If she could have pulled it off, she would have, but it was heavy and seamless, as if it had been forged there. A shackle, she thought bitterly. A magical shackle that only reinforced that she was no better than a broodmare, to be married off and docilely provide children for the honor of the family.
How was she supposed to put that in her vows?
Beside her, Liam looked up from his book and Darla realized that she had sighed out loud.
“Having trouble?” he asked kindly, slipping off his headphones.
“So much trouble,” Darla confessed. “Have you written yours?”
“I looked up the vows they use at the Elvis chapel in Vegas and changed a few words,” Liam said carelessly.
Darla gave him a sideways smile. “You’re going to marry me with cribbed Vegas vows?”
“Well, your mother probably wouldn’t let me fly Elvis in to perform the ceremony,” Liam teased with a dramatic sigh.
Darla giggled despite herself. “It would have been so much easier just to elope to Las Vegas,” she said with regret.
“Your mother…”
“My mother would have had a fit of vapors and then she would have figured out how to have it annulled so she could do this whole circus her way anyway,” Darla agreed. “I know.”
Liam took her hand, and the matching bracelet on his wrist was cool against her arm, like it always was. “We’ll make this work,” he said gently. “It’s going to be okay.”
He didn’t say that they had to make it work, though he could have. He had as much to gain from their marriage as she did… and arguably more to lose if it fell through.
It was a sensible match, Darla reminded herself, twining her fingers into his for comfort as much as for show. She liked Liam, and marrying him solved so many of her problems. If it wasn’t the love match she’d always dreamed of, it was certainly better than any of the other options before them.
She rubbed her bracelet against her opposite arm thoughtfully, pondering the inscription, and the bizarre source.
Several days after their engagement announcement, the bracelets had arrived in the mail. The note enclosed had been a polite decline of the invitation to the wedding by one of the prestigious New York dragon families that Jubilee aspired to be friendly with.
Jubilee had been delighted in the gift. “These dragonrunes mean ‘Unbroken Line,’” she explained with the authority vested in her from several weeks of research. “They must be fertility charms.”
She had insisted that Liam and Darla put them on immediately, and to Darla’s horror, they had sealed onto their arms with a permanence that gave Darla cold chills, the seam vanishing.
“Who sent these?” she asked, struggling to mask her horror.
Liam had smiled the same very polite smile that he had practiced for Jubilee, but Darla recognized the same distrust that was plaguing her.
“He’s a lawyer in New York,” Jubilee had said, comparing the note to her ever-increasing guest list. “A very important figure in dragon social circles there. He would have been quite a catch to have at the wedding, but a gift like this is nearly as good.”
She didn’t seem bothered at all by the fact that they were now affixed to Darla and Liam with no obvious possibility of removal. If anything, she was delighted by the show of magic.
Darla was not delighted.
They seemed to represent everything inescapable about the impending wedding.
Chapter 4
Breck raised his hand and knocked on the cottage door.
He didn’t have a key for this door, and would never have asked for one. He was, however, carrying a bouquet of flowers.
“Come in!” called a thin voice from within.
He opened the unlocked door. “Mrs. Shandy, you are looking more lovely than ever.”
Mrs. Shandy was a hundred years old if she was a week, and she was sitting at a little table by the bed. It was one of the smaller cottages, laid out as a simple one-room efficiency. The remains of a meal beside her showed that the rule against food outside of the restaurant had been relaxed for her.