Adrian Silvercrest's Arc

Chapter 6 of 23

The night before the village wedding, Adrian stood at the kitchen window and watched the sun drop behind the fence. Elara had gone upstairs to change. Aldric was somewhere in the yard. The private ceremony would happen in this room in one hour, and Adrian had nothing to put in her hand. He opened his palm on the table as if a ring might appear there. It did not. He had spent two weeks earning bread. He had no coin for a jeweler, no jeweler within a day's ride, and no time left. He thought of the bouquet he had cut yesterday, the jeweled flower Aldric had shaped from red glass, and understood both were gifts, not vows. A vow needed something you could wear. He sat down hard. He pressed his hands to his face. She would walk into this kitchen and see his empty hands and think he had not meant a word of it. The door opened. Aldric came in with his hat off and his sleeves rolled. He crossed the room, took Adrian's chin in one hand, and kissed him quickly on the mouth. "Stop that," Aldric said. "You look sick." "I have nothing to give her." "I know. I have been counting the days you would notice." Aldric reached into his coat and set a small cloth bundle on the table. He unfolded it. Three rings lay on the wool. Two matching bands, each set with a blue stone. The third was heavier, a wedding ring with a blue jewel at the center and small gold roses ringed around it. Adrian did not touch them. "When." "Last week. Three nights. The stones are real. The gold is real. I do not make cheap things." "Why did you not tell me." "You would have argued about the cost. Now you cannot." Aldric pushed the heavy ring toward him. "That one is hers. The bands are ours." Adrian picked up the wedding ring. The gold roses caught the lamp. He closed his hand around it and felt the small hard shape of the thing he had needed all afternoon. Elara came down the stairs then. She was not in her mother's dress yet; that was for tomorrow. She wore a plain blue linen and had brushed her hair loose. She stopped in the doorway and looked at the two of them at her table. Adrian stood. He held out the ring. "I did not have one an hour ago. Aldric did." Elara crossed the floor. She took the ring, turned it, and slid it onto her own finger before either man could offer to do it. "Then we begin," she said. Aldric slid a band onto Adrian's hand. Adrian slid the other onto Aldric's. In the kitchen, with no priest and no witness but each other, they said their own words. When Adrian looked up, both of them were looking back, and he understood he was married.