Cassandra was offered the choice of two widowers, one a father of eight, the other of five, and a young man her age, who was especially pious, and, as a result of that, afraid to even talk to girls. She suspected that if she were to marry that boy, she'd remain a virgin forever. He probably had no idea that babies weren't brought by a stork. Moreover, he was half a head shorter than her, possessed the narrow shoulders of a man who had never in his life done any physical labor and had disgusting white plaque on his lips. The girl always wanted to spit at the sight of him. If he were her brother, she'd pity him, but as a prospective husband, he made her nauseous. She wasn't desperate enough to resign herself to that marriage.

She had to act so cold and stiff that the poor guy first started to stutter in her presence and then just disappeared for good, informing Hermann that his niece was as hard as granite and adamant in her faith.

Widowers weren't especially attractive either. The father of eight children, on top of his piety, turned out to be exceptionally lustful and went out of his way to grope the poor girl or squeeze her leg under the table. Cassandra tried to imagine living with that letch and shivered in fear. She imagined constantly giving birth without any pause. Cheating? That would actually be better, yet his faith would never allow him to—he'd rather drive his woman to an early grave! It's like he would burst if he had to abstain for a few weeks! Not to mention his eight children.

With that groom, Cassandra was even more swift and picked a strong laxative and a sharp pin as her weapons of choice. She secretly added the laxative to his cup and pricked him with the pin each time the man tried to feel her up under the table. After six or eight holes in his hand, he started to forgo such attempts at "courtship." And the laxative, which lasted three or four days each time, finally drove him away from visiting Hermann Likeworth. He did want to marry, but a kitten, not a wildcat. If he had already gotten the laxative, what guarantees did he have that it wouldn't be followed by poison at some point?

With the third candidate, she didn't have to work hard. After noticing no spark of intelligence, but only the light of faith in his eyes, Cassandra started to bring up the subject of wanting to take the veil and serve the Bright Saint—right after her uncle left them alone with each other. In a couple of moons, the man realized there was nothing to be gained there and left her alone.

Uncle was forced to find the picky girl new suitors. He really did want the best for her—which is to say, a husband who was a dead ringer for Hermann himself: a god-loving, level-headed man. That was the opposite of what Cassandra wished. She'd rather break her head against the pavement than slowly die while crushing the last vestiges of intelligence, fun, sincerity, and spirit inside herself. So she became even more devout. Her uncle had no idea that his niece, who was praying five times a day and visiting church three times, was actually using that time to walk around the city making eyes at passers-by, trying to find herself a man.

She met Rene by pure luck. Cassandra was coming from the daily prayer, and Rene, after having one too many the previous night while celebrating a plum order of the Thieves Guild, had spent the night with a lady of the evening, and having paid for her services, was walking home.

The weather was far from fine. The wind had brought clouds over from the sea, and rain was streaming down in torrents. Rene had to wait it out in a bakery, and after a couple of minutes, Cassandra ran in as well. She shook off the water, pulled off her drenched cape—and the necromancer froze. Cassandra wasn't a classic beauty. Her hair was bright red, her green eyes were slanted inwards, her pale skin was covered with a smattering of freckles around the nose, and her features were irregular: a large mouth, always laughing, and high sharp cheekbones. But did it really matter?

His heart skipped a beat and then started to thump so hard he could barely breathe, and something whispered to him from the deepest recesses of his soul, If you let her go, you'll regret it for the rest of your life!

Rene made his choice. Maybe he wasn't looking his best after the previous night, but that was beside the point. He had to know who that gorgeous girl was and where she was from. Everything else could be smoothed over later.

That said, he didn't exactly scare Cassandra—she had seen her own father in much less presentable shape after some merry parties. If anything, Rene's appearance proved that, while well off, he was no stranger to life's pleasures. And considering Cassandra's history with her uncle, that was a huge point in his favor. Age? Well, Rene was almost forty, and Cassandra, twenty-four. She had missed her window to marry before her father's fall to sickness, and after moving in with her uncle, it was far too late. He always snatched the opportunity to remind her she was an old maid and would be lucky to find a man who would be interested in her. He was wrong. She did find such a man.

After talking for a bit—the rain lasted for almost half an hour—Rene and Cassandra were both surprised that they had never met before. They had lots of common interests and were delighted to find out they were kindred spirits. As a necromancer, Rene didn't really have a lot of respect for traditions, convention, or morality, not to mention religion. What else could he do—go burn himself at the stake? Yeah, right, already running at top speed to the nearest temple.

Cassandra, as a woman whose worldview was deeply influenced by her late father—and herself—had gotten used to freedom, and blossomed after finding respect and understanding in Rene. The necromancer started to frequent the temple, visiting the daytime service whenever his classes let him. Cassandra was already going there thrice a day. Rene waited for her there and escorted her home. They talked, joked, laughed...

Two moons after their first meeting, Rene realized she was the woman he wanted to spend his life with. Cassandra had made that decision much earlier, which is why her answer to his proposal was immediate. The only obstacle in their path was the respected and righteous Hermann Likeworth. He and Rene had always been at each other's throats, and the latter's petition to marry Hermann's niece was met with a flat refusal. The girl was locked in her room. Well, that was predictable.

After taking his leave and giving his future relative a mouthful, Rene turned to his Plan B. The necromancer wasn't any good at picking locks or kidnapping fair ladies. However, that description nicely fit the profile of his friends at the Thieves Guild, who often employed his services. Rene had never informed the law about his clients or the source of his fee, which earned him the favor of the guild. Cassandra was rescued from the house faster than her uncle could say a prayer. The rest was history. A servant of the Bright Saint performed a marriage ceremony between a consenting adult woman fully aware of her actions and an adult necromancer who was also in his right mind—although the groom never confessed to his profession.

When the uncle turned up in the morning, he was presented a marriage certificate and a bloodied bedsheet, signifying that the marriage had been consummated. The honorable Likeworth didn't like that one bit, but he was backed into a corner. The legal age for a woman was twenty-two years old, and Cassandra was even older—any hope to marry her off faded away with each day. Thus, the uncle spat at his niece's doorstep and went home.

The newlyweds lived happily for two years, until a lilac chickenpox epidemic broke out in the city. The name was funny; the disease was decidedly not. It spread as if on wings. The infection was transmitted by direct contact, by flea bite—it was enough to simply touch a cloth used to wipe off a patient's sweat to get sick. The chickenpox wiped out whole towns. During the day, everything was fine. By the evening, their temperatures went up, and the infected spent two days with a fever. On the third day, a lilac rash covered their skin, and on the next, it turned into small, but terribly painful blisters, which gradually grew in size. After two more days, they turned into full-on wounds, and two or three days after that, they killed the patient. Some died earlier, some later, but the outcome was inevitable. The disease couldn't be treated.

It wasn't a disease in the full sense of the word. Instead, it was half sickness, half curse that had haunted the world for several centuries. Its origins were tragic. When a sorceress who commands the magic of life falls in love with a necromancer, people will never leave them alone. The castle where the happy couple lived and experimented was attacked by zealots of the Bright Saint. It is still unclear what exactly transpired there, but both mages were killed, and the castle burned down. All witnesses died shortly afterward, and no killers managed to survive for more than five years after the murder. Even their friends and family wound up dead.

And then, several reckless souls decided to dig inside the castle ruins, hoping to find something valuable. They got sick on the second day after coming back. The entire village died out then, and several more. Three towns later, the epidemic was stopped. Life mages were powerless. They said it was common chickenpox, just augmented—corrupted and amplified. Outraged, they cursed the experimenters and attempted to find a cure. They tried everything, from plants to magic, but to no avail. Treating the chickenpox required a skilled necromancer. The disease was two lovers' dying curse. The sickness researched by that sorceress in order to find a cure became her necromancer lover's last hex—and as all hexes, it could only be undone by another necromancer. Afterward, the remaining symptoms could be easily cured by any life mage.

Rene was more than skilled, which is why he never got infected. A necromancer unable to protect himself from a curse? Ha! But he was unable to save Cassandra. His dear wife, who knew very well about her husband's occupation—and never objected—had tried to keep in touch with her uncle. There was a reason. Hermann Likeworth was famed for his piety. Would he be friendly with a necromancer's wife? He couldn't; not even with a woman whose husband was simply suspected of anything shady. That was useful. So, Cassandra routinely paid visits to her uncle, listened to his preaching, accompanied him to church, brought him freshly baked stuffed buns on holidays—in one word, cozied up to him as much as she could. She had never harbored a grudge against Hermann. She knew that he wished her well—it's just that his understanding of that was too different. Oh well. Maybe he was a fool—but not a villain.

Still, Cassandra was perfectly aware that if her uncle ever learned about her husband being a necromancer, he'd rat him out in an instant. For her, that just meant that he shouldn't find out about that, and nothing more.

Her uncle was one of the first to fall ill, and so was Cassandra, who was visiting him that day. That was the danger of the lilac chickenpox—it never showed itself on the first day. Nobody knew who could infect them. The only visible symptom was the color of a sick person's veins, which turned lilac instead of blue. As soon as his wife stepped inside the house, Rene realized she was sick. Noticing a hex in her aura was simple for a necromancer. He set out to find a cure. Removing the curse took two hours; giving his dear wife an elixir for treating common chickenpox and making sure no trace of sickness was left in her aura was even simpler. The hardest thing was gathering her belongings and convincing her to get away in a hastily hired carriage.

Cassandra was dead set against leaving. She has no reason to—the illness poses no danger anymore. Nobody ever gets infected with lilac chickenpox twice. She will remain with her husband. Actually, she's expecting!