Book 4 Chapter 53: Bliss

++Isabel Vornholt’s wedding was the best opportunity to observe and take note of her inner circle, though her own defences, and the presence of Dave Blakely, made this difficult.++

- Anonymous.

It was expected that I would have at least one dance with the groom—my new husband—and mingle with some of the other guests. After that, it was generally expected that I would retire with my husband and the guests would all leave us to our private affairs.

We started with a feast, which I did enjoy, followed by some mingling while a dance floor was cleared out, then myself and Ilgryn led the dance in question at its centre. I was finally forced to be grateful that my mother had included hasty lessons in the art of dance with her scrutinous wedding preparations, had she not then my impossibly contrived new dress would probably have not only tripped me up, but managed to strangle me somewhere along the way.

One hand in Ilgryn’s, the other on his shoulder while he held my hip and we both stared into one another’s eyes, the two of us began to rock around one way and the other, slowly eased into the music around us.

Perhaps it would have been romantic, if I felt anything close to romance. I was not, in truth, sure what I felt. Ilgryn was attractive and I found his proximity appealing, but it was all physical and sterile.

He did not seem to feel even that much, as coolly distant from me as ever. I actually approved of this, having had enough people salivating over me to last a lifetime. We started to chat as we danced.

“Big turnout, eh?” Ilgryn asked me with a smile. “I don’t even know a tenth of these guests, quite unusual I assure you. Usually a Voret wedding has only fifteen percent of its attendees be unknown to the groom.”

I smiled. “I think I know slightly more than that, but most are some distant connection of another connection. My mother’s doing.”

“And my great grandmother,” he added.

“I find her rather more tolerable than my mother.” My face scrunched up. “She at least tries to seize onto what power she can, my mother is content to remain weak and useless.”

“And yet, I have a hard time imagining that you did most of this yourself," my new husband noted. “So she’s not that useless, clearly.”

He had a point there. I do not like it when other people have points. Ilgryn laughed again.

“You always scowl when people get one over on you in a conversation,” he stepped back, taking me deftly with him, now controlling the flow of the dance. That was fine by me, had I taken the lead it would have become a tripping hazard.

“You are speaking like you know me already,” I told him. “We have spoken for less than six hours in total, including today.”

His face fell a shade. “We’re married,” Ilgryn told me. “I know we don’t know each other well yet, but I’d like to. I’m trying to get a start on that.”

Suddenly his hand felt awkward around mine, and I realised that I had thrown him off somehow. I looked around. Nobody else seemed to have noticed, which was good.

Married. Making him my husband, making him…family.

I had sworn to Agrian, all those years ago, that I would protect my family. Ilgryn did not know about this, but it did not matter. I kept my word because that was what Lord Dread did.

“...I do not know you very well,” I continued. “And I will not pretend to be enthusiastic about knowing you more. But I am not opposed to it. If you wish to spend time together on occasion, we can do that. I will…try.”

He was not especially happy with that, but I did see that it mollified him somewhat.

“You’re being honest, so I’ll be honest too,” Ilgryn sighed. “I don’t know what to think about you, Isabel. I’ve heard stories since we met, and I still remember the way you…went for me, just on the suspicion that I was behind your sister’s kidnapping.”

I remained silent while he spoke, saw the conflict in his eyes. The fear.

“My great grandmother is scared of you,” he said slowly. “She’s trying not to make it show, and most of my family haven’t noticed. Too self-absorbed. But I can tell, she’s scared of you. What did you do?”

I met his eyes and did not flinch from the intensity of his questioning stare. “Do you really want to know that?” I asked him. “Do you want to be unable to tell people, honestly, that you are ignorant about it when asked?”

My new husband was not strong in the way most men would have defined it. He did not go around barging down doors and flaunting his indomitable will and ferocity. That was fine. He was strong in the way that mattered instead, able to think things through under pressure and make decisions that were not warped by his worries or wishes.

He was talking to a woman he did not really know, to whose life his own had been bound, and whom he now knew had given one of the most powerful women in Garamon cause for fear. And in spite of it all, he remained calm as the grave while thinking his response through.

“...Will it endanger me?” he asked at last.

I had to consider that myself. “Yes,” I said. “But only if things do not go according to my plan.”

“And how likely is that?” Ilgryn pressed.

“The odds are effectively zero,” I replied honestly. Lord Dread did not fail.

He chewed on the prospect for a few more moments, then finally nodded. “Then I’m happy not knowing,” he told me at last. “But update me if anything changes, particularly with implications for my family.”

I nodded, and for a moment we just eyed each other, still dancing as others moved around us. Then we both burst out laughing at once.

“What a romantic first conversation,” Ilgryn grinned.

“I do not think anything will quite compete with the line you used to compliment me the day we met,” I noted. “One of the more normal people you know. What shocking flattery.”

Ilgryn pulled me a little closer at that, though there was still considerable distance between us. I never cared for public displays of affection. Did he somehow know that?

Our dance ended before I could ask him, and the two of us took a brief pause from one another’s company to mingle with our guests. I found my immediate family making a beeline right for me.

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My mother was the first to speak, hugging me and fawning over me for long seconds before she finally separated. There were tears in her eyes. “I don’t want to keep arguing,” she told me. “I don’t want to keep fighting.”

“Neither do I,” I said evenly. “But there are certain things, disagreements between us, that are more important than getting along.”

I still remembered my powerlessness when she threatened to keep Victoria from enrolling in an Institute. I would not forget it, ever.

She looked pained for a moment, and I suspected an argument was about to sprout up again.

“Can we talk about this later?” she asked me. “Not today of all days.”

She was dodging the argument. She was ducking out. She was being cowardly, having the conviction to hold her views regardless of how others bucked and snarled against them but caving in the moment it was her own happiness that seemed in line to be jeopardized.

I waited to feel angry or frustrated at that, to explode in a sneering wash of contempt. The feelings did not come. I was far from approving, but I found it hard to muster up any real rage either. I did not know what to make of that.

And we were interrupted before I could decide, Sethira heading over and wrapping her arms around my waist from the side.

“You look gorgeous!” she squealed, while I recoiled and snarled at her.

“Off me!” I spat. “Get off, we are in public!”

Sethira grinned. “I don’t care. Do you?”

She was doing this on purpose, turning it into a game of ‘who blinks first’ knowing we had witnesses and that my pride could not abide giving the image of defeat.

And she was not, I could not. So I just growled to myself while she finished her hug, then stepped back.

“We’ll leave you for now,” my father said awkwardly as he began to turn. “Come, Elizabeth, let’s go and enjoy the party you set up.”

My mother flinched somewhat at his words. Clearly not all bridges were mended between them, as I would have expected. It was not my problem however. They disappeared elsewhere into the hall, though my siblings remained.

Sethira turned to them with a smile. “You must be Isabel’s brother and sister!” she cooed, rushing over to the utterly terrified Victoria and embracing her. “Gods, you’re so pretty!” Sethira was not much taller than my sister anymore, though still leaned down slightly to look her in the eye. “I’ve heard so much about you,” she continued. “Isabel tells me you’re a magical genius. We must meet up later and talk some more.”

Victoria floundered for a few moments, her lips working silently as she futilely searched for words. Garamon had rather particular rules about conduct and contact in polite social affairs. Rules which Sethira rejoiced in breaking flagrantly and often. My sister was not quite as insistent as our mother on following the social contract, but she was clearly unbalanced by it.

This was, naturally, what Sethira had hoped to achieve. She leaned back from Victoria and turned to Qaigor. “And you’re Qaigor, of course. We met a few years ago at your sister’s refinery, during its early days. Do you remember me?”

Qaigor evidently did, and he was now practically glowing beet red as he stared at Sethira and attempted to look at anything except the rather low cuts of her neckline. Puberty seemed to have struck my brother like a sledgehammer, one wielded by our father. He was practically nonverbal.

Sethira ended her torment shortly, turning to me with a grin.

“Lovely arrangement, this. Lots of talented young magicians and people of power.” Her lip curled somewhat as she moved up closer to me. “I just wish they didn’t all live under this silly new system of Garamon’s, they’d have made excellent vassals.”

You could take the lich out of absolute monarchy, but you could not take absolute monarchy out of the lich.

“I am glad you are enjoying yourself,” I told her. “Try not to cause any problems.”

Sethira grinned wider. Then Alira was by my side before she could speak anymore, hugging and congratulating me while we stood and chatted a while longer. She moved on, displaced by my grandfather, then by Professor Brown, then by an endless line of other guests until I felt like I was being wrung out like a dishcloth with all the endless demands for my time.

I had heard that wedding days were supposed to be enjoyable for the bride, and my mother had certainly been confident that this one would be the happiest day of my life. So far I was far from impressed. Indeed, I was fairly sure I would have not only been more productive, but more entertained, simply sitting in my workstation and attempting to expand my magical powers even more. At least I got to feel the joy of manipulating mana when I did that.

If nothing else, though, the constant blur of conversation, gifts and praise meant that things moved on quickly, and the room rapidly became so inebriated as to distract most of the guests from my own presence, which was just fine by me.

This led to the occasional event of interest. At one point Victoria found herself flirted with by several Voret boys at once, and responded by levitating all of them off the ground before I could step in and do exactly that on her behalf. This only seemed to encourage the boys, though I noticed that my sister seemed to be enjoying the attention.

Qaigor found his own source of amusement by getting into an arm-wrestling match with our father, resulting in several heavy tables being snapped in half before my mother finally gave in and asked Sethira to conjure up a block of aether strong enough to survive being an elbow rest. Qaigor won, though not by as close a margin as we would have guessed. It seemed my father had started working on his upper body with all the time he would previously have used exercising his legs.

Blakely moved around leering at the guests, while Alira mingled with Vorets and Professors alike. My own grandfather gradually warmed up to the company when Exyria finally singled him out for a conversation. I watched from the corner of the room as his general hatred of magicians was slowly worked into a particular exception for her. I had to admit, she had been working within Garamon’s culture for longer than I had, and it showed.

Finally, the festivities started to die down and the time came for the bride and groom to retire with each other.

This led to a lot of whooping cheers and laughter among the guests, who were now roughly intoxicated enough that, had I extracted the ethanol from all of their bloodstreams, I was fairly convinced it would have gotten a Demigod buzzed. Half were unconscious and the other was not far short of it, with only a handful among the guests, mostly older individuals such as Exyria or my parents, remaining sober enough to watch over the rest. A consequence of any Voret wedding, apparently. There was always a vast number of young drunkards attending.

Ilgryn, fortunately, was not one of them. In fact I was fairly sure he had not taken so much as a sip since the event began, and he took me rather gentlemanly by the arm as he led me out through the hall’s main entrance.

“Sorry about them,” he murmured while we passed one of his many cousins.

“Your family is not the only one I have gotten used to behaving beneath my dignity,” I assured him. He did not, for some reason, seem assured, but it did not prove to be of much consequence as we headed out into the waiting carriage and sat next to each other while it carried us away from the church.

When we had been mid-ceremony before, conversation came easily. Not now. Suddenly it did not seem like we had nearly as much to talk or laugh about.

I looked at my new husband, and found that he seemed nervous. He was not meeting my eye, not even glancing in my direction. This behaviour continued as we reached my mansion, as we entered it, as we moved into my bedroom.

What happened next was both frustrating, tedious and, for him I would imagine, rather embarrassing.

I had never had sex with a man. By the looks of Ilgryn’s behaviour, he had never had sex at all. We tried to make it work and put our various parts to use, but nothing seemed…active. Both of us gave up after half an hour, lying beside one another. Not touching, which I was grateful for as I did not much care for that outside of the act itself.

“Sorry,” he told me.

I said nothing, secretly rather pleased. I understood the intellectual value of children in Garamon, any of mine were all but guaranteed to be magical geniuses, about the most powerful subordinates I could hope for—and the most loyal, given that I would have access to them for their every formative year.

But that did not mean I was looking forward to the physical effort of incubating the little monstrosities.

“It is fine,” I replied while we lay there. Ilgryn reached over to place his hand on my shoulder, then took it off as I recoiled somewhat.

“Sorry,” he said again. This time I just ignored it, lying there beside him and eying the ceiling. So this was marital life.

It was acceptable.