Eiren awoke the next morning to the sound of Caelony screeching. He couldn't quite hear what about, but it sounded as though it was directed to the priest and quite possibly the cook.

He groaned and rolled to his side, staring at the window for a few minutes. The sun was barely perceptible, hiding as it often did behind the bleak grey clouds. Does the sun ever actually shine here? he questioned silently, before pulling himself to a seated position. He mussed his hair and sighed, dreading the upcoming day.

If the previous week was any indicator of Caelony's attitude, then today could only be... nightmarish. A significant lack of entertainment, gifts, or company, as well as the presence of her four least-favourite people could only spell trouble for the rest of the day. Eiren winced as another shriek filtered through the floor. Best to get this over with, he groaned inwardly, and he made his way to an open closet, now full of the remainder of his clothes.

Once he was dressed in a fine, pink suit - so pale, it appeared almost an extension of skin, if Eiren had any colour at all - he made his way downstairs. Wincing with every step that drew him closer to his betrothed, he found the Lord Van Wyk in the entrance hall, shaking off dirt from his hunting boots.

"Eiren," the Lord said with a nod of his head. He stood tall and grasped a shoulder of the shaking young man before him. "Are you ready to celebrate the final year of your Lady's second decade?" His heavy black locks fell over his face as he laughed at the expression Eiren wore. "You need not appear so unhappy!" Eiren felt that he had no other choice than to be unhappy, and he didn't try to hide a rather underwhelmed expression.

"I am rather apprehensive about today," he admitted, following the Lord into the dining room. Although he disliked being near Van Wyk almost as much as he did Caelony, Eiren had to admit that there was a sort of security in the Lord's tall, heavy frame. Not a large man by any means, he seemed instead to convey strength in his height and leanness. He is indeed a hunter, Eiren noted, looking up at Van Wyk for second. The ruddy stain of activity and the dirt that caked itself into his unusually long fingernails made him appear almost an animal himself, if the animal in particular was a lithe, ruthless killer with paralyzing eyes.

Eiren shuddered and looked away.

"You needn't be, Eiren. As you grow into your role as husband, you will find that Caelony is often more dramatic than she is capable."

"Are you saying that..."

"That her bark is a tad more vicious than her small bite? Indeed." The Lord approached his seat at the head of the table, the priest tottering by as he sat.

"Our little lady is explosive today," he squeaked out by way of warning, before zooming out of the room, no doubt to prepare the abbey. Eiren followed the priest with a wan look. Right after the priest, the cook came running out, tears streaming down their face.

"Oh, it's all going to hell!" Eiren and Lord Van Wyk shared a look.

"Whatever is the matter, Baryn?" The cook wailed and threw their - his? Eiren was still unsure what the cook was, so bland and unremarkable were any of their features - hands up, clouds of flour puffing off into the air.

"The Lady is insisting that we've got all the food wrong, m'lord, and that we must send for replacements at once, and we haven't enough candles or dishes, and I'm really at my limit, m'lord, I can't take much more of her madness - "

"That will be all, Baryn," the Lord interrupted, holding one hand to his head and the other up to silence the cook. His eyes closed in pain, and he waved his raised hand towards Eiren. "Eiren, my son, now would be an excellent opportunity for you to prove your abilities as a man able to calm a hysteric wife."

Horrified, Eiren had no choice but to follow the cook back into kitchens and closer to the volatile Caelony. As he walked in, the cook kept wringing their hands and moaning under their breath, none of which eased Eiren's nerves.

Wearing a simple dress, cream-coloured and laced around the middle with a dark blue ribbon, was a frizzy-haired Caelony. She was throwing aside boxes and strings, looking for some fancy food or pastry that was wise enough to hide from her. When she noticed Eiren out of the corner of her eye, she stood erect and scowled at him, the sight making his innards recoil.

"What do you want?" she spat, not waiting for an answer before she turned back to her messy search. Eiren swallowed and mentally cursed Lord Van Wyk for sending him in here.

"I've come to see what the matter is, my lady, and if I could assuage your struggling." She snorted and threw a biscuit tin at his head.

"Save your poetic words for your Perrinton whores, my love." He ducked out of the way and glowered at her, his patience, thin as it already was, and his nervousness boiling to something close to anger.

"I am here to help you, Caelony. Please avoid treating me like I'm an inconvenience." He sniffed and crossed his arms as she gave him a rather dirty look. "Now, what may I help you with?"

"Look, you dimwitted fool," she started hotly, walking towards him so quickly that his back was pressed against a wall, far too quickly for his own comfort. She jabbed him in the chest with a sharp finger and scowled into his face. "You have nothing to do here - don't go trying to push your white little nose into things you couldn't possibly understand." She poked him again and he winced, all of his courage having evaporated rather awkwardly. "Go read your pretty books, or write your adorable little poems, and leave me be!"

Ejected from her presence, and feeling rather ashamed that he hadn't said anything in response to the abuse he had been subjected to, Eiren meekly slipped out of the kitchen. The Lord was already gone, to soak in the stink of his bed, Eiren thought bitterly, and the dining room was strangely quiet. Save for the occasional screeching of Caelony, who could be heard yelling about "being the only competent human in the entirety of this damn castle!"

The priest burst back into the room, slamming the front doors open as he ran in. Eiren jumped and sighed angrily.

"Why is everybody so loud!" he complained, but the priest shook his head, breathless.

"Come, come, we need to put up the lights," he gasped out, and before Eiren knew what was happening, the priest had pulled him out to the Abbey, where a seemingly endless supply of boxes was stacked in the entrance. The next hour or so was spent labouriously carting bundles of candles into the castle, and once all of the lights were set up, another hour was wasted making the Abbey as much a fire hazard as Eiren had ever seen.

Putting the castle's illumination to shame, Eiren did think the church looked rather nice, glowing a bright yellow from the outside. It seemed like a beacon of something other than dismal, dreary death that the estate seemed so often to emit. Perhaps, once Caelony saw the lights and the peaceful glow, her heart would calm and unburden? He snorted at this last thought - she was almost thirty years of age, and if she wasn't through being spiteful and vicious towards everyone that she met, no amount of light or stained glass windows would cure her.

Thinking their work done, Eiren was unpleasantly surprised when the priest came to him for help with flowers.

"Why do I have to do anything?" he complained as a heap of stringed blue roses was unceremoniously dumped into his arms. "And how do you have blue roses?" The priest, armed with his own pile of flowers, somehow managed to give Eiren a disappointed look over the piles of petals.

"You are to be the head of a household, Mr. Adair. Who else should be assisting in the decorations of his bride-to-be's birthday? The roses are imported," he added as they circled the estate, nailing or hanging the strings as they went. Lord Van Wyk doesn't do anything, Eiren silently complained.

"Imported? Is that really a good idea, to bring any added unknowns to this particular party?" Eiren turned to chase after a flower that had fallen loose, when he caught a glimpse of the gardener and something white. The priest had just started to respond when he saw that Eiren stood still, squinting across the grounds.

"Mr. Adair, these aren't going to hang themselves!"

"What's the gardener doing?" The priest blinked and sighed.

"He is investigating the activities of some of the wild animals nearby."

"Why are they on the estate? Shouldn't they be stuck outside of the gates?" Perhaps these wild animals were what disrupted his sleep of late. Though this was a perfectly sane reason, it did not comfort Eiren to know that loose creatures were free to roam the grounds.

"I said he was investigating, Mr. Adair. Let us continue, please." Reluctantly following the priest, Eiren wondered aloud what the whiteness was - was there some sort of enchanted elk, or snow-white wolf? The priest chuckled grimly behind his roses.

"It was one of the many statues you will find scattered across Kelfordshire."

"Another statue!" Eiren threw down his lump and put his hands on his hips. "Just how often is Mr. Quilby summoned here?"

"Don't be so dramatic. We still have the rest of the back and the entire front of the house to cover." Eiren raised his nose snobbishly in the air.

"You can hardly be reprimanded for answering me this!" The priest opened his mouth to chide Eiren, but before he could, Lord Van Wyk stepped out from behind Eiren and coughed rather imperiously.

"I think you'll find it doesn't matter, Eiren," he said, startling Eiren so badly that he shrieked and pitched forward into the priest. Once he recovered his footing, he shakily bowed before the Lord and mumbled out a paltry apology, before picking the lights back up, chagrined. The Lord did not wait around, though, but went off in the direction of where Eiren had seen the gardener lurking. No doubt to cover something nefarious, he thought nastily, the sting of yet another embarrassment making him feel most bitterly toward everything he crossed for the next few hours.

Wondering what else could need to be done once the castle was decorated accordingly, the priest informed him that all that was left was the ceremony, and the food.

"Once Caelony had read her rites, and we have blessed her for yet another year, we shall eat and be finished with these toils." The list was short, but Eiren still groaned aloud.

"When are the rites and such?"

"In ten minutes." Eiren nearly fainted again.

In eight minutes, they were back in the Abbey. The cook was sniffling in the back of the pews, wringing a cloth endlessly in their hands. Standing even further back in a corner was the gardener, exuding a rather sinister aura and the distinct don't talk to me sort of air that Eiren respected from fifty feet away. The priest wore a long white robe, having changed so rapidly, Eiren was half sure he'd been wearing it under his usual habit. He stood at the front of the pews, on a raised platform decorated with ribbons and intricate patterns of cloth. A small basin of dark red water floated before him.

Eiren himself stood at the first pew, just to the left of the priest, peering nervously into the basin. He was quite sure that the water wasn't coloured as an effect of the stained glass, or the lights, and the contents worried him greatly. Was this the work of some dark magic, or the blood of an unfortunate animal? He shivered and looked up at the windows. Sunlight had already started to fade, and the candles showed their full splendor against the pictured glass.

The Abbey door opened, and in walked a magnificently dressed Lord Van Wyk, Caelony's arm tightly in his. Eiren gaped at their outfits, marveling that they had dresses so finely in so short a time. He felt rather self-conscious about his own attire, and he tried to ignore the dirt on his sleeve, visible from the corner of his eye.

Caelony had donned a pale blue shawl, translucent and shimmering against her dress. Her hair had been braided rather quickly, but the loose curls that floated down made her appear ethereal as she walked down the lit aisles of the pews. Lord Van Wyk - appearing to have changed even faster than the priest - wore a black outfit, stark against his daughter's cream-and-blue colours. His hair was not tied back, but let loose to flow impressively across his back.

Eiren could not tell if they were dressed for a wedding, a funeral, or a birthday, but he decided that in such a strange setting, they looked good, and that was really all that mattered.

They approached the priest, who opened a small book he'd been hiding in his robes. He began to read of the importance of the Creation, and the sorrow of the Golden one for sacrificing his eternal companion to create what could not be, when Eiren found that he would rather stare and contemplate Caelony's expression. Religion had always bored him, and the priest was not making this attitude any less true.

He watched without emotion as Caelony mumbled a few responses to some existential questions, and sneered out her undying devotion to the Gods, and sighed as she accepted her blessings for another fruitful year. What a load of horse shit, Eiren thought, trying very hard not to laugh aloud. If anybody had less of a fruitful year, or was less deserving of one, it was definitely her.

His laughter was immediately stifled by a gasp of shock as the priest lifted the basin and poured the water over her head, sending thick tails of the water over her hair and neck. He watched in stunned horror as the water fanned out over her dress, so stark and violent against the white.

As Caelony lifted her gaze and mouthed her final rites, the blood -for Eiren was sure it was such, now - dripped over her eyes and into her mouth. Struggling to keep his stomach from heaving its previous meals across the pews, Eiren's disgust was quietly interrupted by the late appearance of none other than the famed sculptor, Severin Quilby, who, upon seeing every face turned to him, clasped his exceedingly pale hands together and smiled far too widely.

"I do hope I haven't missed much!"

Eiren blinked and leaned over the pew he stood at, his resolve disappearing as yet another surprise forced the contents of his stomach across the back of the seat.