Chapter 1981: Wedding Plans (Part One)

"...when, exactly, you plan to hold a proper wedding..."

As soon as her mother asked the question, Jocelynn’s ears perked up, and she sat up a little bit straighter in her chair, eagerly anticipating her sister-in-law’s answer.

"Almost a year from now," Nyrielle said, as though the matter had long been settled. "Unless something untoward happens to prevent it. We’ll celebrate on Midwinter’s Night."

"In the depths of winter?" Maela said, taken slightly off guard as she imagined the logistics of arranging such a wedding. It had been difficult enough to arrange Ashlynn’s wedding in the early spring. Several people who Maela thought should have attended, like Duke Argidir Keating or at least his son, Amren, hadn’t come to Lothian for the wedding in part because of the difficulty of traveling such a long way when many of the roads were soggy with snowmelt.

Winter weddings were rare among the nobility of Gaal. Winter was a time of vigilance and contemplation within the Church. Most winter weddings were held out of necessity in order to prevent the scandal of a child born out of wedlock or for some other dire reason. No one would choose to marry in winter if they could avoid it.

"Won’t that be a bit scandalous?" Micheline asked, arriving at the same thought that her aunt had. "A winter wedding, for royalty..."

"A scandal?" Ashlynn said with a light chuckle. "And which of us do you think people will suspect is with child? And who would dare to suggest impropriety between the Mother of Trees and the Harbinger of Death over their choice of wedding date?"

Jocelynn coughed lightly as she fought to hold back her laughter. Clearly, the notion that her sister would be constrained by what people might say was just as ludicrous as the notion that she or Nyrielle would find themselves in a ’delicate’ condition on their wedding date.

Ashlynn had bowed down to the demands of others for far too long. She’d hidden herself away because she couldn’t face the power of the Crown or the wrath of the Church if she was revealed to be a witch. Now that she’d come into her own power, she was done behaving as others expected out of fear...

Rumors of impropriety were the least of her worries, and Jocelynn was proud to see Ashlynn treating them with the disdain they deserved.

"Besides, we want to hold our wedding on the longest night of the year," Nyrielle added smoothly, looking at Ashlynn with a smoldering, affectionate gaze. "Dawn always comes too soon when I’m with my beloved, but on our wedding night, I want to delay it as much as I can."

"Weren’t you the same with your husband?" Nyrielle asked, turning her gaze back to Maela. "Don’t tell me that you rushed out of bed at first light because you’d had your fill of him," she teased.

"Nyri," Ashlynn said gently, tapping her lover on the arm and giving her a look that spoke volumes in a glance.

Maela was rescued by the arrival of the second course, when Georg returned with a pale, golden soup made from carrots, potatoes, and lentils that had been boiled in rich bone broth until they were tender enough to pass through a fine wire mesh. The result was a luxurious, creamy soup with a deep aroma of spices, served in small cups meant for drinking rather than eating with a spoon.

"You know, I really did rush out of bed at dawn the day after my wedding night," Maela said, holding the warm cup in her hand and savoring the rich aroma along with the feeling of warmth that spread through her chest after her first sip. Clearly, Georg felt they needed something warm and cozy after the chilled, raw dish, and the soup filled that role beautifully.

"Rhys had this idea for a wedding gift," Maela said, her face heating in a way that had nothing to do with the warm soup. "There must be a hundred islands off the coast of Blackwell. Some of them are large enough to hold towns and villages of their own, but several of them are small enough that you can walk from one side to the other in a matter of minutes."

"Rhys claimed one of those islands for us and took over the lighthouse there," Maela explained. "So the day after our wedding night, we left on the morning tide for this tiny little island with a little cottage next to the lighthouse... He wanted to stay for a month or more, just the two of us in our little love nest without anything to interrupt us," she said, smiling wistfully at the memory.

"That sounds so romantic," Micheline said, her eyes shining as she imagined her beautiful aunt and dashing uncle with a whole island to themselves in a lighthouse by the sea. "I bet you never wanted to come home."

"We didn’t make it a full week," Maela said, shaking her head and laughing at the idea of staying any longer. "I love my husband, and he’s a capable fisherman," she said proudly. "He earned his membership in the Linemen; it wasn’t just given to him for being the son of the count. Every morning, we’d go out on this little boat he named Piper, and he fished for our meals..."

"It was sweet the first time, and I was properly impressed by the yellowfin he caught, but then it came to dispatching it and cooking the fish, and I promise you," Maela said, waggling her finger at her niece. "There is nothing romantic about fish guts and the smell of it all. And once we got the fish back to our cozy little lighthouse, I learned that my dashing husband barely knows how to cook..."

"I’ve had father’s cooking," Ashlynn protested. "He grills fish very well. It’s simple, but it’s a nice way to enjoy the pure flavor of the fish."

"He’s gotten better over the years," Maela acknowledged. "And he wasn’t ever bad at it... But if it wasn’t grilled, it was cooked in a stew pot and everything that came out of that stew pot was either mushy or bland or both..."

"By the end of the week, all I wanted was a loaf of bread that hadn’t been scorched in the hearth, and a fresh, crisp salad," Maela said. "Anything that didn’t smell like fish guts. When one of his knights dropped by with fresh supplies and to make sure we were well, I told your father that I was going back to Blackwell with or without him!"