Radiance (Wraith Kings, #1)

by Grace Draven

By marrying the prince, she became a duchess, a Kai hercegesé.

to him she was profoundly homely. His upper lip curled in distaste at the sight of her skin. Pale with pink undertones, it reminded him of the flesh of the bitter mollusk Kai dyers boiled to render amaranthine dye. Her bound hair burned red in the punishing sunlight, so harsh and so different compared to the Kai women with their silvery locks.

opaque white, blue ringed in gray and black pinpoint centers that expanded or contracted with the light. The first time he’d witnessed that reaction in a human, all the hairs on his nape stood straight up. That, and the way the contrasting colors made it easy to see the eyes move in their sockets gave the impression they weren’t body parts but entities unto themselves living as parasites inside their hosts’ skulls.

She was a challenge to look upon without wincing, but he very much liked her wry humor.

You might have a face to turn my hair white, but your honesty is handsome.”

She had proclaimed his appearance ghastly and his honesty handsome. Ildiko still stood by both opinions. She could have done infinitely worse. More than a few Gauri women had the misfortune to marry human men with handsome faces and ghastly souls.

He had asked a question Ildiko thought she’d never hear in her lifetime. No one ever asked her what she wanted; they only told her what she was to do and say.

“And then you smile,” she said. “Bursin’s wings, but that’s a blood-curdling sight to wake up to at any time of the day.”

Theirs was an agreement based on the beginnings of friendship, respect and an intuitive understanding of each other that still left him slack-jawed with amazement.

She was ugly; she was beautiful, and she was his.

“Your mother is...” “A soulless creature with a thirst for murder and an intellect greater than any other in the kingdom.”

Something flared between them, a sense of camaraderie, of belonging. For a brief moment, Ildiko felt as if she and Brishen stood alone in this chamber, bound together not only by vows but by similarities far greater than their obvious differences.

make a very handsome dead eel, my husband,” she said and winked. Sinhue and Kirgipa both gasped. “For a boiled mollusk, you wear black quite well, my wife,” Brishen shot back, and his smile stretched a little wider.

“I will conquer kingdoms for you if you but ask it of me, Ildiko.”

If a simple genuflection of gratitude compromises my character and shames my house, then we are both less than shadow. There is more to royalty than blood and birthright,

I’m as much an admirer of a pretty garden, fancy windows, and a fine couch as the next woman, but there’s also beauty in purpose.

“Woman of day,” he said slowly. “You mean everything to me.” No amount of blinking this time held back Ildiko’s tears. They streamed down her cheeks to drip off her chin and onto Brishen’s shoulder. “Prince of night,” she said in a watery voice that echoed another moment when she’d greeted him with the same words. “You’ve come back to me.”

She made him strong; she made him weak, and in that moment, she nearly put him on his knees.