Page 42 of Honey Cut
“Was this always the plan?” I ask as I watch the room fill. It looks more and more like a wedding as people sit, as the sky darkens above the glass ceiling. A midnight version of a wedding.
“Ever since he decided to marry her,” Dinah says. She looks at me. “This is his world, the one he built. And those people out there need to see that she’s just as much a part of it as he is.”
Jealousy rips through my guts.
I want it to be me on that bed, me with roses and bluebells under my feet as I walk toward Mark on a road made of candlelight and cello music.
But I was never the plan. He told me so, didn’t he, in Singapore and again at Morois House. By then, he’d already been engaged to Isolde for four years.
It was never going to be me.
It’s a bitter blow anyway, when Mark himself appears in the wings on the other side of the stage, looking like a dashing Lucifer in his black tuxedo. In one hand, he’s carrying a slender golden collar with an etched pattern and set with small rubies. Honeysuckle again, that tendril of promise between them.
The jealousy is eviscerating me now.
The music slows but doesn’t stop, a thrum on the edges of silence, and Dinah steps out onto the stage, where the candles have been lit too. The lighting is moody and intimate for so large a space, and it feels holier than the cathedral when she speaks.
“Dearly beloved,” she starts, and there is a swirl of wicked laughter through the room. The microphones hanging above the stage mean she doesn’t have to lift her voice beyond her usual throaty contralto. “We are gathered here today to see something wonderful. Not just Mark’s new wife, but our new wife. Not just Mark’s new pleasure, but our new pleasure. We are here to witness, just like medieval courtiers of old, the sealing of vows. After tonight, there will be no mistake whom our new queen belongs to.”
The guests are primed, shifting, eager. This is not the usual boredom of wedding guests, the resignation of sitting through a ceremony largely irrelevant to them. They want to see Isolde on that bed as much as Mark does.
Mark comes onto the stage as Dinah steps back, and the guests erupt into wild applause and feral cheers, a desperate edge to their welcome.
“They don’t get to see him play very often,” Sedge says quietly from next to me. “They are panting for it.”
I look over at him, but he keeps his eyes straight ahead on Mark, his slender jaw tight.
“I know the feeling,” I can’t help but say, and Sedge huffs an exhale through his nose, a small laugh.
“Don’t we all?”
The music swells as Mark finds the center of the stage and Dinah melts into the shadows. Violins join the cello, and then another cello joins too, and it’s like music from a dream, a dream of shadowed forests and pitiless kings. For a minute, the candles around Mark look like torches, and I blink.
The guests stand, and the doors at the end of the hall open, revealing Lyonesse’s new queen. She is alone, clad in a white long-sleeved gown. It plunges to her navel, and exposes her collarbone, sternum, and her taut belly. But it reveals nothing else. The hem reaches to the floor, and the fabric is luxurious but opaque.
Small flowers are woven into the loose braid that falls over one shoulder, her feet are bare, and she wears no jewelry save for her wedding ring. She carries a small bouquet of purple and green, more herb than flower.
Hyssop.
Isolde follows the music down the aisle, and she walks alone. A submissive is the only one who can give themselves away, Dinah had explained to me earlier. There would be no handing off, no facsimile of separation from a family to join a spouse. You give yourself freely.
This might be worse than the actual wedding yesterday, even though I have no idea how that’s possible. Watching a veiled Isolde approach the altar had been agony, like bleeding into my own chest, knowing that she would never be walking to me and that I’d never be walking to him and that from now until forever, I was shut out of their joining.
But here, tonight, it is excruciating. Dinah was right. Yesterday was a show for the world, a rendition of a wedding, but somehow, this is the actual thing. This is Mark as he is, and I think maybe even Isolde as she is. In the white gown that is somehow both erotic and demure, with her feet bare like they are in the dojo, her hands clutched around a plant that features in King David’s most desperate prayer.
This is really them, joining together without me.
It was always going to be this way, I remind myself. Mark hadn’t even known I’d existed until after he was engaged to Isolde. I wouldn’t have met Isolde at all if it hadn’t been for Mark.
There was never any other outcome than them together and me alone.
Isolde mounts the steps to the stage, her dress sweeping against the flowers and ivy edging the treads, and as the candles flicker behind them, she kneels gracefully at Mark’s feet.
“We have done this once before,” says Mark, and the entire hall is in the palm of his hand as he speaks. His voice is his devil’s voice tonight, seductive and cruel.
Oh, how he makes us fall in love with him. We should hate him for it.
“But you are my wife now, my chosen one, and so in honor of the collar you now wear on your finger, I want to make new vows to you.”
