Chapter Text
It is sun-drenched and warm on her wedding day. Air heavy with sweet pollen rustles through flower-laden tree branches, clusters of pink and white cherry blossoms crowding in on the temple. She is suffocated in her white bridal robes, the stiff bridal hood obscuring her line of vision—yesterday was the last night she was able to wear the indigo and violet robes she so dearly loved. Her face itches from the thick red-and-white makeup the servants spent hours applying, sharp pins digging painfully into her dark hair. Efforts were made, Shiomi knows, to ensure that the last shining pearl of the Yoru clan be polished to perfection—in that regard, the Spider Court spared no expense.
You knew something like this would happen, she tells herself, fingers clenching around the sake. Shiomi urges herself to not spill it; she was already dragged out of her room during the night to the Spider Court, let her have this one last scrap of dignity—ensure her soon-to-be-husband not see her as little more than a clumsy child, or worse a sniveling captive. You were prepared for this since you were a little girl, Shiomi insists to herself, that you would marry into a noble house and bear children—and that marriage would be arranged for you by someone else.
If only she could accept that truth so easily.
Shiomi has never liked those fairytales that spread so among the lower-class—stories where love triumphs all. Love will not feed nor clothe you, what will you do when you wake up in bed next to someone who cannot provide for you or work to manage your household, your children? She always rolled her eyes at stories or rumors from the neighboring countries, where girls threw fits over the mere concept of having to marry else. No, to marry for status is the pragmatic choice. It would have been the path she took—and she knows she would have flourished, too. She could see her future meticulously managing a household of servants, ensuring her children be primed as heirs.
Nothing like this.
The purification rites nag at her—that telltale drone, akin to the buzzing of a fly. Shiomi wishes she could swat the priest away with her hand and shut him up. No, it was never supposed to be like this.
A proper marriage would have taken months of arrangement, preparation, drowned in negotiations over a proper dowry. This sort of union was forged the night she was dragged out of her house screaming, insistent that no, she had warned Mother that it wouldn’t this way, listened to her cousins and sisters and parents gurgle out their last breaths under metal with her magic unable to do a thing to save them. Brides are treated with dignity and value—they are worth their weight in a dowry. Here she is little more than livestock.
Her bruises from where the Spider Court’s guards dug too hard into her arms still sting. The cluster of ugly black-and-blue at her wrists is hidden under heavy white sleeves, embroidered with blue. The plum blossoms used in today’s earlier bath (the servants scrubbed at her so harshly that her limbs and torso were left pink and raw under their brushes, against warm water) smell so sweet Shiomi thinks she might vomit. At least it is not so still and suffocating as the air in this temple.
Ensuring she remains discreet, Shiomi steals a glance at her soon-to-be-husband.
Lord Rien. He is twenty-eight years old to her eighteen—a near-perfect ten year distance. There he stands before her: dressed in black, hands folded neatly in front of him. There are streaks of white nestled in among the ink-black of his hair. How strange, Shiomi wonders. Twenty-eight is hardly so old. Perhaps his position of power causes him stress? I do recall Mother noting that some people’s hair prematurely whitens if they are too strained in life. Perhaps that is the case with Lord Rien. He is, after all, occupant of quite a lofty position—that is to say nothing of his own circumstances prior to this union.
She surveys his face as subtly as he can. There is not a trace of triumph in his eyes—silvery, fringed with dark lashes. She recognizes no joy, either. Rien stares onward with a tiny, placid smile. It is the sort of expression Shiomi recognizes too well: that forced little performance so integral to displays of proper etiquette, one of many little gestures her own mother and tutors and nursemaid passed on to her.
It would be easier to clench her jaw and tolerate the rest of the wedding ceremony if Rien gloated about it. He, the triumphant captor who had at last claimed the pearl of the Yoru clan—once shining white, now crusted over with blood dried to a sickly rust-brown. Gods above, it would be easier if Rien expressed even a modicum of grief—any tightness in his hands, any lingering sadness in his countenance. But when Shiomi glances at him she sees nothing. There is only the afterimage of an ideal lord of a noble house: well-groomed and handsome, impeccable etiquette. It is not a lie because with Lord Rien, he has nothing inside to lie about.
(And oh, she knows of all that he did. She knows he must have been among those sent to the Spider Court to the Yoru clan’s home. Did anything go through his mind when he cleaned off the blood from his blade later that night, when he heard her shrieking for the Spider Court’s guards to unhand her, insistent that she had warned them? Did he feel even the slightest pang of guilt? Pride?
She too will join his afterimage. Dias predicted all Shiomi Yoru would bring to this world—the most powerful wielder of the Arayashiki that the land of Kurotari had ever seen. All that magical potential Shiomi had tapped into would be inherited by her brood. The Spider Court shall have their child of the fabled prophecy, let the liquidation of the Yoru clan serve as a warning.)
His worst feature, Shiomi decides, are his eyes. It is not so much that Rien’s eyes are unappealing. Nothing like that all—those whispers and rumors from other ladies of the court regarding Lord Rien’s gorgeous appearance clearly have basis in fact. His eyes are evenly-shaded, a cool steely gray. What makes Rien’s eyes his worst feature, Shiomi decides, is how little she can see of him through them. She looks and looks at him as though he is made of smoke. Her soon-to-be husband is little more a magnified shadow cast upon a backdrop of shadow.
With past suitors, she could always infer things about them. Stray hems at their sleeves indicated a husband who would potentially be slovenly. Even less obvious were his eyes—a gleam too bright with no wrinkles at the eyes indicated someone who might rather fritter away precious time, a dimpled smile indicated a suitor who would likely be more open about what he felt for better or for worse. And yet when Shiomi looks at Rien, she cannot discern anything at all.
Will he treat me with cruelty? she wonders. Or will he be kind? Will he spend his money—for really, it isn’t my money, not anymore—frivolously? Will he manage the finances of the Spider Court responsibly? I have heard of Lord Rien as both a husband and a nobleman. But hearsay can hardly be so reliable.
So lost in thought Shiomi is she almost does not notice Rien staring at her.
She keeps her expression placid. Shiomi understands that this goes against tradition—the bride must avert her eyes during this part of the ceremony. She stares at the point between Rien’s eyes, at the top of his nose. That way her staring can be feasibly passed off as an accident, little more than the wandering eye of a fresh-faced young bride (but Shiomi Yoru never quite found herself fitting the mold of that blushing, doe-eyed virgin archetype very comfortably).
Still—nothing. Even disapproval at his disobedient young bride, sneaking glances at him, would sting far less than the blankness present in those storm cloud irises.
The poets deemed her the pearl of the Yoru clan, the shining star that remained gleaming even amidst the darkest of nights—waxed purple verses about Lady Shiomi Yoru’s lustrous dark hair, milk-pale skin with eyes like garnets set in her face.
A pearl only emerges after sand works to irritate an oyster. The brightest stars will collapse in on themselves into little more than gas and dust. And even the brightest full moon comes to wane.