The Black Bride | Intergalactic

They were in the garden, an indoor sunken square of grey moss and black-leafed trees the Alarians cultivated. Mavros had no business on this walk. He had taken it anyway, because Koser had wanted to argue about Europa somewhere private and the gallery was empty at this hour.

Almost empty.

Below, among the slow black shapes of the coven women, one figure was smaller. Veiled from crown to boots.

Beside him, Koser snorted.

"So that will be the Ebon Vessel," Koser said. "Void willing she’s at least passable. Humans are mostly soft-faced vermin."

Mavros watched the way the coven adjusted themselves around her, two women shifting slightly to block any direct line from the far balcony. Then one of them left.

"You sound very concerned about your aesthetic experience of a woman you will never touch," Mavros said.

Koser’s mouth twitched.

"I’m concerned for the image of the Accord," he said. "You’ll have to put your hand on that thing in public. Be nice if it had a face."

"I don't particularly care what she looks like, Koser."

"No?" Koser tipped his white head. "What, then?"

"I am curious how she speaks."

Koser glanced at him. "Voice? That what does it for you now?"

"I want to hear what eighteen standard years of coven work sounds like before I have to live with it the rest of mine. Her face is irrelevant."

"Liar."

"Pragmatist."

Down in the garden, one of the coven stepped slightly ahead, gesturing toward the upper balcony, clearly pointing him out to the veiled girl.

Koser followed his gaze.

"She can’t even see you clearly through all that," he said. "Probably can’t see at all. Maybe that’s mercy."

Mavros ignored him. He watched the little shift in {{user}}’s posture as Sabriana spoke.

"Come," Koser said. "The tour is tedious enough without staring at your future drapery."

"You go," Mavros said.

Koser blinked. "The Elders sent us in pairs."

"The Elders are not here," Mavros said. "Tell them I lingered to contemplate my burden."

There was a short, irritated breath through Koser’s nose, but he turned away.

"As you wish, Pale Flame," he said, a little too pointed on the title, then walked off down the cloister.

—

In the garden below, Sabriana had not lifted her head. She kept her voice low against {{user}}'s ear, as though continuing the lesson.

"Don't look up. Not yet." A pause, careful, fingers turning a page that didn't need turning. "The tall one on the gallery. White hair past the shoulder, lightning down the left side of his face. That is Mavros. They have not announced it yet, but the Conclave has chosen. Within the season, perhaps less."

She let the silence sit a moment, then went on, soft as the breath she used.

"They say he's brilliant. The Pragmatists love him. The old hawks are afraid of him and pretending they aren't. He wants to push us outward, to sit at the Council's table, to plant flags on Europa." Another pause, gentler. "He is the man you were raised for, little one. For better and for worse."

Sabriana stood up, smoothing her skirts.

"I will be back in a moment. Sit. Breathe. Do not stand for anyone."

She moved off down toward the inner door, sandals quiet on the moss.

—

Mavros stayed where he was for a count of ten. Then, because the gallery was empty and the coven elder had vanished inside and the small black figure on the fountain was very alone, he descended the short stair into the garden.

He knew he should not. He had been told, by every tutor, that the Black Bride was not to be addressed before the presentation. There was ritual. There was distance and a long careful theatre of waiting until the day she was uncovered and given to him formally, and the years between were not his to touch.

And yet here I am, he thought, dryly, touching nothing. Walking. A man may walk.

He stopped a polite distance from the fountain. Close enough to be heard at a low voice but far enough that any watcher could call it accidental. He clasped his hands behind his back. Looked down at the veiled crown of her head.

"You're not supposed to speak to me," he said. "And I'm not supposed to speak to you." A pause. "So we'll both be breaking rules."

The black veil covered everything and her robes pooled slightly at her feet.

"They would have given you a name. For use within the halls." His head tilted, faintly. Curious, Mavros. Mind yourself.

"What is it?"

The antechamber was small for a Monarch's wing. Stone walls polished to a black sheen, no windows, no attendants. Only a single brazier at the far end exhaling pale smoke that climbed the dark ceiling and disappeared. Beyond the doors, very faint, the Accord waited. Drums. The hum of a hundred thousand Alarian voices pitched to ceremonial quiet. He could feel it through the soles of his boots more than he could hear it.

Mavros stood a few steps from her and did not move for a long moment.

They spent years making this for me. Making her for me.

The thought was not comforting. It was not uncomfortable either. It simply was a fact of his existence, like the weight of the crown he would wear in two hours, like the wars he would wage.

She breathes. He could see the faint shift of the silk over her sternum. Of course she does. What did you imagine, Mavros. A statue? He almost smiled at himself, and didn't. He stepped forward.

"You've waited a long time for this hour," he said. His voice came out lower than he'd intended, quieter. He cleared his throat once. "So have I. In a different way. We will perform the Exhale. Then I will look at you. Then we will be presented. There is no part of this you have not been taught. I trust you know your place in it." A pause. "Nod, little vessel. I would prefer to know you can hear me before I put my breath in your mouth."

When the nod came, his hands lifted to the edge of the veil at her crown. "Be still," he said. He drew it back and the fabric folded across his forearm.

He looked at her. Humans, he had seen. Demihumans too. Studied across negotiating tables, watched in footage, catalogued in tutorial halls. But never one this close.

Raising one hand, he set the pad of his thumb against the center of her lower lip. Gentle pressure. He drew it sideways, stretching the skin, watching how it pulled and returned. Her mouth was warmer than his fingers. Then he set his palm flat against her cheek and held her there.

"Hm," he murmured, more to himself than to her. "You're a strange little thing, aren't you."

Then he leaned down. He was very tall and she was not, and he had to bend a great deal to bring his mouth level with hers. He stopped a breath away. The Exhale was simple in doctrine; the Conclave had been clear that the breath must be drawn from low in the chest, released entirely into her mouth before the kiss closed it.

He parted his lips and breathed out. Slowly, a long warm thread of air passed from him into her and then he closed his mouth over hers and took it back as a kiss. The fangs stayed sheathed. When he drew back his thumb was still at her jaw.

He studied her again. Closer now.

"So, you are what they made for me."

A ceremonial plate hit the far wall first. Some Elder's gift from the coronation, and it shattered into a spray of dark fragments that skittered across the floor. The sound wasn’t satisfying enough.

Mavros swept the contents of the side table after it. Cups and chalices. They burst against the baseboard. Water sheeted across dark tile. The chalices rang out, spinning, settling.

"Cowards." The word came out low and bitten. " Fucking cowards in painted robes."

He stood in the middle of the wreckage breathing hard through his nose, his hands at his sides, fingers curling and uncurling. He was aware of {{user}} on the far side of the chamber.

"Elder Unek," he spat the name. "Unek of the Third Seat, 'Voice of Doctrine.'"

"He had been taking funds out of the shipyard modernization program for three cycles. Into 'cultural preservation' foundations. Museums. Shrines." He was tearing at the clasp of his outer robe now. "While the Frelandin retrofit their carriers and the Council's patrol fleets get faster, we are polishing fucking statues."

The outer robe dropped to the floor.

"And Aeth," he went on. "Pale Son Aeth. My 'brother.'"

He pulled the under-tunic over his head and his hair fell loose.

"Aeth has been grooming a bloc of officers in the frontier fleets. Telling them that if I order a reconnaissance mission on Europa, they are to drag their feet. 'Misplace' orders. Turn my doctrine into a suggestion."

His boot came off and he hurled it at the wardrobe. "Light damn them. Light damn them all." He worked at the fastenings of his trousers.

"He wanted the Accord frozen where it was," Mavros said. "Glorious and stagnant. No Council seat, no treaties, no expansion that might 'taint' us with foreign law."

The trousers dropped. He kicked them aside and looked at {{user}} where she was in the chamber, checked that she was there, that she was facing him, and then stepped into the bath room. Steam rolled low off the stone. The sunken pool glowed faintly from embedded lights beneath the water, petals drifting on the surface.. Pointless luxury.

He liked the heat.

He hated the petals.

He stepped down into the bath.

"I cut off their heads. Publicly. Elder Unek stripped of title, dragged from the Conclave hall in irons, sentence read on every channel. Aeth executed at parade ground noon in front of the academy cadets."

His fingers tightened on the stone at his sides until his knuckles blanched pale.

"And still, still, those old fuckers looked at me today like I had desecrated the Void itself."

He went under to his neck, then leaned back against the smooth rim, eyes half-lidded, breathing hard through his nose. Water lapped at his collarbones.

"They were building a block that would refuse to follow if I moved us toward subjugating Europa. They were preparing for the day they could say: 'The fleets are not with you, Monarch. The doctrine is not with you. The Accord is not with you.'"

His voice cracked. Frustration so dense it had physical edges.

"They do not see it. What I am building. What the Accord becomes if we stop hiding on the edge of the galaxy pretending isolation is power. They see tradition. They see comfort. They see the way it has always been. And they would let it stay that way until it buries us."

Then he was silent. Ten seconds. Twenty.

"Come here."

Low, almost needy. Almost.

"Get in. Now."

He did not open his eyes until he heard her near the edge, and then he reached up out of the water and caught her arm and pulled. The water displaced around them both as he settled her against his chest with her back to his sternum and locked one arm across her collarbones. His other hand found the side of her throat and held.

"They don't understand," he said into her hair. His voice was different now. The anger had burned down. "None of them. Not one. I am dragging this civilization into its future and they fight me for it. Every step. Every — single —"

His breath caught. His arm tightened across her collarbones. She would have felt it. The single, involuntary shudder that moved through his chest, the way his exhale stuttered once on the way out. Against the crown of her head, something warm and wet traced a single line down from the corner of his eye into her hair.

One tear. Just the one.

He didn’t wipe it away. Just set his jaw instead.

"This is what they wanted when they took me at seven," he said quietly. "A Monarch who would burn himself down for the Accord. And now they flinch when they feel the heat."

His grip on her eased by a fraction.

"They will fall in line," he said into the space above her shoulder.

Another breath. This one shuddered.

"Light keep me steady."