Little Husband

The wedding had been postponed twice.

The first time, it was because of the bet. Adam refused to marry Lapis to anyone while the matter of who had ‘won’ her was still technically undecided.

The second time was the spiders. With the silk colony scattered and Iris pacing the weaving room like a caged animal, nobody had the heart to throw a celebration that needed bolts of fresh silk for the bride’s dress.

But the spiders came crawling back after a few months, exactly as Ashen had promised. The bet had long since been decided. And so, one evening at dinner, Anastasia set down her spoon, smiled at the two of them across the table, and announced the date as casually as if she were mentioning the weather.

Lapis choked on her soup.

Ashen patted her back with a sigh.

‘And here I thought I’d gotten used to these surprises…’

◉◉◉

On the morning of the wedding, the sisters stole Lapis away before the crystals had even fully woken.

They sat her down in the women’s hall and painted her hands with henna, drawing thin red vines that curled from her fingertips to her wrists and bloomed into little flowers on her palms.

Iris and Monica argued the whole time over whether the vines should curl left or right. Misty, who had been given the honor of painting the last flower in the center of her sister’s left palm, took so long over it that Lapis fell asleep halfway through.

Then they dressed her in red.

Red was the color of joy in their tribe, and of beginnings. The dress was woven from Hushweaver silk dyed the deep crimson of pomegranate seeds, embroidered at the hem with golden thread in patterns of twisting branches. Over her hair, they laid a red veil so thin that the crystal light glowed straight through it.

When they finally brought her into the gathering hall, the whole tribe went quiet.

Ashen, who had been standing at the front of the hall in dark robes and a crimson sash, trying very hard not to fidget, forgot to breathe for a moment.

‘...Huh.’

He had seen his sister every single day for nineteen years, drooling in her sleep, sulking over porridge, falling on her face in the training grounds. He had seen her in nothing but a loose sash-robe more times than he could count.

But he had never seen her like this.

Lapis walked down the aisle between the rows of family with her henna-painted hands folded in front of her, her eyes lowered demurely behind the veil like a perfect, proper bride.

Then she reached the front, glanced up at him through the red silk, and winked.

‘...And there it is.’

◉

The ceremony itself was simple. Their tribe had never had the luxury of complicated things.

Adam stood before them as Lapis’s guardian. Two witnesses stood at his side: Bram, grinning from ear to ear, and Ezra, who had been asked to lead the blessing, since there was no one in the tribe more devout than the boy who had memorized the Eternal’s commandments at four years old.

Adam looked at his daughter.

“Lapis Hunt. Do you accept Ashen Hunt as your husband?”

“I accept.”

“Do you accept Ashen Hunt as your husband?”

“I accept.”

“Do you accept Ashen Hunt as your husband?”

“Father, how many times do I have to—” Anastasia cleared her throat sharply from the side, and Lapis quickly straightened. “…I accept.”

The hall rippled with laughter.

Adam’s lips twitched, but he kept his face stern and turned to his son.

“Ashen Hunt. Do you accept Lapis Hunt as your wife?”

“I accept.”

“And what do you offer her?”

That was the bride gift. Every husband in the tribe gave one before the vows were sealed. Something precious that would belong to her alone from that day forward, and that no one could ever take from her.

Most of the brothers gave jewelry, or a fine cloak, or a weapon they had forged with their own hands.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Ashen reached behind him and took the bundle that had been leaning against the wall.

He unwrapped it slowly.

A katana lay across his palms, resting in a sheath of pale, polished wood with faint pink grain swirling through it.

The tree had shed a single branch one morning a few months ago, dropping it right at his feet while he sat at its roots, and he hadn’t needed Patient Eye to understand what that meant. The hilt was wrapped in red using the hardened petals of the manaweave that had died when Lapis was twelve.

He drew the blade a finger’s width from its sheath.

Its black spine peeked from the sheath, edged in a faint inner pink glow.

Lapis recognized it instantly.

She had watched him carry it around for seven years, tending it, whispering to it, refusing every single time she asked whether it was finally for her.

“It’s done,” Ashen said quietly. “It bloomed a few weeks ago.”

◉◉◉

[ PATIENT EYE ]

Target: Katana (Bloomed)

Creator: Ashen Hunt

Material: Mithril (Null-Stone Altered)

Intended Wielder: Lapis Hunt

Concept: Love (Budding)

Observed Conditions:

Seven years of Living Temper and Resting Forge have refined the blade beyond its original state. Its hardness, resilience and mana conduction have reached heights no ordinary blade can approach.

The Late Bloomer manaweave woven into the blade has completed its bloom.

The nascent Concept of Love has deepened. In bloom, it has acquired a new nature: love that accumulates in silence until it can no longer be contained.

Gained Ability: Confession

When its intended wielder practices the draw with nurturing intent toward her blade, her house, or the one she loves, the love poured into each draw is never spent. It accumulates in the blade and its sheath, gathering draw after draw, day after day, along with her sentiments.

When she can no longer hold it, she may release everything the blade has stored in a single, reckless draw.

After a Confession, the blade is emptied and must be filled again from nothing.

◉◉◉

He had already told her everything in the farm the night before. She had cried about it. Then she had hit him for making her cry the night before her wedding, when her eyes were supposed to look nice.

But now, standing before the whole tribe, she reached out with her painted hands and took the sword from his palms like something sacred.

“Does it have a name?” Ezra asked curiously.

“That’s for her to decide,” Ashen said.

Lapis looked down at the blade for a long moment. Then she looked up at her brother through the veil with the sweetest smile he had ever seen.

“Then I’ll call it Little Husband.”

Ashen pressed a hand over his face.

◉

They bowed three times.

The first was to each other.

They knelt on the cushions laid out before Adam, folding their legs beneath them, and faced one another across a small space of floor. Lapis’s crimson dress pooled around her knees. Ashen’s dark robes brushed the cushion. Then, slowly, they lowered their heads until their foreheads nearly touched.

It was the bow of equals. A promise that neither would stand above the other.

The second was to Adam and Anastasia.

The patriarch and matriarch sat side by side on a low bench, and the two of them shifted to face them and bowed until their foreheads touched the floor. It was the bow of children thanking the parents who had raised them. And, in their tribe, it was the bow that thanked the ones who had chosen their pairing.

When Lapis lifted her head, she poured two cups of tea from the pot resting beside her and offered the first to her father with both hands.

Adam accepted it and drank. Then, with a strange expression that his children rarely saw on his face, he took a small pouch from his robes and pressed it into her hands. A blessing gift for the new bride.

Lapis offered the second cup to her mother.

Anastasia took it. She drank. And then the matriarch, who had shed tears of joy at every single wedding in the tribe for the last thirty years, burst into tears so suddenly that Adam had to take the cup from her shaking hands before she spilled it.

“My babies…” she sobbed, pulling both of them into a hug so tight their foreheads bumped together. “My little babies…!”

“Mother, the veil—”

“Mom, I can’t breathe—”

The tribe laughed at the recurring scene. Anastasia’s antics had become part of the tradition at this point.

The third bow was to the Eternal.

They turned to face the front of the hall, where nothing stood but empty air and the soft white glow of the crystals overhead, and bowed together, slowly and deeply, until their foreheads touched the floor one last time.

Ezra raised his open palms toward the ceiling, and the whole hall went silent as he spoke the blessing.

He asked the Eternal to keep them. To shelter them through the Darkness. To grant them patience with one another, and children who would carry the torch further than they had. To let them grow old together, if such a thing was still possible in this age, and to let them never forget the people around them who loved them.

When he finished, the whole tribe whispered the same quiet word together, the word that sealed every prayer.

And it was done.

◉

The last thing they did was sign the parchment.

It was laid out on a low table before them, looking pale, thick and faintly shimmering. Running through it, woven into the very fibers of the paper, was a single thread of red Hushweaver silk.

Sister Selene had made it. She had made one for every couple in the tribe for the past twenty years.

Selene had taken Lust as her Sin, and Proxenitria, the Matchmaker, as her Thema. In her hands, Lust had grown delicate, and was far removed from the hunger most people associated with it.

It concerned itself with the pull between two people using an invisible thread that drew one heart toward another, and refused to let go.

Every parchment she made carried one such thread.

It did nothing, of course. Every couple in the tribe had one hanging above their bed, and not one of them had ever bound anyone to anything.

But Selene swore up and down that no thread she had ever stitched had come undone. And looking around at the couples in the hall, holding hands and leaning into each other’s shoulders, it was hard to argue with her.

Ashen dipped the brush and signed first.

Lapis signed beside him.

Selene leaned over the table, took a needle threaded with red silk, and with a few quick, practiced stitches, drew the thread across the parchment and looped it through both of their names. Once through his, once through hers. Then she tied it off in a small, neat knot right between them.

“There,” she said, smiling. “Now you’re stuck with each other.”

“I was already stuck with her,” Ashen muttered.

“You’ll be stuck harder,” Selene grinned.

The feast that followed went on until the crystals had dimmed into amber.

Plates of honeyed dates and sweet rice were passed from hand to hand. The children ran wild between the tables, and the warriors drank more than they should have. Bram tried to make a speech and got about three sentences in before Rune dragged him back to his seat by the ear.

At some point, Ashen noticed Cain standing near the edge of the hall, alone.

His brother hesitated for a long time. Then he walked over, stopped in front of them, and bowed his head stiffly to Lapis.

“...Congratulations,” he said. It came out quiet and awkward, as though the word had been stuck in his throat for a year.

Lapis blinked at him in surprise.

Then, slowly, she smiled. “Thank you, Cain.”

Cain nodded, glanced at Ashen once, and walked away without another word.