It was, Regina thought, very fitting that the Alpins welcomed their new wives by making them walk through the dead bodies of all the previous family brides.
Like every noble line with a lineage that dated back to the conquest of Carcosa, the royal Alpins had customs that were unique to their family.
Unfortunately, Regina reflected as she stepped into the musty darkness in her enormous wedding dress, the Alpins’ unique custom was to welcome their brides by making them walk through the dead bodies of their previous family before they entered the ceremonial hall to be married.
Of course, that begged the question of just why the Alpins had built their ceremonial hall on top of their catacombs.
“Gina,” Henrietta conversationally said as she lifted the torch, allowing slivers of light to illuminate giant stone-and-metal passageways that seemed to come from the fever dreams of an architect who overly-identified with bees. “Even if we did not think that the Alpins wanted to murder you, they are far too terrifying to marry. Coming from our family, that is saying something.”
Regina stared at the giant stone-archways, circular niches, and assassin-friendly columns that made up the Alpin catacombs, the final resting place for generations of Alpins and Alpin-rivals who had all somehow had terrible accidents involving metal stakes.
“I agree,” said Regina.
Nothing lived in the Alpin catacombs – even the smallest insect or the most tenacious plant. It was a place only for the dead and the about-to-be-wed. Frankly, it was terrifying that the Alpins thought the two should be mixed before a royal wedding.
Nothing lived… and Regina had a feeling that was intentional.
After all, this entire tradition seemed to be created to rid the Alpins of unwanted brides and bridegrooms, in case those unfortunate souls were not framed, exiled, or murdered before the wedding.
Even so, Regina was ready to go on this journey with only Henrietta as a support. After all, it was a sacred journey that was meant to carry her from the darkness of her past family to the sacred golden light of the Alpins.
Thus if it was a dead bride that the Alpins wanted, it was a dead bride they would receive.
“Henrietta,” Regina said, with a smile that was mostly teeth. “Did you bring the material with you?”
Henrietta smiled back with equal warmth.
“As much as I enjoy vases,” Henrietta replied, “there is nothing quite like a warm fire on a dark morning.”
Regina let her eyes travel upwards, up to the bodies of past Alpins and Alpin-rivals. To reduce the space needed to contain all of them, the Alpins had even decided to tie the exalted ones with rope, leaving the long-dessicated corpses to dangle above their heads.
It was, Regina decided, excellent fuel for the flames she and Henrietta would soon be fanning.
“Good,” Regina replied, and felt for the treasures within her skirt as she lifted her own lamp high. “Then let us keep moving.”
~???~
The problem with seeing the future was that one began to rely on seeing the future. This meant that any endeavor where you could not see the future suddenly became terrifying.
‘I have become spoiled,’ Regina admitted to herself as she made her way as quickly as she could through the narrow path of bones. Out of the corner of her eye, she noted when Henrietta extinguished her own lamp and followed as silently as possible behind her. ‘I have become so used to seeing danger through Artem that without those visions…’
Somewhere, the wind raced through bones that were hundreds of years old, rustling through skeletons, skulls, burial cloth, and urns with a fierce glee.The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Regina flinched and admitted, ‘I have lost my nerve and better find it before I doom myself.’
At least, Regina consoled herself, she had Henrietta with her. Technically, an Alpin bride was supposed to have left her handmaiden at the entrance to the catacombs to await news of her successful – or unsuccessful – journey to the ceremonial hall. However, Henrietta had of course accompanied her… and was now following her at a distance, armed and ready.
Even so, Regina had taken other steps to save herself. Though she had not received any visions of her death over the next few nights, she had still made use of the information she had received through more mundane means. Her parents had wordlessly dropped off several crude sketches of the Alpin catacombs and she had determined the safest path forward. Regina assumed that her parents would only be paid if she survived long enough to be married, but since it was by far the most useful gift they had ever given her, Regina was hardly going to complain.
Of course, her chosen path seemed to take her uncomfortably close to niches full of grinning Alpin skulls long since stripped of hair and flesh but full of cheerful glee. However, it was also one of the many small paths that branched off the main road. This alone, Regina hoped, would make her harder to track.
Of course, just as Regina had begun to relax, she began to hear something… rattle.
‘That could just be old bones,’ Regina told herself, ‘shifting with changes in the temperature or the wind.’
Then she heard the rattles grow and grow and grow and decided that neither temperature nor the wind tended to shift bones that dramatically.
Just as she was shifting to bring her very heavy lamp down on the head of whoever intended to assail her, a very familiar voice broke through the darkness.
“My love?” it said – and Regina went still.
~???~
It hurt more than Regina could have imagined to realize that her first thought on seeing Artem was relief.
Something deep in her bones recognized Artem as safe and the moment of joy was all the worse for being followed immediately by the realization of the truth.
“Why,” said Regina, trying to keep her voice even, to stall long enough for Henrietta to get closer, “are you here… my sweet dove?”
She could see Artem now, his face strangely distorted in the shallow light of her lamp.
He looked, Regina realized, strangely exhausted.
“You,” said Artem, “do not want to be Queen, do you?”
Regina froze, the world reduced to noise in her ears and a blurry mass in her vision.
“I,” Artem softly said, “was going mad, trying to understand why you suddenly began to avoid me. I thought I understood your heart as you understood mine, only…”
Even by the light of the flicking lamp, she could see the dark circles under his eyes as he mustered a smile.
“I,” Artem said, “overestimated myself. I tried to deal with you, Regina, but you kept escaping me. So now –”
Artem raised his hand and Regina felt her eyes go wide as she waited for him to strike.
“I know what to do,” Artem said, and his eyes glittered in the dark like the knives he could wield.
Regina took a step back, her heart beating like a hammer in her breast, and Artem followed without pausing.
“This will not hurt,” Artem said, his voice very gentle even as he took some papers out of his jacket’s pocket. “You may be a little… sleepy for a while but you will not feel a thing.”
He was going to kill her, Regina realized. He was going to and this close, she could do nothing.
“I have,” Artem added, his voice coming as if from a great distance, “some connections… Mother’s homeland… Brilliant idea about fire…. Yet you need to die first…”
He had placed some papers in her hand.
Regina could not look at them, could not read something meant to frame her for treason once she was dead and burned.
Artem really had meant to kill her all along.
The worst of it, she realized, was that even now, even facing her own death, she still loved her painfully strange, funny, and silly goldfish.
“Artem,” Regina said, and even as his eyes fixed on her, she stumbled for the words. “Why would you do this? Did your family force you?”
That was when Artem blinked, confusion suffusing the face that Regina knew so well.
“What,” Artem said, “do you mean?”
Yet before Regina could answer, Artem collapsed to the ground in front of her.
“Vases,” said Henrietta, watching the shattered shards of urn and corpse dust rain down on Artem’s unconscious body, “truly are incredibly useful things.”