A/N: Look at that! A prompt that I've kept relatively short! And I managed to post it before the end of the year! Congartulations are definitely in order.
Petals rained from the white and blue lilacs in Faragonda's hair with every step. She twirled around with ease despite the midnight blue fabric clinging to her legs and forming heavy curls around her ankles.
She'd convinced Griffin to be the one in white the same way she'd convinced her to be her bride in the first place – with adoring looks, soft but deliberate touch and irresistible kisses. A ton of them.
The smile on her lips was brilliant, the little laugh lines around only adding a delicate charm. Griffin could not tear her eyes away from the most precious sight. Being her wife made the happiness on Faragonda's lips brighter, sweeter. She couldn't help but lean in to kiss her, the gazes of their guests fading from her mind to leave room only for Faragonda's heartbeat echoing through her own rib cage.
Metal clinking against glass stole all the breath from her. The sound rang through her bones painfully and her teeth clashed with Faragonda's. They were forced to pull away.
Her face twisted in a grimace as her lungs fought through the faint scent of singed air enveloping her – like her life had caught fire. Like an invisible smokescreen it irritated her throat and stung at her eyes. The quiet spilled out of her mind and washed over the celebration. Her heels screeched jarringly against the tiles as she turned.
The familiar face greeted her, as expected. He was dressed in his finest suit, not a hair out of place. His composure was like a hard, unmoved rock – something to ground her when she'd been by his side, something to bury her when she was staring at him from across the room, her body failing to be a shield for the frail happiness she shared with Faragonda.
Sylvia's steps echoed behind her, and her own mother's did, too. They'd waited for decades for their daughters to get together. They wouldn't let the wedding be ruined now.
She only had eyes for the freezing, glacial blue of his own. The warm touch at her wrist was searing. A hiss tore from deep in her chest, her lungs staggering, fighting to draw in a breath, bruising against the edges of his piercing gaze.
She had not heard a single word from her wedding ceremony, except for those coming from Faragonda's lips. Only later, dancing in the arms of her new bride, her heart had stopped pounding for him and she'd forgotten the name that had almost been on the wedding invitations instead of Faragonda's, the name stuck in her mouth, tucked away under her tongue, the sound of it poison to her very life.
"Valtor," Faragonda's calm voice cut through the tension inside her, her teeth sinking in her lip to close the gap opening in her chest and threatening to tear her in half.
She'd expected him, too. Unlike Griffin she hadn't let her guard down just because he hadn't interrupted their vows. He could still uproot the future they'd promised each other without wanting her back even for a second. The cruelty of it suited him. It suited her too.
"Mrs Sylvane," Valtor acknowledged Faragonda with a mocking bow of his head. "I am not here to infringe on the happiest occasion," his gaze shot over her shoulder to where Sylvia and Emalyn had to be standing behind them like a guard ready to attack. "I've come to make a toast."
Griffin squeezed Faragonda's hand. A silent plea to steer them clear of the catastrophe descending upon them. She herself was stuck to the spot, transfixed – just as she always was in his presence.
A smirk flashed across Valtor's face, dangerous, to be completely ignored by Faragonda. Her stoic stance appeared more tortured than defiant.
Valtor raised the champagne flute in his hand, always one for theatrics.
"One day when this all will be but a bitter, tainted memory, I want you to remember that you are not alone. Griffin has made promises before, to many different people. And she broke them all like she does every time. It's just her nature to be inconsiderate, deceitful and selfish, and to leave behind those that would give life and limb for her." His gaze moved to the people behind them once again. "Don't take my word for it. All you have to do is ask Mrs. Sylvane."
Griffin shook, shivers rocking her whole at the knowledge that her mother's heart would have cracked by now if it'd been made of stone. And it was not. How much more could she force it to bear?
"I am not alone," Faragonda was unmoved, her hands, clasping Griffin's between them, cocooned her in unshakable security. "Griffin's flaws do not bother me. She's made mistakes. We all have," she raised her chin. "Unless you'd admit that your attempt to kill her was completely remorseless as well as deranged?"
Cutting her brakes had been too banal to be him. It had also been too flawlessly executed to be anyone else.
Valtor grinned, unbothered. "Like I said, there's a long list of parties that would want payback."
"I wouldn't know," Faragonda responded to his smugness in kind. She brought Griffin's hand up to her chest, holding it directly above her heart. "She's my wife and I would never do anything to hurt her. I promised that I will love her in good and in bad, and whatever she does, won't change that."
Griffin's throat closed. Her fingers went limp between Faragonda's, her heart struggling to beat in halves, her lungs running on empty.
Valtor caught her eye, suspending her in a moment between two waves of panic only to throw her in the deep, "Well, that's a relief."
His tongue shaped every word carefully – a blade in her vulnerable flesh. If she could look away, down to her dress, it would be running red with her blood.
"Isn't it, Griffin?"
Her blood was on his lips – he would lick it slowly and savor it and she would still kiss him right after. But the very image of her fingers turning red where Faragonda cut herself on her edges made her stomach turn.
Her hand dropped from Faragonda's like a sinking stone tied around a drowning man's neck. The ring she'd put on Faragonda's finger was the noose and being the devoted, faithful wife that she was, Faragonda would never cut it loose.
She wasn't Valtor.