We went up the steps which led to the throne, the people still shouting, and I sat her in the royal seat beneath the snake’s outstretched head, and she drew me down to sit beside her.
She raised her jewelled hand, and a silence fell on that great throng, as though the breath had been suddenly cut short for all of them.
Then Phorenice made proclamation:
“Hear me, O my people, and hear me, O High Gods from whom I am come. I take this man Deucalion, to be my husband, to share with me the prosperity of Atlantis, and join me in guarding our great possession. May all our enemies perish as she is now perishing above whom we sit.” And then she put her arms around my neck, and kissed me hotly on the mouth.
In turn I also spoke: “Hear me, O most High Gods, whose servant I am, and hear me also, O ye people. I take this Empress, Phorenice, to wife, to help with her the prosperity of Atlantis, and join with her in guarding the welfare of that great possession. May all the enemies of this country perish as they have perished in the past.”
And then, I too, who had not been permitted by the fate to touch the lips of my love, bestowed the first kiss I had ever given woman to Phorenice, that was now being made my wife.
But we were not completely linked yet.
“A woman is one, and man is one,” she proclaimed, following for the first time the old form of words, “but in marriage they merge, so that wife and husband are no more separate, but one conjointly. In token of this we will now make the symbolic joining together, so that all may see and remember.” She took her dagger, and pricking the brawn on my forearm till a head of blood appeared, set her red lips to it, and took it into herself.
“Ah,” she said, with her eyes sparkling, “now you are part of me indeed, Deucalion, and I feel you have strengthened me already.” She pulled down the neck of her robe. “Let me make you my return.”
I pricked the rounded whiteness of her shoulder. Gods! when I remembered who was beneath us as we sat on that throne, I could have driven the blade through to her heart! And then I, too, put down my lips, and took the drop of her blood that was yielded to me.