“Oh, I wish that were true, but I’m better at seeing it as nonsense than I was as a cub,” I said with a dark tone. “I don’t know how to help you with this. I get though why Ms. Reed said we were a bad match.”
She snorted, which shocked me. “Ellie was in her own abusive relationship for a decade even as she helped others. I’m glad she’s found the perfect man now, but while she is a wonderful woman, she is not perfect. I have always seen her flaws, and I am the one person she will never be able to see clearly. I cannot fault her for that.”
Fair enough, but I also didn’t understand what had gone down between them.
She met my gaze and let out a slow breath. “I’ll say it one day. Today was a big step for me. I don’t accept what happened to me as acceptable.”
“That’s good,” I sighed, bobbing my head. “Yeah, that’s good.”
She focused back on her task, cutting up chicken for whatever she was making. “When it was over, he said, ‘You better give me a son with all that seed in you.’”
“He’s really a crass fucker,” I grumbled.
She nodded and the haunted look in her eye was like a knife in my gut. “I knew women carried babies. I’d seen pregnant women, but—women didn’t know things like they do now. It wasshamefulto talk about anything. We were kept ignorant. I had no idea that was how a woman became pregnant. I-I spiraled out.
“He left to go get drunk with the others and servants came to tend to me, not letting me bathe to keep… You know.” She cleared her throat and looked uncomfortable, hurrying on. “But all I kept thinking about was what if I had a daughter?”
“Yeah, an asshole like him would be super pissed.”
“That’s more complicated than you know, but that’s not what I mean,” she mumbled. “If I had a daughter, she would live through what I did. I couldn’t have a daughter to live through that. I’d rather die than bring a girl into this world to suffer what I did.”
Oh shit. Yeah, that would be… Fuck.
And clearly, it was more than a thought from the grief, fear, and horror I was scenting off of Aurora.
She told me how she was violently ill from the stress, couldn’t keep down blood or food. The elders assumed her husband did something horrific… Which he did, and they reprimanded him about her age and being a better man—setting an example. That she might have become a woman by menstruating, but truly breeding her could lead to babies with deformities.
And she said it all in such a detached way as if it hadn’t happened to her but someone else that it broke my fucking heart. It really did.
It bought her time and she hatched a plan, a sin she could never be forgiven for from what she said. A way to hide her child if it was a daughter when she did eventually become pregnant.
Because apparently, she would absolutely have a daughter since her husband wascursedto have no sons for something horrific he did. I was honestly riveted, the fucking crazy I waslistening to like some movie that I couldn’t believe wasn’t made. Like the shit was beyond unreal.
I kept blinking, shaking my head, or pinching the bridge of my nose as she told me all of this, the dishes long done and now her finishing up dinner.
Thelong storywas she realized that “bedding” was being raped as she was and how maids were always raped in her family’s castle, so she assumed they would be in that coven’s castle as well. So if they were being raped, at least have one carry a child for the coven leader so she could keep her daughter safe to not suffer what she did was better for them.
Right, but some girl would still suffer that. There would still be another horror and… Wow.
I mean, she wasn’t wrong that being raped by one man as a coven leader’s wife was better than being born a bastard of a guard and becoming a maid to endure the same as the maids did. But… That wasn’t exactly… Fucking shit was fucked up.
Beyond fucked up.
“I know,” she whispered when she was done and plating food for us. “I know what I did was beyond forgiveness. I know Ellie will never forgive me for keeping her mother away from her and the way I excused it. I’ve hadcenturiesto understand my sins.”
“It irks me that you say sins, not crimes,” I admitted.
She blinked at her plate but then winced. “They weren’t crimes back then, Creed. I was a noble and she was a commoner. I would maybe have had to pay a fine, but no one would have come after a rich man’s wife. So yes, by today’s standards, they were crimes, but back then…” She gave a half shrug. “I’m sorry that upsets you. I’m not sure why crime is more important than—”
“Yeah, it will when I explain, sorry,” I muttered. “Plus, I paid for my crimes.”
She gave me a glance filled with so much sadness that I felt it in mysoul. “People and judges decide the punishment on crimes, Creed, and they are never harsh enough for the victims. The gods punish sins, and they are the harshest possible judges because they made the lives we sinned against.”
Wow. Just… Wow. She truly believed that.
I listened as she told me about how Ms. Reed was raised, how she was fiercely protective of her and attended her schooling so no one could teach her anything bad, never look down on her. She was able to learn as well. That was how she found out her most “trusted” friend and maid was actually a spy for her family.
They knew everything about what was going on from the beginning but didn’t care as long as they were still paid for her. Maybe they had in the beginning, but they were too far to do anything since they had angered all the witches and warlocks in France. None would ever work with them or open a portal.
