She confronted her friend and the woman confessed—said she had no choice since her family still worked at the castle and for Aurora’s parents. This was the way for any daughters of Aurora’s family, and a servant was always educated to hold their leash at the new coven, exert influence, and be puppeted. She begged for forgiveness and asked for a chance.
“You didn’t give it, right? She could have told you from the beginning and asked to work together so her family wasn’t screwed,” I grumbled.
“Exactly what I said, so I gave her the option to run or die,” Aurora told me. “She tried to inform my family and I let my husband find out, playing dumb and suggested that she had been a spy all along. The evidence was easy to find, and he rewarded me greatly when I was the loudest voice that any traitor should be punished mercilessly.
“He didn’t know that I was hiding Theresa, and I was scared that my family now knew about her. I realized later he already knew from a different servant—the one with Theresa.” She chuckled darkly. “No one ever can really be trusted for anything.” She shook her head. “But my family knew what was done to me and didn’t care.
“They only cared about my gaining power in the coven and influence over the elders like myfriendhad been pushing me to do. Kenneth and the elders were skeptical and watched me closely, but I wasn’t acting disgusted, I truly was. I asked to see the marriage contracts and found a clause that made the betrayal nullify the payments.
“I demanded the coven ask for funds back from my family for their deceitful ways when they hadn’t even visited or acted as family.” She smiled. “I stirred up a huge fuss to protect Ellie and Theresa. I made it clear that I thought it was all because they heard how excellent Ellie was and wanted to claim her for their family and pull something fishy.
“The elders listened and two went directly to my family coven and demanded the money returned. My parents actually paid some of it for themisunderstanding. My place was solidified in the coven then and I made it clear to Kenneth that it was all for Ellie. My family was her and the people I was born to dead to me.”
“What changed? Clearly, it changed,” he muttered.
“I couldn’t give him a son or more children no matter how many times he tried to breed me,” she whispered. “A just punishment from the gods for what I’ve done.”
I froze in my next bite. “Like you’ve confirmed you can’t have children, or you just assume that’s what happened?”
She gave a half shrug. “The physical Ellie made me have said I’m fine in that way, but—I had dreams. I doubt they were dreams from the gods, but it felt like a message. Maybe from anancestor chastising me for what I’d done. I don’t know.” She let out a slow breath. “It was—those dreams were what made me realize I was still trapped in my trauma.
“I still saw that night and how I couldn’t let my daughter live the same. I would die before I ever let Ellie either. Please believe that. It was why I fought so hard to make her better than me. Ifoughtto have her trained—physically trained so no man would treat her that way. One elder in particular hated Kenneth, and I used that to tell him what was done to me.
“I made it clear that it wasn’t about what was done to me but to know some other coven could treat Ellie that way when she was so precious and special—we had to protect her. Our beloved heir. He saw the truth and how special Ellie truly was. He pushed and convinced the others. It was what had to be done.”
The way she said something made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. “What did you do to make that happen, Aurora?”
“What I had to,” she whispered. “What I would have done a million times over to protect Ellie.”
Rage filled me. “You let him fuck you.” I toned it back when she flinched and a tear rolled down her cheek.
“Yes,” Aurora breathed. “I told you that I had many sins. I was unfaithful to my husband and let a few of the elders have my body however they wanted so Ellie and Theresa didn’t have the fate I did.”
I jumped when the fork in my hand snapped. “Sorry.” I let out a slow breath and winced when more tears were on her cheeks. “I’m not mad at you, Aurora. I wasn’t even alive, and—I’m mad they took advantage of you like that.”
“I offered,” she whispered. “What Kenneth did that first night backfired. All of his friends, brothers, and male cousins lusted after me. He accused me of seducing them and wanting them. It was why he locked me away in my rooms for the first several years. The night of my arrival, he was upset with me thatI didn’t act happy with his attention and then he hated me that others wanted the same.”
“He’s a fucking psycho, Aurora.”
“Maybe. Maybe all men were back then. Either way, the elders had long since learned about that night and wanted more than the show others got. I knew their perversions and used it when I had to.”
“Do Ellie and Theresa know you did it?”
Her head snapped up and horror filled her eyes. “Please don’t tell them. I can’t bear for them to know I was a whore.”
“Forthem, Aurora,” I growled. “You gave yourself to savethem. What did they get from it all? How many ways did it save them both—help them?”
She acted like a fish as she opened and closed her mouth. “The only way I was able to send Theresa away to safety was by selling the jewels that one elder had bought me over the years. She would have been caught up by her father’s madness otherwise. When the guards from my family coven came to collect me, the elder tried to keep me as his whore.”
“I bet that went over well,” I sighed, getting there were so many layers to this drama that I was pretty sure there needed to be a whole Telenovela for it.
She gave an elegant snort. “He wasn’t the only one. Apparently, Kenneth’s cousin andbrotherhad both been arranging and pushing Kenneth’s gambling addiction to take him down thinking they could take over the coven andme. Neither checking with the other and were floored they had the same plan. So Kenneth is ousted, my family guards and an uncle show up, and the whole coven looks insane with six people demanding I become theirs.”
I wasn’t as surprised as she still seemed to be, going on about how she’d barely spoken with the cousin and only had a few conversations in passing with her husband’s brother, alwaysabout Ellie. Aurora was a rare beauty who didn’t understand her effect on men because of either how she was raised or her abuse.
Or really, she was abused by her parents and that was part of it too. Maybe she just didn’t put much stock in the physical after seeing how much it could hurt so many?
I wasn’t sure, but she didn’t care or didn’t seem to acknowledge it.
