Till Death

You die at 11:52 p.m. on your wedding night, in your mother's pearls, with your husband's hand stroking your hair.

It starts with a toast.

The bridal suite at Wyndmere House is all candlelight and white peonies, the windows open to the river, the last of the Midsummer lanterns still glowing on the lawn below. Somewhere downstairs the band is packing up. Your feet ache. Your face aches from smiling. Three hundred guests, eleven speeches, one first dance to a song you didn't choose, and now, finally, it's just the two of you.

Tristan closes the door with his heel and holds up a bottle.

"I saved the good one," he says. "Just for us."

He is so beautiful it still catches you off guard. Honey-blond hair falling over his forehead, the sailing tan, the dimple that made every one of your bridesmaids sigh when he walked down the aisle. His bow tie hangs undone around his collar. He pours two glasses, careful, like a man performing a small and sacred ritual.

"To my wife. To Ava Langholm," he says, and hands you yours.

You think, for one strange second, about a man on the terrace at the reception. Tall, dark auburn hair, green eyes like cold water. Dominic Arkwright, the corporate raider who has spent the last year trying to tear your late father's company apart. He wasn't invited. He came anyway, caught your arm by the balustrade, and said in a low, flat voice, Don't drink anything he hands you, Miss Wrenfield.

You laughed in his face. Of course you did. The Executioner, crashing your wedding to frighten you. Everyone knew what he was.

"To us," you say to your husband, and you drink.

It's bitter.

Not the bright, cold bitterness of good champagne. Something underneath it, faint and strange, like the smell of a crushed fruit pit. You frown at the glass.

"Tristan, I think this one's turned."

"Has it?" He takes it from your hand, gently, and sets it on the mantel. He doesn't taste it. He doesn't even look at it. He just smiles at you, that warm, easy, golden smile, and says, "Sit down, sweetheart. You've had a long day."

The room tilts.

You put a hand out for the bedpost and miss it. Tristan catches you, guides you down onto the white duvet like you're something precious, and you hear the door to the dressing room open.

Romy.

Your stepsister is still in her silver bridesmaid's gown. Platinum hair in a sleek bob, red lips, eyes the pale blue of winter sky. She is the most beautiful woman at every party she attends and she knows it. She crosses the room, sits on the edge of the bed, and takes your hand.

Her fingers are warm. Yours are going cold.

"Romy," you whisper. "Get someone. Something's wrong."

"Shh, Ava," she says. "I know."

The candle flames are starting to blur into soft gold halos. Your heart is doing something heavy and slow. You try to sit up and can't. Tristan sits on your other side and strokes your hair back from your forehead, and you look up at him, at the face you were going to wake up next to for the rest of your life, and you understand.

He isn't afraid. Neither of them is.

"Why?" It comes out as barely a breath.

"Your mother's trust, sweetheart," Tristan says, almost kindly. "It vested at the altar this afternoon. Everything you have is ours now. Well." He glances at Romy and his smile changes into something you've never seen before. Something private. "Mine. And then ours."

Romy laughs softly.

You think of Lucinda, your stepmother, kissing your cheek at the end of the aisle with tears in her eyes. You think of all the times Tristan and Romy laughed at the same joke a second before anyone else. You think of how you never once let yourself notice.

"Someone," you manage. "Someone will come."

"You mean Arkwright?" Romy leans close. Her perfume is jasmine and something metallic. "Your Executioner isn't coming, darling. He left the reception in a hurry. Something about proof." She tucks a strand of hair behind your ear. "His car went off Haldane Bridge twenty minutes ago. Into the river. Such a shame. Such a dangerous road at night."

No.

The word doesn't make it to your mouth.

He tried to warn you. The one person in three hundred who told you the truth, and you laughed at him, and now he's in the black water at the bottom of the hill because he was trying to come back for you.

The ceiling is very far away now. Tristan's hand is still in your hair. Romy is still holding your fingers, and she squeezes them, almost affectionately, and checks the small diamond watch on her wrist.

"Eleven fifty," she says. "Not long."

You want to scream. You want to claw the smile off her face. You want, more than anything, to go back. To the terrace. To the man with the cold green eyes. To listen.

I'm sorry, you think, to him, to your mother, to yourself. I'm so sorry. If I had one more chance—

The candlelight goes out like someone closed a door on it.

The last thing you hear is your husband's voice, close to your ear.

"Sleep, Ava."

You gasp awake.

Air. Real air, cool and sweet, rushing into your lungs so hard it hurts. You're sitting bolt upright, both hands clutching at your chest, and your heart is slamming against your ribs, fast and strong and alive.

Daylight.

Pale morning light through gauzy curtains. A window seat piled with faded cushions. Wallpaper with little painted birds on it, blue and gold, that your mother chose when you were six.

Your childhood bedroom. The east wing of Wyndmere House.

You stare at your hands. No rings. No wedding band, no engagement diamond. Your nails are bare, not the pale pink manicure you had for the wedding. You're wearing an old Yale T-shirt you haven't slept in for years.

You touch your throat. No pearls.

Your mouth tastes like toothpaste and sleep. Not almonds. Not anything.

"What," you whisper to the empty room, and your voice cracks. "What is this."

A dream. It has to be. Some horrible, vivid nightmare brought on by wedding nerves. Except you can still feel the weight of Tristan's hand in your hair. You can still hear Romy's watch ticking. You can still taste the bitterness at the back of your tongue, even though you can't, even though it isn't there.

Your phone is on the nightstand, plugged in, exactly where you always kept it when you lived here.

You grab it. Your fingers are shaking so hard it takes three tries to unlock.

The date sits at the top of the screen in clean white numbers.

Monday, March 23.

You read it four times.

March. Not June. Not the morning after your wedding. Ninety days before it. The wedding is June 21. You know that the way you know your own name, because you spent a year planning it. Ninety days. You count it on your fingers like a child, twice, and get the same answer both times.

Down the hall, a clock chimes seven. The old grandfather clock on the landing that's been four minutes fast since before you were born.

You're not dead.

You were dead. And now you're not.

You press your hand over your mouth to keep from making a sound, because you don't know what sound it would be. A sob. A laugh. A scream. All three. Your eyes are burning. Your whole body is shaking.

If I had one more chance.

The phone buzzes in your hand.

You flinch so hard you almost drop it. A notification slides down from the top of the screen, a little gray bubble, and your blood goes to ice.

Tristan: Morning, beautiful.

The same two words he sent you every single morning of your engagement. The same words he sent the morning of March 23 in your old life, which you remember because you screenshotted it and sent it to your best friend with I'm marrying the sweetest man alive.

You stare at it until the screen goes dark.

Ninety days. Perfect memory.

And a husband who hasn't killed you yet.