The Vampire Prince's Bride

Joaquín holds my wrists down on the well stone so his mother can paint the bride's mark on them.

"Keep still, Inés," he says. "It goes on neater if you keep still."

Two red bands, ash and madder. The whole of Ceniza is in the plaza to watch them dry. The doors up the hill open at dark.

"She's shaking," Doña Remedios says. "Hold her properly."

"I'm not shaking. You are. You've got paint on your good skirt."

She looks. Somebody laughs, then remembers.

Here's what this plaza doesn't know. I've been up that stair seventy-one times, once a month with the grain, because the outsider's daughter carries the grain. And seventy-one times a voice behind the gate has asked what I'd do if they sent me.

Last week this woman measured me for a wedding dress. Then the castle's writ came down, and it said: send one.

Not the lot from the jar. A choice. The council sat up all night deciding who Ceniza could spare, and chose the girl who stood in this plaza at thirteen, the night they walked Teodora Anzures up the stair, and swore she'd kill the prince herself if they ever sent her.

Pilar Anzures brings the gown. Crimson. She's wearing the blue dress I was measured in. Give it a week and so will the rest of my life.

"It's been taken in," Pilar says. "Teodora was bigger. My sister went up those steps without crying. Try to manage that."

"Your sister was eighteen," I say. "I know the way."

Then my mother reads the tithe. The mayoress named her Reader, so no one can say the Ocampos weren't willing.

"By the covenant of Ceniza," my mother reads, "the castle gives the water, the valley gives the grain, and in the tenth year the valley gives a bride." She doesn't look up. "The bride. Inés Ocampo."

Benja is behind her with his hands over his ears. He's twelve. Nobody has told him it isn't a wedding.

My mother fastens the gown. Something hard and thin goes down my left sleeve, and she says it into my hair.

"Not for them. For him. Aim for where the heart was."

"The castle asked for the one we could best spare," Doña Remedios tells the plaza. "The council grieves."

"The castle asked for one," I say. "You wrote my name. I watched you through the council window, Doña. You licked the pen first."

The plaza goes quiet.

"Is that right?" says the miller.

"Walk her," says Doña Remedios.

Joaquín walks me to the first step. My ring is on a cord round his neck.

"It isn't personal, Inés."

"You held me down with the hand you proposed with."

"Someone had to."

"No. Someone volunteered."

Nine hundred steps. I've counted them seventy-one times under forty kilos of barley. Tonight it's a dress and a stake, and it's the longest climb yet.

Below the terraces the Anzures wheel turns on the race. The water comes down from the castle. No one asks who lets it.

At nine hundred the doors are open.

Seventy-one times I left the grain at the gate and went home. Tonight they stand wide, like somebody's expecting me.

I walk in.

A hall of black stone and red candles. On the stair at the far end, nine women in black. Not moving. Not breathing, and I'm looking.

The one on the third step has Pilar's face with the colour taken out.

Teodora Anzures. The last bride. She's alive.

She's also, very clearly, not.

"You're late," says a voice from the candles.

I know the voice. Six years through the bars. Put it down there. Is it barley? What would you do, Inés, if they sent you?

"You," I say.

"Me."

He comes into the light. Pale. Dark hair. A black coat buttoned to the chin, and eyes the colour of the paint on my wrists.

"You're the prince."

"I take the grain. Same job, most months."

"You let me think you were the gatekeeper."

"You never asked. You told me you'd kill the prince. Seventy-one times. I didn't like to interrupt."

He looks at my wrists. Not at my throat. I notice that.

"May I?"

I hold them out. He doesn't touch.

"Ash and madder. The old recipe. Do you know what that mark is?"

"The castle's seal. It's on every writ you send down."

"The bride's," he says. "Every writ your village has obeyed for two hundred years was signed with that mark. By a girl they'd walked up this stair to be eaten."

On the third step, Teodora smiles. She keeps her teeth behind it.

He takes something off the wall. An iron key on a red cord.

"The spring is under this hall. That key is the sluice. Your valley drinks when the bride says so."

"And you?"

"I can't turn it. Your ancestors wouldn't have their water in a Varlan hand." He holds it out. "The bride is the hand."

The key is heavy and cold, and it's in my palm before I've decided anything.

"Why me?"

"Your mayoress sent me a blank page. I'd already chosen."

"You chose the girl who said she'd kill you."

"Nobody in this house has told me the truth in forty years, Inés. You've told me the same one seventy-one times."

Silver in my left sleeve. A key in my right hand. He's close enough that I could find out where the heart was.

I don't. You don't stab the only man in two hundred years who's handed you a valley. Not on the first night.

"What will you do with it?" he asks.

I think about Doña Remedios in the front pew, asking for a wet spring.

"Doña Remedios prays for rain every Sunday," I say. "From tonight she's praying to me."