Author's Preface
We don’t actually get married on Wednesday. It gets pushed back to Friday evening for logistical reasons. Two in particular: one, because Thorunn has the excellent idea of getting married aboard the Skaði during its brief stop in Belsie Port (removing us fully of Saol Eile’s jurisdiction and into the nebulous world of international maritime law); and two, Edgar wants to be there.
“Of course I’m attending,” he sniffs indignantly. “You need a priest, don’t you?”
I am flattered that my father-who-doesn’t-know-he’s-my-father insists upon attending my wedding, but he seems to have a different idea of it than I do. “It’s not that sort of wedding,” I explain. “We’re just signing the contract, having a dinner and drinks, then spending a night in Belsie Port while the Skaði loads cargo. Then, in the morning, Thorunn departs on the Skaði and the rest of us return home on the Belsie ferry.”
“And? You still need an ordained priest to administer the vows.”
“I don’t need vows. It’s a business marriage.”
“What about witnesses?”
“Lady Amira and her guards will be there, as well as Miss Lisle and Lady Thudovarius. I told you, it’s not a real wedding.”
“Miss Odric.” Edgar forcefully sets down his pen and leans across the desk. “After all you’ve done for me, I’ll be damned if I miss your wedding, real or not. If you help me clear this desk by Thursday evening, we can both take Friday off. I’ll even arrange for my private sailing yacht.”
I protest, but of course, it’s a moot point. Edgar is coming to my wedding.
A similar argument is had with Mom and my friends. I am adamant that it is not a “real wedding” and that we do not need all the fanfare of a ceremony and reception.
“We’ll have a real wedding when we are good and ready,” I insist. “Decorations, party, dress, whatever the fuck people care about for these sorts of things. This is a temporary measure to make sure the Crown won’t sell me off.”
One look at Mom, Pansy, and Lucienne, sitting across the table from me at dinner, and I know that they are not having it. I exchange glances with Thorunn. He is similarly bashful at the thought of too much fanfare, and like me, prefers that this occasion be discreet and professional for now. I still haven’t met his family or visited his homeland, which I must do before I officially join him in marriage. When I look back at Mom and my friends, they glare at me for a little longer before turning back to each other.
“As I was saying,” Mom continues, as if I had never interrupted her, “are you all free to go wedding dress shopping tomorrow?”
Pansy and Lucienne are, but I am not. Edgar and I are busy all day Thursday, cramming two days of work into one. Thorunn is similarly indisposed, scampering around the Skaði in preparation to depart. We compromise. Pansy somehow convinces Thorunn permission to board the Skaði early and set up the venue. Lucienne holes herself up in her lab and forges the wedding rings. Mama takes our measurements, buys a ready-to-wear suit and dress, and works late into the night on Thursday, making alterations for a better fit.
Out of politeness, I extend two other invitations that are respectfully declined. One to Ezra, who cites a general disdain for weddings and also sea travel; the other to Moretti, who says he is busy. I have no doubt that he genuinely is swamped with work, since he seems to have pushed all of his other cases to the side in order to deliver the marriage contract to me in record-breaking speed. But there is another, more plausible reason: he does not want to see me marry another man. I don’t blame him. As I am about to leave his office, I linger in the door.
“If it is of any consolation,” I tell him, “Thorunn and I have spoken at length about us. You, me, him. I’d like to hope that our time of being jealous is in the past.”
Moretti manages a pressed smile. “With all due respect, Baroness, it’s not you I’m worried about,” he responds.
“You seemed to hold your own in the ring.”
“That stunt I pulled to win—I can only do that so many times. Next time the Jarl wants to kill me, he won’t break a sweat.”
I cock my head as I regard him. “You know,” I add, “it wasn’t me who invited you. It was Thorunn.”
Moretti barks a laugh. “To provoke me, I assume?”
“To be his best man.”
He considers that for a long time. The answer, in the end, is still a respectful no.
On Friday morning at the crack of dawn, Edgar arrives at my house to pick us up. Since Mama, Hilde, Svara, and I are traveling separately from Thorunn, Pansy, and Lucienne, we do not need to race to the wharf and catch the Skaði, which steamed out of port at an ungodly four o’clock in the morning. After all, Mom reminds us, it’s best to keep Thorunn and I separate—bad luck for the groom to see a bride before the wedding.
The journey aboard Edgar’s sailing yacht, a half day’s sail to Belsie port, is spent letting Mom give me a makeover. Again, my insistence that this is not a real wedding falls entirely on deaf ears. When I was very little, my mother’s favorite weekend pastime was to play pretend at a full spa treatment and makeover, adding extra soap to the lukewarm bath for bubbles, cutting up cucumbers for our eyes, draping ourselves in recycled curtains to mimic luxurious gowns, staining our lips and nails red with crushed wildflowers, braiding our hair with cheap glass beads and satin ribbons. Now, with Mom having blown a hundred obols on makeup, perfumes, and body oils, we get to play spa for real. The yacht even boasts a heated bathtub with water jets on all sides, which roil up the water and massage the body. I offer to let Mom try it, but she insists that this treatment is exclusively for me.
She’s right. I’ve worked hard. I deserve to rest and relax. I have not had a true day off in…I don’t recall. Since the turn of the new year, everything in my life has been about Edgar’s petition, Mom’s safety, or pacifying Thorunn and Moretti. I am letting today be about me.
My wedding outfit is refreshingly understated. A high-necked silk blouse with pearl fastenings down the back, a simple A-line skirt, and lace gloves and stockings. Svara braids my hair into an elaborate updo, showing off a pair of pearl drop earrings. Were it not for the outfit being in all white, the pieces are comfortable and functional enough that I might wear them to work. The makeup, per my request, is similarly understated. Blush to tint my cheeks, kohl to line my eyes, balm to soften my lips. And the final, finishing touch:
“A tiara?” I ask Mom. “What for?”
She nudges me with her elbow. “You know why,” she grins impishly. “He’s their version of a crown prince, isn’t he?”
“I guess.”
“Then if you marry him, wouldn’t that make you a crown princess?”
I scrunch my nose. There isn’t a formal title for the wife of a Jarl, nor does Thorunn have a last name which would mark me out as royalty. In keeping with Northern tradition, I would actually take the last name of his mother, Mirri, and become Eloise Mirrisdottir. But I suppose Mom has a point. I put the tiara on. It is a small, delicate silver thing, accented with pearls and the smallest crystals. Likely not real diamonds, or Mom would have had to spend a fortune of Edgar’s money (it was difficult enough to route small payments from Edgar’s bank account to Mom’s, requiring Edgar himself to show up at the Royal Bank and scream top-volume at the manager for a half hour; I can’t imagine authorizing payment for a genuine diamond tiara). Real or not, it’s the thought that counts.
We arrive in Belsie Port at half past four. The Skaði, the larger and faster ship, arrived hours before us, and now sits contentedly in the harbor. Stepping aboard her, I see that she now puts even Edgar’s opulent yacht to shame. In the three weeks the Skaði sat in the Saol Eile docks, she was not merely undergoing repairs. She was also being fitted for her new career: a career as the fastest and most comfortable ocean liner in the world. Capable of crossing entire oceans in a matter of days, with enough room to house hundreds of passengers and several ships’ worth of cargo, the Skaði balances efficiency and elegance with every appointment. The passenger spaces are rich with Saelic-style décor, patterns, and furniture. This must be why Saol Eile had such strong ties to the North in my past life—the Northerners supplied the ship, and the Saelics supplied the luxury.
Although I failed in dissuading anyone from dressing me up, I succeed in putting my foot down as to the ceremony itself. No chapel, no walking down the aisle, and no grandiose organ music. The venue is a small, private dining room. The music is supplied by a handsome brass-belled gramophone. The table is already set and filled with food. Pansy, Lucienne, and my husband-to-be are already here.
When we enter, Thorunn stands. Mom whispers that she couldn’t find a tuxedo which would properly fit him, so he has opted for a less-formal black tunic, trousers, and his silvery wolf-fur cloak. For once, someone has persuaded him to brush his hair flat.
“Eloise,” he breathes, and crosses the room to kiss me. “Gods, you’re radiant.”
I return the kiss, but the second that I pull back to look at him again, I burst into uncontrollable snickering. “Sorry. It’s your hair. It’s ridiculous.”
He spins towards Pansy. “I told you, I look like an egg!”
Pansy prevents me from mussing up Thorunn’s hair only long enough for the photographer to arrive and set up his contraptions. We stand statue still as he instructs, and then, a second after the bulb flashes, I pounce on Thorunn and ruffle his hair back into its signature wild fluff. In retribution, he lifts me into the air and spins me around.
It’s not a real wedding. Edgar doesn’t bother reading the usual hour-long sermons and ceremonies. He brought his cleric’s robes, including the stupid bishop hat, but only wears the hat for a few minutes as a joke and stores it under the gramophone for the rest of the night. We push the cutlery aside to sign the contract on the dinner table, then get distracted by the wine and charcuterie board. Lucienne presents the rings. They are plain platinum bands with no embellishments. As we slip them onto each other’s hand, arcane runes briefly flicker along the polished surfaces, then vanish. Not wedding bands. Warding bands. No matter how far away Thorunn and I are, as long as we wear them, a special bond of protection will link us. Should either of us face mortal danger, both rings will break—saving one wearer’s life and informing the other that something is wrong.
“The Skaði will be traveling the world on its maiden voyage,” Thorunn tells me, “so our fastest ship will likely be unavailable. But if anything happens to this ring, I swear to you, I will drop whatever I am doing and hop on our second- fastest ship, and I can be in Saol Eile in three days.”
“And I’ll write every day,” I promise him. “The mail carriers will hate me.”
“I will send poems. May I also send gifts?”
“Like what?”
“I…don’t know yet. If I find things. There are beautiful stones on our shores, I have wanted to show them to you.”
“Well, my dear, you know that I like neat rocks, but the mail carriers will hate you, too.”
It’s not a real wedding. A real wedding wouldn’t tolerate every single guest getting so hammered out of their minds that, by dessert, we are prancing around the dinner table and half-hollering a folk ballad. Nor would it tolerate all of us kicking our shoes off and racing each other down the promenade deck, a race that Lucienne wins, as she has installed a gasoline-powered engine to her wheels that is unanimously regarded as cheating, but still incredibly cool. A real wedding shouldn’t end with the ship’s captain, a grizzled old man who looks like he has never smiled in his life, coming down to see what all the fuss is about only to find the bride, groom, and wedding guests sprawled out on their backs, pointing out constellations in the stars. It certainly would not result in a quiet bet amongst ourselves that Hilde cannot successfully flirt with and seduce the captain (she succeeds. Mom and Hilde win the bet).
It’s not a real wedding, I can tell myself a million times over. And yet, I am wrong. It is real. It is not the formalities which make a wedding real. Somewhere in between the laughter and tears of joy, there lives an unspoken oath which binds us after all. The ink upon the contract is not yet dry, and yet, I am certain as if it is etched in stone. Thorunn is my husband. And I, his wife.