Ensnared (Sorcery and Science Book 5) (26 page)

“I kept hoping he would just forget about the whole wedding thing, but he’s too stubborn-minded for that,” said Isis. “The deliveries started yesterday evening. First it was the shoes. And then all kinds of jewels.” A grim look darkened her face. “This morning, it was lingerie. Aaron delivered that one personally, looking very smug about it too.”

“So that’s why you’re finally speaking to me again,” Ariella replied.

“I wasn’t ignoring you. Not really. I was just feeling…”

“Sad?”

Isis sighed. “Guilty.”

Ariella lay down beside Isis on the sofa and gave her a comforting embrace. “Well, I’m here now.”

“I’m glad.” Isis smile weakly. “I need you now, Ariella. More than ever. The wedding is happening tonight, after Aaron’s coronation. I keep thinking I’m going to wake up from this nightmare. But it’s real. And much as I want to blame Aaron, it’s as much my fault as it is his.”

Ariella squeezed her shoulder. “I doubt that.”

“You don’t know what I’ve done. The lies that I’ve told.”

“Perhaps not,” said Ariella. “But you can tell me.”

Isis sighed.

“Really. You can tell me anything. I won’t judge.”

Before Isis could speak, a knock sounded on the door, and she buried her face under a pillow.

“I’ll just get that then,” Ariella said, standing.

She swore to herself that if it turned out to be Aaron Pall, she was going to break his arm. She noticed her sword set against the wall by the door and picked it up.
Or maybe do more than break his arm.

But when she did open the door, instead of Aaron she found a slew of women dressed in the Selpe blue imperial color. The lead woman, a slender figure with knee-high black boots beneath her pencil skirt, set her satchel upon the floor and looked Ariella up and down.

“Well, you’re a pretty one, for sure. And an Elition no less. How exotic of him. There will be a lot of broken hearts across the Selpe Empire tonight, but if Aaron Pall had to settle down, it would be for no less than a beauty like you.”

Ariella nearly choked on the bile that rose in her throat.

“What’s the matter, dear?” the woman asked. “Wedding jitters?”

“You have the wrong Elition,” she said, waving toward the sofa.

Isis peeked over the back edge, eyeing the caravan of seven women with as much trepidation as she would a battlefield of soldiers.

“Ah, yes. You do seem to be more his type,” the woman said with an approving nod.

Ariella didn’t know what she could mean by that, but she took it as a compliment that she was apparently not Aaron’s type. Isis seemed less pleased by the comparison. Maybe the woman had been turned off by the gigantic sword Ariella held in her hand. Aaron probably wasn’t the sort to pursue a woman who could behead him with a single stroke should he hazard to agitate her once too often. Isis certainly presented a softer appearance.

“I’m Zania,” the woman told Isis. “And this is my team. We’ll be getting you ready for your wedding tonight.”

“Thank you, but I do not require assistance.”

A horribly shrill cackle erupted from Zania’s maroon lips. “My dear, you may be beautiful, but I have never seen any bride more in need of my services. When we’re done with you, no one will question your right to be Aaron’s wife and empress of the Selpe Empire.” She flicked a hand toward Isis’s current outfit. “Or were you planning to face the empire’s ruling aristocracy in your pajamas?”

“I…”

Zania gave her a knowing smile. “I thought not. Ladies.” She waved a hand over her shoulder, and her six assistants poured into the room. “Let’s get to work.”

As the women circled around Isis like overly zealous vultures, Ariella cut through their ranks to hold her friend’s hand. Maybe she didn’t quite understand the madness that had befallen Isis, but she could do nothing less than stand by her side as all hell broke loose around them.

“I’m here,” Ariella whispered to Isis.

“Thanks,” she whispered back.

While
the women prepared Isis for the ceremony, they gossiped shamelessly, almost as though the two Elitions weren’t even there. They chatted about Isis’s ‘perfect complexion’ and ‘eyes like gemstones’, crudely comparing her features to a long catalogue of women it was rumored Aaron had lured into his bed. Ariella even had to give the most garish of the women a menacing glare. She’d gotten it into her head to try to squeeze Isis’s rump, daring to compare it as one would produce at a farmer’s market. Luckily, the woman decided she preferred keeping her hand to continuing in her foolhardy comparison.

But Ariella kept listening to the women. She felt seriously out of the loop, and everyone knew beauticians were one of the best sources of up-to-date information in Orion. They rotated from villa to villa along the elite Imperial Lane, gathering and spreading gossip.

“Lady Lexi says Lord Adrian believed Aaron needed an added boost to win over enough nobles to be voted in as emperor over his cousin Veronica
.”

“Veronica Frostwater?”

“Yep. You know her?”

“
I’ve heard the usual gossip. Rumor has it her father left her and her mother to run off with an Elition woman.”

Ariella hadn’t heard this, but that certainly explained Lady Veronica’s very public dislike of Elitions. And it made her a poor choice for ruler of the Selpes. For the sake of Elitia, Ariella found herself actually glad that Aaron had won.

“A child was even born out of his affair.”

“Ethan,” muttered Isis.

Zania
nodded. “Yes, Ethan Frostwater. So you’ve heard that story. But don’t you worry, my dear. Unlike Lady Veronica, Aaron is more sympathetic to your kind.” She smiled. “Clearly from his choice of bride. Hey, Julia, didn’t you hear something once about Aaron hanging around with that Elition girl with the turquoise hair?”

“Yeah, it was three or four years ago. But from the way he was trailing her every step, I’m sure nothing ever happened between the sheets.” The woman named Julia wiggled her thick eyebrows up and down.

The other women giggled. Ariella looked at Isis and rolled her eyes. Despite the useful nuggets of information, the beauticians’ gossip was all in poor taste.

“I wonder,” Julia began. “If anything ever happened between Aaron and Veronica.”

The woman strapping Isis into her lingerie snorted. “Ewww. They’re cousins.”

“And, Helen? Such rendezvous have been known to happen amongst the empire’s noble families.”

Helen swatted her lightly on the hand, but a smile crept up her lips. “Naughty girl. Don’t let them hear you speak so. You know how the aristocracy loathes having their dirty little secrets aired out to dry.”

“Well, Aaron would never fall for a superficial ninny like Lady Veronica. She’s lucky if his first act as emperor is not to see to it that she drowns in her own pool.”

The beauticians let out a collective giggle. They sounded altogether too merry at the prospect of another person’s demise.

“Those Diamond Edges are such naughty boys,” said the woman weaving the back ribbon closure of Isis’s corset together. She licked her lips. “Deliciously naughty.”

“Hush, girl. Keep your fantasies to yourself,”
Zania
snapped. “You’re speaking in front of Aaron’s bride.”

From what Ariella could tell, Isis didn’t seem to care. Or notice. She was too busy staring blankly at her newly painted toes to follow much of their chitchat.

“The word is our stud Aaron won the support of the Selpe nobility by capturing the Elition assassin Jason Chanz. Many of the ruling Selpe families have been victims of that Elition savage.”

“Don’t call him that,” Isis objected.

The women giggled again and patted her on the shoulder with copious winks. They didn’t seem to realize she’d been objecting to their description of Jason, not Aaron. As they brushed, painted, and dressed Isis, their loose tongues continued the outpour of gossip, utterly oblivious to her discomfort.
The chattiest of the bunch, a woman with blonde braids, recounted a conversation she’d once had with Aaron. According to her,
he’d spent the better part of a morning relaying in minute detail what Isis was to wear on their wedding day, all the way down to the trim of her dress and precise shade of her boots, white with a hint of pink undertone to match her hair. His attention to detail was shocking indeed, especially in someone who seemed happy to revel in his own lack of subtlety.

Isis bore the women’s presence in silence—and finally, hours later, she and Ariella were alone again. Ariella walked up behind her friend, who turned before a
full-length mirror, her eyes wide with astonishment as they panned over her own reflection.

The wedding dress was beautiful. It cascaded into a train in back, and fell in front to the tops of her white, high-heeled boots in gracefully tapered layers of fabric. The entire folding and looping of the pale white skirt fabric, which had taken two women the better part of an hour, was truly a work of art. The neckline plunged into a deep V, but her exposed skin was not left unadorned.

There lay a necklace that dropped in long rows of strung white and pink diamonds. It matched the pair of drop earrings in her ears. There were no sleeves to the dress. Instead, it had narrow shoulder straps of gem-studded fabric; from them fell an array of beaded strings, neatly tucked and arranged so that they looped halfway down to her elbows. The chest of the dress was also sewn with subtle patterns formed from diamonds, and the waist pulled dramatically inward, held tightly by the wide satin ribbons that crisscrossed down her back.

Isis’s hair, parted on the extreme side of her head, swept across her forehead and pulled tightly upward into braided coils fastened at the back. The sparkle of the pink diamonds, along with the gloss of her lipstick, caused the pink undertone inside the blonde to pop forward noticeably. Ariella was certain Aaron had selected that color for this very reason. He seemed to be making every effort to showcase Isis’s Elition features, not hide them.

Never before had Ariella seen her friend so adorned and embellished. Much as she hated to admit it, Aaron had good taste. He’d clearly chosen Isis’s entire wedding outfit to augment not only her beauty but also her Elition features, a gutsy move that would leave many Selpe aristocrats seething with outrage. Despite everything else he was—and Ariella could think of more than a few colorful descriptions—he wasn’t ashamed to take an Elition for his bride. She couldn’t help but respect him for that.

A foreboding knock resonated against the wooden door. Isis looked to the clock, her eyes wary. It read fifteen minutes to eight. The coronation would start at eight. Isis retreated to the back glass wall and turned her back on the door to stare out into the garden.

“Shall I get it?” Ariella asked her when a second knock followed.

Taking Isis’s deflated sigh as a yes, she stepped across the wooden floor and opened the door to find Davin on the other side.

“It’s time,” he called past Ariella to Isis.

“I know,” she replied. Her eyes remained fixed on the garden outside for a few seconds longer, then she turned and set her arm in Davin’s, allowing him to lead her to her fate.

* * *

526AX November 20, Orion

The journey through the halls seemed to take hours, but it was over in a few short minutes. Ariella followed closely behind Isis and Davin. She felt her mouth drop as the doors of the ballroom spread open before them.
The room had been embellished like never before—with flags from the upper level railings, roses down the banisters, and diamond-dotted ice sculptures between the tables—for this was to be a double ceremony. Moments after Aaron was crowned emperor, Isis would be married to him.

He already sat on a wide throne with blue silk cushions at the top of the stairs, looking down over everyone with a triumphant expression on his face. Beside him stood Lord Adrian, whispering into his ear, but as soon as Aaron’s eye caught Isis, he didn’t see anyone else. Ariella watched her friend’s arm tense around Davin’s, a final protest before she surrendered herself to a much unwanted fate. She wanted to tell Isis to run, to flee this life, but she knew there was no point. She wouldn’t abandon Elitia to the venom of Aaron’s wrath.

At sundown Aaron was crowned emperor of the Selpe Empire. Veronica Frostwater, his Elition-hating cousin, congratulated him, her words dripping thickly with poisoned honey. And as Lord Adrian placed the platinum and blue diamond spiked crown of the Selpe Empire’s ruler upon his head, she stared at him as though she would have liked to literally poison him.

With the first ceremony complete, Aaron extended his hand toward Isis. Pausing only to glance from Ariella to Davin to King River, she ascended the royally carpeted staircase. As she joined Aaron atop the upper level, she bit her lip against the collective stare of a few hundred eyes. Smiling smugly, her husband-to-be kissed her softly on the lips. Then he clasped her hands in his and nodded for the officiant to begin the second ceremony.

As the man spoke, Aaron watched Isis with the enthusiasm a lion would devour a long-stalked prey. Vibrant as her features were, now free from the Inhibiting Serum, her face was still unusually pale. She didn’t love him and definitely wouldn’t have married him had she not been forced into it. Ariella had to hold herself back from sprinting up the staircase to pull her friend away from that Selpe monster. It was a good thing she hadn’t brought her sword along.

As the ceremony progressed, Aaron slid a white diamond ring onto Isis’s finger—the symbol of their marriage—then set a platinum headband studded with blue diamonds atop her head—the symbol of her new status as empress. Finally, he leaned over to seal the ceremony with a kiss. When Aaron, his lips still locked to Isis’s, dipped her down for a little dramatic show, the spectators’ polite clapping burst into roaring applause, but even from her spot at the sidelines one level down, Ariella could read the pain in Isis’s eyes. He responded with his typical combo of a mischievous head tilt and a subtle shrug. The ladies in the audience nearly fainted. Isis looked away from him.