What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1)(16)
“Will be dead before morning,” her husband said, leaning back onto his desk once more. He stretched his hand out and caught my chin, leaning forward until his face was only a breath away from mine. “Do you understand now, Estrella?”
I nodded, squeezing my eyes closed as the horror of his intentions took root inside of me. I’d always thought myself safe from that kind of attention, so long as he never discovered I was not a virgin. Another man would take me in that way, but I’d thought myself safe from him, at the very least.
I’d never truly been safe at all.
“Why did you allow it to continue?” I asked, risking the next question.
He grinned, something evil lurking in his eyes, and I knew that whatever came next would horrify me. “Your virginity never mattered to me, though taking it would have been enjoyable. That is the High Priest’s prerogative alone. If anything, your Mist Guard saved me the trouble of listening to you cry during your first time. Now I needn’t worry about any of that nonsense, because he already broke you in. I might have arranged for it to happen myself, in time.”
“But the High Priest said The Father has plans for me. I hardly think any of that matters now,” I argued, trying to push away the image of what might have come. For once, the idea of being sacrificed to the Veil wasn’t the worst horror I could imagine. “You can’t make me your mistress if I’m dead.”
“I wouldn’t need to kill Jaclen for you to become my mistress,” he said, grabbing a cloth off his desk. A bowl of water sat beside it, and he dipped it into the liquid as he lifted one of my shaking hands off my lap. “I need her to die so that you can become my wife.”
I flinched, the agony of those words striking me like a physical blow. I couldn’t be the Lady of Mistfell. I wouldn’t long survive a life with Byron as my husband—my days and nights dominated by his demands and his company.
“I’ve shocked you. Why did you think I brought you here and taught you to read? Why did you think I taught you the decorum of a lady at great expense to myself? My whore would not need to have such abilities,” he said, pressing the cloth into one of the wounds the twilight berries had left me with the day before.
“I never considered this,” I admitted. It hadn’t even been a possibility in my mind. Killing his wife, who was a distant relation to the King, was something unthinkable even for him.
“Mistfell needs an heir. Before the sacrifice tomorrow, I will announce Jaclen’s death and inform the villagers that I have chosen another wife to give them the heir they deserve. They’ll learn that The Father himself made his will for our union known to me as I sat beside Jaclen’s death bed. The High Priest will not dare to take you from that divine purpose, and he will need to choose another to sacrifice. We’ll be married within the week—”
“No.” The word hovered between us, filling the library with the muted sound of my voice and the quiet defiance that I hadn’t even meant to say aloud. My ears rang, while nausea swirled in my gut.
“What did you just say?” he asked, his body stilling as his gaze hardened into a glare. All traces of gentleness he’d deigned to show me as part of his act disappeared, the truth of him showing in his anger.
“No,” I repeated, my voice coming through with more strength. My heart was in my chest, my skin slick with a cold sweat as I drew my line in the sand. Some fates were worse than death.
This was one of them.
“You do realize the alternative is having your throat slit, just like your father?” he asked, the incredulous laugh that fell from his lips only serving to make me more determined to escape him. To make the choice that he wouldn’t approve of.
“I do” I lifted my chin and straightened my shoulders, projecting the posture of the woman he’d tried to mold me to become.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he scoffed dismissively, but behind his gaze, disbelief turned into knowing. He knew as well as I did that I’d meant the word. That I fully intended to say no to him.
“I was six when you held me still and forced me to watch them slice my father’s neck open. When they’d wrung all the blood they could from him, they burned him on a pyre and celebrated around his ashes. I hadn’t even turned seven yet when you first invited me to this library and allowed the Priestess to beat me until I curtsied properly, until I stood straight enough, and I knelt as long as ordered without complaint. I have spent a lifetime tolerating your touch and your attention. No more,” I said, the burn of tears stinging my throat and my nose and I held them back, refusing to give him that last part of me.
“And if I decide I do not need your permission? You think I have done all of this just to bow to your wishes?”
“Then I’ll tell the High Priest what you’ve done. You cannot keep me alive and keep me silent, as well, my Lord. Whether it is tomorrow or in a year, I will tell anyone who’ll listen that you’ve murdered your wife. What do you think the King would do with that information about his relative, when you and I both know you strive for far greater things than Mistfell?” I asked, sinking my teeth into my bottom lip. It wasn’t a hollow threat; it was a promise I would spend every day of the rest of my life attempting to fulfill.
I just didn’t know if the King or the High Priest would care, or if Jaclen had any power at all, but his original plan to poison her slowly over the course of years made me think that maybe, just maybe, he would be condemned for his crime.