bottom of the page caught my attention, though. A record of a few large donations he’d made. They weren’t to any charities I’d ever heard of, and they all went to the same organization. The Order of the Eight. I hadn’t thought Yesida was religious.
“What were these donations for?” I asked.
“A good question, because the Order of the Eight has no record of these transactions.”
“How is that possible?”
“We only discovered these donations from his personal records. They are not in the Order’s records because they never received them. I don’t believe the money was ever intended for the church.”
“I don’t understand,” I admitted.
“Those listings were mislabeled on purpose. We managed to trace the shipment of gold to a warehouse in Mikell. From there, it was distributed to several cities and towns—to the chapels.”
“You just said it was never intended for the church.”
“It wasn’t. Every single coin went directly into the pockets of the priests of Valil.”
The god of beauty and decay. This wasn’t making any sense.
“Those priests are members of the Knights of Valil, Lady Eujia. They are not yet widely known, but they are a cult of zealots who believe Valil has descended into the world in mortal form. And they are dangerous. They’ve been abducting and sacrificing atheists and cursed for years.”
I shook my head. “Yesida would never fund something like that. He rarely even attends services. He’s no zealot.”
“No, he isn’t. He’s funding them because he doesn’t have a choice. Read the next page.”
I swiped at the screen and found a photo of a handwritten letter. It listed out several activities, including times and locations, from simply shopping for groceries to attending specific classes at university. At the bottom it read, “We are watching your sister. You will follow the below instructions, or you will receive her head.” Then it described exactly what Yesida had been doing with his donations. But the letter made no indication of who had made the demands.
“He doesn’t even know who he’s funding,” I said.
“It’s possible.”
“But Nesia is responsible for the company’s finances now. If she doesn’t know about this—”
“Oh, she knows. You think she wouldn’t have spotted these odd transactions the moment she took over? She’s continuing the payments.”
I set the tablet on his desk. “Why are you even telling me this?”
“Because this cult is very interested in you. I doubt they’re thrilled that an atheist was made emperor, and they’ll be even less thrilled that you’re marrying him. Combined with Nesia taking over the payments to protect herself, they don’t need Yesida anymore.”
“Oh gods.”
“The cult would never harm you, Chosen, I am certain of that. I am informing you so that you can keep an eye on the emperor. I have agents among his guards who are aware of the situation, but if anything were to happen in your presence, you will be his best defense.”
And our wedding would be in public.
“I won’t let anything happen to him,” I swore.