Adrian Silvercrest's Arc

Chapter 7 of 23

The private ceremony ended near midnight, and by morning the village wedding was two days off. Adrian woke before either of them and sat at the kitchen table with the ring on his finger and nothing else to give. The rings had come from Aldric. The dress was Elara's mother's. The chapel was the village's. He had brought nothing of his own to the aisle, and Elara would see that when she walked it. He found her in the garden cutting stems for the kitchen jar. She wore the plain blue linen again. She did not look up. "You are quiet," she said. "I have no gift for the day." "You gave me a ring." "Aldric gave you a ring. I held it out." She set the shears down. Her mouth pulled tight. "So this is the worry." "You will stand at the front of that chapel in your mother's dress and look at me and know the prince paid for nothing." "I did not marry a prince." She said it flat. But she turned her face away, and he saw the doubt he had feared, sitting on her like a bruise. Aldric came out of the cottage with his sleeves rolled and a small wooden box in his hand. He had heard them. He always heard them. "Stop," Aldric said. He set the box on the low garden wall and opened it. Inside lay a red jeweled flower, its petals cut from red glass and pinned with small blue stones. Beside it lay a bouquet bound in twine — blue, silver, and gold blossoms clustered tight. "I made the flower for you," Aldric said to Elara. "For your dress. Adrian cut the bouquet yesterday from the field behind Dan's fence. He tied it himself. I only dyed the stems while he slept." Adrian stared at him. "You were going to give her nothing because you thought nothing was yours," Aldric said. "The field is yours. Your hands are yours. Give her the bouquet." Adrian lifted the bouquet from the box. He held it out. "I cut every stem. I did not know he would finish it. But I cut them for you." Elara took the bouquet. She smelled it. Then she picked up the jeweled flower and pinned it to the front of her linen, above her heart, where the dress would carry it in two days. "Then I have both of you on me," she said. She kissed Adrian first, on the mouth, slow. She stepped back, looked at Aldric, and kissed him too, quick and sure. The bruise was gone from her face. "No more worrying," she said. "Save it for the priest." Adrian watched her carry the flowers into the kitchen. The doubt he had put in her was lifted. But the chapel doors would open in two days in front of the whole village, and every neighbor there still believed he was marrying one woman alone.