Petre pulled up sharply, making his stallion rear, and sent me tumbling brutally onto the ground. I curled up in an agonized ball on the frozen ground while he circled me, huge bone-crushing hooves mere inches from my head and body.
Though I was exhausted and in pain, I willed myself into focused alertness. Now was no time to give up. Now was no time to give in.
Rolling onto my back, I glanced to the side to try to orient myself.
Time-worn gravestones stared back at me, crooked and forgotten, like decaying teeth. Nearby, the broken wing of a stone angel poked up from the snow. Delirious and desperate as I was, I scrambled toward the broken wing, hoping to use it as a weapon. But before I could muster up the strength to get very far, Petre hopped off his horse with a thud and planted his boot on the small of my back, digging the heel into my spine making me yelp in pain.
“You’re a fighter, I’ll give you that much,” he said, spitting on the ground so close to me that I felt his saliva spatter my cheek. “But today is the last day you fight me, you hear? If you fail to comply, if you fail in any of your duties as my wife, I won’t just take it out on you, my love. Your father will be strung up as an example, and if that fails to change things, it will be your mother that will pay in pain and blood for your ill manner. If I have to, I’ll murder every single Valentine on this earth to get you to become the wife I deserve. And Vasile? He isn’t coming to save you either. You fainted before you could see what happened. I killed him. Such a shame you missed it. He’s in pieces by now, food for the wolves.”
My gut churned and my eyes burned. Vasile dead? I swallowed hard, trying not to give him the satisfaction of the grief that felt like a fist to my gut.
And my parents? If I couldn’t save Vasile, I would do everything I could to protect them.
The sound of nearby footsteps made my heart somersault in my chest. Help must be coming. It had to be. But as I craned my neck, I saw that it was just the opposite.
Rushing toward me were six women that I had never seen before, dressed in matching silk dresses with flowers in their hair. They were all thin, eyes red rimmed and glassy, reminding me of how my friend Natasha had looked of late, and that just made my heart ache for someone familiar.
Wordlessly, the six of them grabbed a hold of me, and the bone-grinding pain of Petre’s heel in my spine was exchanged for their rough hands on my arms and my body.
For once, I didn’t fight. There were too many of them, and what was the point? I’d seen Vasile surrounded by Petre’s men, I’d been brought here against my will. I was going to be married and there was nothing anyone could or would do about it.
The only person in the world I wanted was certainly dead and unable to protect me. And if I didn’t go along with what Petre wanted, he would kill everyone I still cared about.
I let the women drag me down a snowy path without even trying to pull free, through frozen and forbidden gardens, and finally into a room in the disused monastery behind the cathedral, where a wedding dress awaited me.
The women shoved me into the room, and I stared at the dress, stunned. It was, in fact, the same dress that I had picked out myself. But so much had happened since then that it felt like some other version of me had picked out the pearl details on the corset, the satin trimmings on the sleeves.
No doubt most girls in my position would have felt like they were standing in their fairy tale gown. But to me it was as forbidding as a noose.
Five of the attendants stripped me naked, while the sixth stood watch at the door. They treated me with a humiliating ruthlessness, like I was a cow being prepared for slaughter rather than a human being.
I desperately tried to cover my nakedness, but they were uninterested in my comfort or embarrassment. Two of them seized my arms, holding them out straight, and two others shoved me into my undergarments, two layers of crinoline, wrapped me in my corset then finally, into my gown, pulling the corset ribbons so tight that my ribs and stomach screamed for mercy.
Before any of them could see the ring Vasile had placed on my finger, I slipped it off and hid it between my breasts to keep it safe.
Once the encasing was done, I was shoved into white satin ankle boots, and a wide diamond choker. Patting it with my fingertips, I felt that it was made of three parallel rows of square diamonds, but each setting had a prong that dug horribly into my skin, turning even the tiniest shift of my head into pure agony. I clawed at the clasp on the back of my neck but one of the attendants swatted my hand with such force that I felt one of my nails split in two.