The Alchemist Married the Wrong Storm

How it begins

Tala's husband condensed on the ceiling halfway through the vows.

The king, whom she had expected to marry, stepped backward.

A small storm gathered above the ceremonial table. Rain struck the silver cups. Lightning moved politely around the guests before settling inside the shape of a man.

He landed barefoot on the treaty.

“Is this the place?” he asked.

Nobody answered.

Tala looked at the alchemical seal beneath his feet. She had designed it herself: a seasonal exchange, witnessed in public, stabilized by a marriage agreement she had not particularly wanted but had considered preferable to another winter without rain.

Somebody had changed one symbol.

The king looked at her.

Tala looked at the changed line.

The storm man sneezed. A gust lifted the archbishop's hat.

“Excuse me,” he said.

Tala found this promising.

She took the treaty from beneath his feet and turned it toward the light. The seal no longer named the crown. It named the weather held in its vaults.

“You're the missing season.”

“I have been called that.”

“What would you like to be called?”

He considered the question for long enough that the room became uncomfortable.

“Vey.”

The king began speaking. Tala raised one hand.

She knew the gesture would cost her later. For now, it stopped a room full of powerful people from discussing the man beside her as though he were an inconvenient roof leak.

“Do you understand what happened?” she asked Vey.

“I was told I would be released.”

“Into a marriage.”

His gaze moved from her face to the treaty.

“Can you refuse?”

The question startled her.

Around them, rain began pooling beside the royal chairs. The flowers drank it greedily.

Tala held out the altered seal.

“I think,” she said, “we should both find out.”

Vey took it carefully, as if paper were a creature he had not yet learned how to keep alive.