What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1)(21)
“I have a question before I make my final decision,” I said, not lifting my gaze to meet his eyes. His arm twitched with surprise, and I realized he truly believed, from something as simple as walking to his side, I had accepted his place in my life.
“Then ask it so we can be done with this nonsense. I need to make my announcement before the High Priest makes his,” Lord Byron said, his voice filled with all his impatience. The fact that he’d even bothered to give me the illusion of a choice meant he truly feared what the King would do if news of his crime reached Ineburn City. He’d thought me so far beneath him that I couldn’t hurt him the way he had hurt me.
Men always underestimated the women they saw as insignificant.
“Why did you choose me?” I asked, finally turning my gaze up to his. I kept my chin tipped down, peeking up at him through my lashes to offer the image he preferred to see. “We both know there are far more beautiful women you could have given favor to, so why?”
His jaw clenched, his eyes narrowing for a brief moment as he considered my question. “I didn’t know you even existed until the day your father died. Most of the children remain silent if their parent is chosen, but not you, Estrella. You wept, sobbing so loudly I’m certain they heard you in the Hollow Mountains.”
“You chose me because I cried for my dying father?” I asked, swallowing around the nausea rising up my throat.
“You must try to imagine what it’s like being raised as the only son of a Lord. If you think I’ve been harsh with you, you know nothing of what it was like to be me as a child,” he returned, his eyes looking into the distance as we strolled along the empty path. “I didn’t grieve for my father when he died. Seeing you suffer so openly—the way you cried at Temple every week for months after his passing and couldn’t even stand to look at the High Priest—that was what initially drew me to you. I didn’t understand it for what it was at the time. I invited you to my library because I wanted to see that sadness in your eyes, but as the years passed and I remained without a child, I realized you could teach your children to love so fully, as well.”
“You chose me because I loved my father, and you wanted me to teach our children to love you that way?” I asked, simplifying his response and taking out the horseshit that was designed to make me pity him.
I wouldn’t, because he’d stopped being a victim a long time ago and chosen to abuse me, even knowing how much it hurt. My steps faltered as I considered whether he’d done it to others in secret, or worse, when he didn’t have the prospect of marriage to restrain him from causing permanent damage.
“Yes. I chose you because you love with all your heart and do not care what people think of you for it. What more could a father want for his children?” he asked, turning to stare down at me in a moment of vulnerability. “They’ll be lucky to have you.”
He raised a hand to cup my face, the soft fingers of a life of luxury touching my swollen cheek. I wanted nothing more than to grab that hand and shove it away, but I let it stay as the first people started to trickle onto the path beside the gardens.
They passed us in silence, stepping onto overturned dirt from the gardens, which we’d pulled every plant out of during the harvest. They made their way toward the front in groups, approaching the place where the sacrifice happened every year with solemn expressions.
They’d be sad as they watched the horror unfold, but then they would celebrate as if I’d never existed.
“They won’t,” I said, murmuring the words quietly. My voice caught—the reality of what was to come staring me in the face. I couldn’t look toward the gathering assembly without seeing my father unwillingly dragged to the front, the echo of my screams and the burn in my throat assaulting me through my memory.
“Estrella,” he scolded, utter disbelief filling his expression as I took a step back.
“Your children were never going to love you the way I loved my father. Do you know why, my Lord?” I asked, letting the hatred I felt for him show in a rare moment of honesty. I couldn’t do much to hurt him, not with the pyre calling me, but I could strip away the motivation for everything he’d spent over a decade working toward.
“Why?” he asked, his throat moving with his swallow.
He glanced over his shoulder at the figure lurking at my back. I didn’t need to look to know who waited for me if I only turned, instead blasting Byron with the full force of my glare. “Because you will never be worthy of that kind of love.”
“I won’t intervene once you make this choice. You understand that?” he asked.
“I do,” I said simply, lifting my chin higher as I stared back at him. I didn’t expect him to, didn’t even want him to; not when survival was tied to his bed and his sadistic pleasures.
Lord Byron’s nostrils flared as he glared down at me, nodding briskly to the man behind me. I turned to the High Priest, finding his soft gaze on mine as he said, “You’ve been informed?”
“Can I say goodbye first?” I looked over his shoulder to where my mother and Brann approached the Veil. He heaved her wheeled chair over the raised rows of dirt in the enormous garden bed, pushing her forward as her body jostled.
“Of course,” the High Priest answered, his words solemn as I stepped away from him and walked over to my family. I helped Brann, turning my back to the Veil and grabbing my mother’s chair by the wheels and hauling it toward the shimmering white boundary.