Chapter 2: The False Dragon in the Groom's Place

Sophia POV

On the morning of the binding, I put on the gown Olivia had refused.

More precisely, it was the one she had torn at the hem while trying it on and then ruined with a glass of red wine. Mrs. Pike dropped it on my bed and said, "You should be grateful."

I was grateful. It was the thickest piece of clothing I had ever worn in my life.

The trouble was that it was two sizes too large. A great gap of emptiness hung at the waist, and I had to keep one hand clamped there the whole time or the whole thing would have slid to the floor. Walking, I looked like a child who had been rolled up inside a curtain.

Olivia and I were bound on the same day. She went out the front door. I went out the side one.

The crowd packed the front of Vance House so tightly that there was no room to breathe. When Olivia appeared, the whole street drew in its breath at once. Her gown was sewn all over with pearls, her veil needed four maids to carry it, and her gloves had been cut away at the wrist so that a single golden scale showed bare against her skin.

I stood by the side door. No one looked at me.

That was fine. If no one looked at me, no one would laugh at me.

"Who's that one?"

"The one with no scales. She's being sent to the Black Prince today, to be his anchor."

"How is that any different from feeding her to a dragon?"

I lowered my head and pretended to study the snow on the ground. It was white and very clean, and I had a faint urge to taste it. Don't be stupid, Sophia. Snow is not sugar frosting.

Above me came the beating of wings. Four wyverns swept over the rooftops and settled on either side of the street, gray-green hide stretched over enormous wings, poison barbs glinting at the tips of their tails. Two legs, I recited silently to myself. Pure-blooded dragons have four legs and a pair of wings. Wyverns have only two legs, and their brains are no bigger than a beast's. Olivia's tutor had taught her that, and I had listened in through the window.

Crown Prince Julian followed on a white horse, in a gold doublet with gold hair to match, his attendants scattering gold coins into the crowd as they went. The people screamed and scrambled for them. I only stared.

Dragons never scatter gold. They would sooner bleed than part with a single coin from their hoard.

He must love Olivia very, very much.

He dismounted to hand her into the carriage, and a great gust of wind swept past and tore my veil clean off my head. With one hand holding up my gown, I had only the other free to grab for it, and as I caught it my collar slipped and the silver pendant slid out from beneath my clothes. I fumbled the veil back down and stuffed the pendant away again. It was a matter of seconds at most.

But when I looked up, Julian was watching me.

One foot was still on the carriage step, and he had gone utterly still, his nostrils flaring slightly, as though he were scenting something. It was a strange look, and it took me a long while to place it, and then I realized I had seen it before, on my own face. It was exactly how I stared at the cream cakes in the bakery window every time I walked past.

Was he hungry?

But he was about to go and eat at his own binding feast.

"Your Highness!" Margaret rushed forward and planted herself in front of him, her face gone pale. "The Flame Priest is waiting at the temple."

Julian looked at me once more before he climbed into the carriage.

Margaret turned and said, in a voice only I could hear, "Hide that thing. If you let it show again, I'll have it melted down."

My fingers went stiff.

She knew. She had known all along what that pendant was for.

And I did not know myself.

My carriage was rented from a livery stable. The door would not shut properly, and the horse looked hungrier than I was. Mrs. Pike rode with me, and a maid named Kate. Kate had come only last month, tall and quiet, with a coldness in her eyes.

I lifted a corner of the curtain. Vance House was falling away behind us, and there was not a single person at the door to see me off.

"Put that down!" Mrs. Pike snatched the curtain back and pinched the back of my hand hard in the same motion. "Making a spectacle of yourself."

I pulled my hand back and rubbed it gently. I did not cry out, and I did not weep. Crying out only earned you a harder pinch. That was the first rule I had learned at Vance House.

The wheel struck a stone, and Mrs. Pike's head cracked hard against the roof of the carriage.

Kate glanced at her. The corner of her mouth moved.

I thought she was smiling. But her face was so cold that I could not be sure.

Blackmere Hall stood in the north of the city, beside a frozen black lake. Black stone walls, pointed towers, and a silence like a tombstone. The main doors were shut fast. Only a dark side door stood open.

A young man came out of it, in a black uniform with a sword at his hip, his smile stopping at his mouth and never reaching his eyes. "Miss Vance? I'm Ben Carter, His Highness's captain of the guard. This way, please."

In the courtyard, servants were hauling buckets of water and scrubbing at the snow. The snow was red. A great sheet of it, running from the steps all the way to the corner of the wall.

Mrs. Pike's legs gave way, and she clutched at my arm. "Wh-what are they doing?"

"Oh, that." Ben's tone was light. "A servant who didn't know his place. Lost his head. His Highness gets a headache from the smell of blood, so it has to be scrubbed away quickly. The lady looks unwell. Would she like to rest?"

She ducked behind me at once.

But I was thinking of something else. At Vance House, you worked whether you were well or not. Here, being unwell apparently earned you a rest.

I decided I liked this place.

The binding was held in the small shrine on the estate. An old Flame Priest with a white beard, a stone altar with a fire burning on it, and six uneasy witnesses, sent by the Vance family and by the Crown Prince's household. On the altar lay a black scale the size of a palm.

There was no groom.

"His Highness is unwell," Ben announced. "By dragon law, his bonded beast will stand in for him and take the blood oath."

He raised his left arm. Perched on the thick leather bracer was a—dragon?

A very small dragon. The size of a cat, with gray-black scales, a pair of thin leathery wings, a thin thread of smoke curling from its nostrils, and round red eyes glaring ferociously at everyone present.

"This is Cinder, His Highness's false dragon."

The witnesses all shifted their chairs back in unison. Only later did I learn that Cinder had bitten every guard on the estate, singed a messenger's hat, and chased a fox that stole its jerky two miles out.

Ben set it in my arms.

I braced myself to be bitten.

It did not bite.

It was warm, like a stove in winter, and it smelled of roasted chestnuts. Goodness. If I had had it in the wood shed, my hands would never have grown chilblains.

I could not help holding it a little closer.

Cinder went rigid. Then it laid its head on my wrist and began to rumble in its throat, like a kettle just coming to the boil.

The smile on Ben's face faded, little by little.

The priest pricked my fingertip with a silver needle and had me let the blood fall onto the black scale.

The instant the blood landed, a light kindled in the center of the scale. First gold, like the sun at noon. Then a thread of silver worked its way out of the gold and wound itself around it.

It lasted only a blink.

The priest's prayer book fell from his hands. Ben's eyes went wide. A gray-robed witness in the back row rose quietly and slipped out through the rear door.

I looked down at the scale, then at my own wrist.

I was finished.

Had I—had I broken the prince's scale?

"Sophia Vance," the priest said, picking up his book, his voice unsteady, "do you swear by blood to become the consort of Alexander Kingsley?"

"I—I do."

The words were barely out of my mouth when my stomach gave a long, loud growl. The whole shrine heard it.

Cinder lifted its head and looked at me with an expression of deep suspicion.

"I—I won't eat you," I whispered.

It hesitated, then licked my chin.

And just like that, with a false dragon in my arms, I became the anchor bride of the Black Prince.

The moment the ceremony ended, Ben came to take Cinder. Cinder would not go. It hooked its claws into my sleeve, and Ben had to pry it loose three times before it let go. His look at me had changed. It was not a smile, and it was not anger. It was the way a man looks at a parcel he has not yet decided how to open.

I was taken to a cold room in the west wing. No fire had been lit in the hearth, and frost had flowered across the window glass. Mrs. Pike and Kate stood guard outside the door.

No one told me what an anchor was meant to do. Wait for my husband? Would he come? Would he—tear me apart?

Then I saw what was on the table.

A plate of binding cake, glazed with shining honey and scattered with almond flakes.

My mind stopped working altogether.

I picked up a piece and bit into it. It had sat out all day, and the crust had gone hard and the inside was a little dry.

It was the best thing I had ever eaten in my life.

Outside the door, Mrs. Pike was stamping her feet. "Freezing to death out here! I'm not standing in the cold for a useless creature like that. I'm going back to report to the lady."

Her footsteps faded.

A long while later, a scream came from deep in the estate, high and drawn out, very like Mrs. Pike.

I blinked, and took another bite of cake.

The clock on the wall struck nine.

The floor beneath me shuddered faintly, as though something enormous had turned over in its sleep somewhere deep inside the house.

My wrist went cold.

If I was fated to be torn apart tonight—

at least I would not be torn apart hungry.