Luminous

8 - Coris Hadrian

Are we really going through with this?

Even with her glowing eyes taken care of, Meya wasn't at ease. As Gillian and four of his bandits shaved, bathed and suited up in the Crosset guard uniform, as she herself was scrubbed and cleaned by nine maids who also had her hair bleached and curled, making her resemble Arinel as humanly (or Greeneye-ly?) possible, as Gretella and Haselle tutored her in the ways of a noble lady, which included mundane matters like how to walk properly, eat properly, talk properly, all the way to—to put it politely, please one's husband in the bedchambers. Properly.

Now that the small entourage had crossed the border into Hadrian and was being led by its red-clad guards up the hill to the castle, the question became a constant ringing in her head.

Really? Are we seriously even considering this? Really?

Sitting in her velvet-lined seat, surrounded by little round comfy pillows (all moldy green), measuring the hill's incline with her behind, Meya clenched her fists and struggled to calm her failing nerves.

Any minute now, she'd step out to the Hadrian sun in Arinel's green silk dress, greet her husband-to-be—Lord Coris Hadrian—and his family, enter a wedding ceremony with him, and—Oh, Goodly Freda, please him in the bedchambers.

Meya resisted the temptation to yank out her hair. Her head was sore enough from the trials it had been through with the bleach, the dye, the curling and the braiding. Her face felt like she had dipped it in bread flour, with all the powder heaped on to cover her freckles and suntanned skin.

She'd have to be unbelievably lucky for Lord Coris to be stupid enough to believe this Arinel was born with golden curls and porcelain white, unblemished skin, and not a disguise to ensure he would accept her on her wedding day.

What frightened Meya most, however, was the bedchamber part. Meya knew she was coming of age, but marriage had been further from her mind than Everglen until now.

Ever since the Famine ended, peasant girls in Crosset usually worked the fields until halfway into their twenties before they finally married. Unlike pretty Marin, who could marry any man her father approved without paying the groom a single copper coin, other girls must earn their dowry.

Suntanned, freckle-faced, flat-nosed, mud-smudged, pig-smelling as she was, Meya didn't dare dream of marriage. She was saving up more to buy herself land to build a humble spinster-sized cottage after Dad had died and left everything to Maro. Yet, here she was, about to marry a nobleman. A nobleman, for Freda's sake! She should be celebrating her luck, but she shivered in fear.

She'd never known him, never even seen even his portrait. What if he turned out to be a sadistic lunatic? Lord Crosset used dozens of peasants as decoys to make sure his daughter arrived safely for her wedding. Who was to say Coris Hadrian wouldn't be the same? What would happen if her cover was ever blown?

Still, it's better than dying in the forest. And after all, since you were the one who came up with the plan, you should be the one to carry it out!

Though reasonable, the realization wasn't consoling. Unable to bottle up her insecurities any longer, Meya raised her gaze to the now brown-haired girl sitting on the carriage floor before her.

"Lady Arinel?"

Arinel's cold blue eyes rose as if to answer a challenge. After the scathing remarks they exchanged, Meya wasn't sure how to carry herself before the proud Lady.

"Lord Coris. What's he like? Is he kind? Is he handsome?" 

Meya eked out a timid conversation opener as she fidgeted with the cloth of her dress. The condescending look in Arinel's eyes vanished, replaced with warm understanding. She averted her eyes,