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Cold feet before your wedding was normal, Thalassa told herself. Everyone was nervous the morning of. There was nothing wrong with having second thoughts.
Still, she stood in front of the mirror in her bride’s chamber, and ran through the poem again.
Her something old was her mother’s veil. Her something new was her dress. Valant had given her his brooch for her something borrowed, and she had pinned it to the inside of her dress because Shadi didn’t want to see her wearing it. She wore sapphire earrings for her something blue. To round it all off, she had painstakingly sourced a sixpence to slip into her shoe. She could feel it digging into the ball of her foot, the discomfort grounding her into her body.
These items were supposed to bring her and her husband-to-be good fortune and longevity in their marriage. Thalassa had tried to stick to the traditions as closely as she could, but she didn’t have any married friends to borrow something from, and so Valant’s brooch was the best she could do. She hoped this diversion from the poem wouldn’t lessen its impact. She needed all the luck she could get.
Shadi had laughed at her when she had told him that she wanted to follow tradition, but she and Jove had skipped these rituals, and she couldn’t bring herself to skip them again.
Her first wedding had been quick and spontaneous. Jove hadn’t proposed so much as he had asked her to run away with him. Young and in love and disillusioned with her family’s legacy, how could she say no? They had married in a courthouse, and then flew to Europe that same night. She had broken the news to her father in a letter she had penned from a hostel in Prague.
It had been the happiest day of her life, second only to the birth of their son. The day she lost them both was by far the worst.
If Thalassa was honest, she hadn’t planned on having another wedding. It was nothing against Shadi; she just hadn’t imagined herself getting married again when her relationship with Jove had ended so tragically. If she didn’t get married, then she wouldn’t have to suffer through the loss of another husband or another child.
…But then she had found out she was pregnant again, and Shadi had proposed to her in front of her father a week later, and Magnifi had made his opinion on the subject very clear (to the point that Thalassa began to doubt that Shadi had proposed of his own volition), and so now she was standing in an antechamber of the chapel with a veil over her face, and white silk clinging to the swell of her baby bump, and a brooch in her dress, and sapphires in her ears, and a coin in her heels. Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, and a sixpence in your shoe.
Thalassa knew, logically, that skirting wedding traditions hadn’t killed Jove and Apollo. Still, she wouldn’t risk it a second time. Anything to prevent another tragedy. Anything to keep her future husband and daughter alive.
A knock on the door roused her from her thoughts, and her father stepped in wearing his full Troupe Gramarye regalia. “Hi, sweetheart,” he greeted her with his permanent performer’s grin. Thalassa doubted he remembered how to turn it off. “Ready for your big show?”
Thalassa took a slow breath, in and out. “Yes. Of course.”
“Come on, Thalassa.” Magnifi laughed. “I taught you better than that. Let me see that smile.”
It was an instinctual reaction more than a deliberate choice. Thalassa’s lips turned up, and suddenly a different woman was looking back at her in the mirror, perfect and plastic, Daddy’s little star.
“There she is,” Magnifi cooed, laying his hands on her shoulders as he crept up behind her. He looked at her reflection up and down. “You look just like your mother.”
Thalassa wouldn’t remember. Her mother had quit her job as a magician’s assistant – and by extension, their family – when she was only eight years old.
(She hadn’t understood her mother’s decision then, but she understood it now.)
Unable to look herself in the eye any longer, Thalassa turned away from the mirror. “What are you doing here?”
“I brought you something.”
Magnifi produced a pale blue pocket square, and with a quick flick of his wrist, it changed into an all too familiar cape – a trick that hadn't impressed her in over a decade and certainly not since he had taught her how to do it herself.
Thalassa’s stomach dropped. She knew what it was and why he was giving it to her, but was compelled to ask anyway. “What is this?”
“Something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue.” He draped the cape over her shoulders and pinned it in place with a diamond brooch. He didn’t seem to notice that her body was as rigid as a mannequin.
Thalassa didn’t want this. However she felt about getting married again, she didn’t want to wear even a small part of that costume to her wedding. It was supposed to be her day – a ceremony to celebrate her relationship with Zak– with Shadi. The wedding did not and should not be related to the Troupe.
…But the Troupe and her family came hand-in-hand – one had long swallowed the other whole – and as frustrated as she was that Magnifi would dress her in that cape, she was angrier at herself for not anticipating it.
“I don’t think it’s possible for something to be old and new at the same time.” It was the closest to an objection she could muster.
Magnifi grinned, turning her around and forcing her to face her reflection once more. With her veil tumbling down over the magician’s cape, she looked more like a cartoon than a bride. “It’s old, because it’s your mother’s, and new, because you haven’t worn it before. If you give it back afterwards, then it’s borrowed, and I doubt I need to explain how it’s blue. It’s the perfect good luck charm.”
Thalassa pressed her lips together. “I don’t think that counts as new.”
“Sure it does,” Magnifi insisted, and Thalassa pushed no further because there was no arguing with her father about facts. If he said it was, then it was, and that was that.
“I’ve already picked out my good luck charms. I don’t need another,” she tried instead.
“There’s no such thing as too much good luck, my dear. What harm’s another going to do? And a charm that hits all the criteria is the best charm of all.” He squeezed her shoulders. His grin never faltered.
That was what made Magnifi Gramarye so formidable – he had impeccable control over his face. Even with a supernatural gift to detect minute body movements, Thalassa could never tell when he was being sincere. She supposed a man who could detect lies himself would be extra cautious about hiding his tells, but sometimes she wondered if he had been a performer for so long that he had forgotten how to be a person too.
When Thalassa still made no move to accept the gift, Magnifi caught her eye in the mirror, and cut right to the heart of her discomfort. “Everything will be okay, sweetheart,” he said with uncharacteristic softness.
It wasn’t a surprise he could read her so clearly. When she was little, she had thought he was a mind reader. Thalassa took a slow shaky breath, her voice heavy in her throat. “What if it happens again?”
“It won’t. You know I won’t let anything bad happen to you and the girl. Thalassa, for as long as you are a Gramarye, you are under my protection. No harm will come to you. No harm will come to your daughter. I’ll–”
“Or Shadi.”
“...Or Zak. I’ll keep you safe. Magician’s honour.” He grinned, and even though she knew such things were out of his control, she believed him, because Magnifi Gramarye was the world’s greatest magician, and if anyone could do the impossible, it was him.
When Jove and Apollo died, Thalassa had nowhere to go but home. It had been two years she had last heard from her father – he had stopped speaking to her when she left the Troupe just as he had stopped speaking to her mother. She didn’t know if he would welcome her or turn her away, but she needn’t worry. He took one look at her tear-stained face, opened his arms wide, and said the chilling words that had echoed non-stop in her chest ever since:
“Once a Gramarye, always a Gramarye.”
At the time, it was a reassurance – a reminder that no matter what happened, no matter how distant their relationship grew, she would always have a place in the Troupe.
Nowadays, it felt more like a sentence. If she wanted her father’s love, she had to practice magic. If she was married to a fellow member of the Troupe, then she couldn’t run away as easily. If she wanted a home and safety and comfort, then she had to play by her father’s rules. It didn’t matter whether she wanted to practice magic or not. She was a Gramarye, and always would be, and this was the life a Gramarye lived.
Thalassa knew now what it was like to lose everything. She couldn’t take losing everything again. She needed her daughter to be safe, and her husband. She needed her father to stay in her life. If committing to the Troupe was what it took to keep them, then so be it.
She pulled the cape a little tighter around her shoulders, and made sure it was sitting nice over her dress. Something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue.
“Thank you.” Her voice was barely a whisper. The sentiment behind it rang hollow.
Her father winked.