The Vampire & Her Witch-Chapter 1505: The Bride’s Last Goodbye (Part One)

Anne’s fingers moved with the practiced efficiency of a woman who had dressed Blackwell ladies for longer than Jocelynn had been alive, drawing the laces tight along the back of the bodice with steady, measured pulls that cinched the stiff whalebone against Jocelynn’s ribs.

The dress had been made in Lothian City by a seamstress who had never set foot outside of the march, but Jocelynn had provided her with sketches of the fashions worn by the young noblewomen of Blackwell County, along with instructions that were precise enough to leave the woman little room for interpretation.

The result was something striking enough that the daughter of a count could have been worn to a ball in Blackwell Harbor without seeming out of place, though its construction might have garnered a myriad of whispered comments of both admiration and confusion. Tonight, Jocelynn was certain that it would draw far more than just whispers.

To start with, the color of the dress was wrong. For a wedding gown, the color was terribly, deliberately wrong.

The cerulean blue of the Blackwell coat of arms was a deep, saturated shade that caught the lamplight and shimmered like the sea at dawn, and every woman in the Lothian Court would recognize the insult the moment they saw her. A bride wore white. A bride wore purity and innocence and the promise of a new beginning. A bride did not wear the colors of a foreign house as if she were sailing into battle under her father’s flag.

Good, she thought. Let them see the flag. Let them know where she belonged when this was over.

She’d told Owain that she couldn’t wear white because her sister had worn white at her own wedding, and Jocelynn didn’t want to remind her groom of the wife he’d lost. It was the sort of deferential thoughtfulness that Owain expected from her, a gesture that flattered his vanity while appearing to show sensitivity toward his grief, and the lie had come so naturally that it frightened her.

But the truth was simpler, and uglier, and it lived in the dark space behind her ribs where she kept the things she couldn’t say to anyone.

White was for maidens. White was for purity. White was for women who hadn’t driven a knife into a man’s chest over and over until his screams dissolved into wet, rattling gurgles and his blood pooled deep enough on the dungeon floor to soak through her slippers.

Owain had put the skinning knife in her hand as a wedding gift. He’d called it justice. She’d called it nothing at all, because there was no word for the thing she’d become in that dungeon, kneeling in Percivus’s blood with the fabric of her dress growing heavy and warm against her knees.

White would be a mockery of everything she’d done, and everything she still intended to do.

So she wore cerulean. She wore it the way her father’s ships flew their colors, to declare who she was and who she was willing to fight for. She wore it for her sister, so that afterwards, people would know that there was a price to be paid for harming her family... A price she intended to pay herself to make up for her own part in her sister’s death.

The bodice of the dress was cut high with a neckline that sat just above her collarbones rather than dipping low, the way Owain preferred. The sleeves were long and fitted, ending in points that hooked over the backs of her hands, and the skirt fell over her hips in clean, layered folds that resembled the tessets of a knight’s armor before they softened and spilled to the floor.

There was lace at the collar and cuffs, fine white lace imported from Keating that softened the severity of the cut just enough to keep the seamstress from asking uncomfortable questions about why the future Marchioness wanted a wedding gown that looked more like armor than a celebration.

The lace was the only element of softness she’d allowed herself, and she had it cut in the shape of cresting waves. Waves she desperately wished would carry her home, or at least to her sister’s side in the next life so she could atone for what she’d done.

The whalebone corset beneath the bodice wasn’t the delicate, decorative thing she’d worn to dinners with Owain. This one was stiffer and more structured. It was the kind of corset that held a woman upright through hours of standing, and most importantly, it was a corset with laces along the back and the hips... laces that would keep Owain’s hands busy ’unwrapping’ his bride while she made her move.

She expected to die in this dress, and she’d designed it for that purpose, but she’d also designed it as a trap for the man who thought he could remove it.

"My lady," Mary said softly from her place near the small table where the jewelry had been laid out on a square of dark velvet. "Shall I bring the pearls?"

Jocelynn studied Mary’s reflection in the looking glass without turning from the window. The older maid stood with her hands folded at her waist, her plain charcoal wool skirt and tunic carrying the same austere modesty that both women had worn since the memorial.

Mary’s expression was carefully composed, but the slight furrow between her brows and the way her eyes kept drifting toward the writing desk betrayed a worry that went deeper than the ordinary anxieties of a wedding day.

Anne was watching too. She’d stepped back from the laces to examine her work, but her gaze lingered on Jocelynn’s face in the glass with the quiet, searching attentiveness of a woman who had spent years learning to read the moods of the Blackwell household.

Anne and Mary had served the family for most of their lives. They’d known Ashlynn since she was a girl sneaking out to the gardens. They’d wept for her at the memorial, their thin voices joining the chorus of more than forty others to sing their lady home to the Heavenly Shores while the iron basin caught the ashes of a childhood that had burned away to nothing.

They knew Jocelynn well enough to see through most of her masks. And right now, behind the mask of the bride preparing for her wedding, they could see something that frightened them, even if neither woman could name it precisely.

"The pearls," Jocelynn said. "Yes."

Mary brought the velvet cloth to the dressing table, and Jocelynn looked down at the two pieces that lay against the dark fabric. The earrings were hers. They had always been hers, a legacy from her grandmother, Countess Elara. They were perfectly round pearls set in simple silver clasps that caught the light without demanding attention. Classic and timeless.

They weren’t meant to be worn casually. When her father presented them to her after his mother’s death, he called them Tears of the Sea. They were meant to be worn on the most solemn of occasions and the only time she’d put them on to attend a party, her father had scolded her fiercely before making her put them away.

In Blackwell, there hadn’t been many occasions where she needed to wear them, but now, in Lothian, she found herself wearing them far too often.

The necklace was different.

The strand of luminous, warm-white pearls had belonged to Ashlynn. They had passed into Ashlynn’s hands from their grandmother the same day the earrings had passed to Jocelynn, but when Ashlynn wore them, they seemed to come alive in a way they never did for Jocelynn. It was as if both women had caught the Tears of the Sea, but Jocelynn’s only wept for sorrow while Ashlynn’s wept for joy.

But there was no joy in possessing both pieces. Every time she clasped the necklace around her throat, she felt the cool weight of the pearls settle against her skin, and instead of the warmth she’d imagined when she used to watch Ashlynn wear them, all she felt was the absence of the woman they truly belonged to.

Holding the pearls felt like holding Ashlynn’s hand. And Ashlynn’s hand would never hold hers again.

"Help me with the earrings first," Jocelynn said, sitting at the dressing table so Anne could finish the last of her hair while Mary fastened the earrings. Anne’s hands resumed their work, weaving sections of Jocelynn’s golden hair into a style that was both elegant and practical, swept up and away from her face in the manner of a Blackwell countess rather than a Lothian bride.

She saved the necklace for last, lifting it from the velvet herself rather than letting either maid handle it. The pearls were cool against her fingers, smooth and familiar, and for a moment, she simply held them, feeling their weight in her cupped palms.

Then she raised the strand and clasped it around her own neck, letting the pearls lay against her skin and hoping, just for a moment, that they would shine with the luster they had when Ashlynn wore them.

But the pearls were just pearls, and on Jocelynn’s neck, the only tears the sea could shed were tears of sorrow.