Duskfall Read Free Page B

“You do?”
    “Of course I know. You think I can’t tell when my daughter is trying to suffer in silence? You are just like your mother, that way. I know you have concerns. But Knot
is
a good man. He’s not the type of human that would… he’s a good man, Winter. He’ll take care of you. He’ll give you a life that I never could.”
    What he said was true. Even someone like Knot, with so little, could give her so much. If they moved to the city, somewhere they could make a fresh start…
    “What if I don’t want that life? What if the life I want is exactly the one you
can
give me? Or Lian? What if I want to make my
own
life, Father?”
    “Goddess rising, you are so like her it’s amazing,” her father said.
    Winter sat down. Even as she said the words, she knew it wasn’t possible. There was no making her own life. Knot was her only chance. She needed him.
    “Here’s the thing,” her father said, taking her hands in his. “You’re marrying this man. There’s no stopping that. But you haven’t signed your life away. It is what you make of it. Knot may surprise us all and turn out a tyrant; if that’s the case, you have my permission to murder him in the night and escape to make a life of your own.”
    Winter smiled, although the joke was uncomfortably close to a few situations she had heard of in the city.
    “But I don’t think that will be the case,” her father continued. “I think he’ll want you to be happy, and I think he’ll want to help you do whatever you need to find that happiness. Don’t underestimate that bond, my dear. Marriage, done right, can be much more freeing than we give it credit for. I think the two of you need each other.”
    Winter was about to ask what her father meant by that when a knock sounded on the door. “Holy Canta calls her maidservant,” a woman’s voice said. “Will she answer?”
    The priestess was ready.
    Winter glanced at her reflection in the small looking glass opposite her. The girl who gazed back at her was confident, calm. That girl could almost be happy. Could almost believe what her father was telling her.
    “Winter,” Bahc said, “today is your day. Accept your own happiness.”
    Winter cleared her throat. “She will answer,” she called, in response to the priestess’s summons. She turned and walked towards the door, pausing to kiss her father on the cheek.
    “I love you, Papa,” she said. Then she opened the door, and walked into the chapel.
    * * *
    She did not flinch as the small dagger slit her palm.
    “And do you, Danica Winter Cordier, covenant through blood and in the presence of Holy Canta that you will give yourself to Knot now and forever, through frost and fire, storm and calm, light and dark, dusk and dawn and throughout the turning of time?”
    “I so covenant, by my blood,” Winter said. The priestess, a rotund woman in her middle years, looked approvingly down at her from a large square pedestal. She took Winter’s hand and placed it in Knot’s. He had received a similar wound moments before.
    Winter looked at Knot. He wasn’t smiling, but Winter knew him well enough to know that he wouldn’t. But he was content. His eyes were peaceful.
    “By the power of the Nine, whom Canta chose,” the priestess continued, “whose power flows in me, I bestow these blessings upon you.”
    The words buzzed in Winter’s head, and she found it difficult to concentrate. She was new, now. For better or worse, her life would be forever different.
    “That you will love one another,” the priestess said.
    Winter gazed out at the small chapel. Torches cast a flickering glow up into the rafters of the elongated gable roof, but left the wide wings of the building in shadow. Darrin and Eranda’s daughter Sena stood close by her. She was the only tiellan girl close enough to Winter’s age to serve as a handmaid, though still not much more than a child.
    “That you will serve those around you.”
    Lian and Darrin sat on the front row of