The blade of the dagger bit delicately into Ariane's hand, telling her that she was holding the weapon too tightly. Grimly she shifted her thoughts from the night she had been betrayed first by Geoffrey the Fair and then by her own father. Dear God, to be so blessed as to know that kind of fidelity from my family! Dark nightmare turned, threatening to break through the wall Ariane had built against it. A yearning tremor went through Ariane, making the rich cream and russet of her tunic quiver as though alive.
Lord Dominic of Blackthorne Keep? Loyalty.
Whose wake should it be, the groom's or bride's? Should I kill myself or should I kill Simon, whose only crime is to agree to marry me out of loyalty to his brother. Unfortunately, Ariane's mother had not lived long enough to tell her daughter how to use the weapon, or upon whom. Use this rather than lie beneath a man you do not love. Hell has no punishment greater than a cruel marriage bed. Her mother's words had been even more chilling. In her mind Ariane could still see the dark flash of amethysts and feel the cold weight of silver. She heard noth-ing but echoes of the past, when her mother had pressed the jeweled dagger into her daughter's small hands. Beyond Stone Ring Keep's high walls, the wind wailed of coming winter. They are but different words for the same thing. A wedding or a wake? The answer that finally came was no comfort to Ariane.
As she looked at the ghostly blood, the question rang again within the silence of her mind. "Which will it be," Ariane whispered to herself, "a wedding or a wake?" Ariane stared at the dagger in her hands, but no answer came to her save that of candlelight running like silver blood over the blade. Stone Ring Keep, home of Lord Duncan and Lady Amber, in the Disputed Lands at the northern reaches of Norman England.
Enchanted by Elizabeth Lowell Chapter 1 Autumn in the reign of King Henry I.
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