A collar. An actual collar, with rules and script and ceremony, apparently. The thigh seal, burning ink laced with blood, actual blood of her husband.
Who wrote this? Why would anyone agree to this?
How was this even legal?
I reached the chapter titledTraining the Pet.
Page after page of expectations—behavioral conditioning, communication laws, protocols for submission during rites, guidelines for “correction.” Each line read like a leash. Each paragraph was worse than the last.
I snapped the book closed. I hadn’t even looked at the dialect package. I had no intention to on learning another tongue for them to be cruel to me.
A soft knock broke through the panic.
“Miss Thorne?” A staff member’s spoke through the door.
I rubbed my eyes. “Yes?”
“Your father requests you in the study.”
I froze.
My father?
Maybe he’d finally remembered I was his daughter. Realized I couldn’t carry this alone.
“Tell him I’ll be right there,”
I exhaled slowly and, for the first time in days, couldn’t stop a small, shaky smile. Maybe there was still awein all of this.
I smoothed my sweater down over the bandage, wiped my cheeks until my skin burned, and stepped out of my room. Eachstep toward the study felt like hope. Until I reached our study, then the nerves it.
Still, he’d asked to see me.
He wanted to talk.
Maybe things were turning.
I knocked once and let myself in.
My father stood at the dual desk we used to share, shoulders tense, gaze fixed on some point beyond the papers scattered in front of him. He looked exhausted in a way I’d never seen, not even after seven-day negotiations when I was a kid.
A half-filled glass sat in his hand. Another bottle waited.
He didn’t look up when I closed the door behind me.
“Sit,” he spoke like he was addressing a problem, not his child.
I obeyed, taking the chair opposite him.
He stared at the glass for a long moment before speaking. “Is it done?”
I wasn’t sure what he meant at first.
“Yes. The outline is finished. It?—”
He lifted a hand, palm up. I closed my mouth in record time.
“I don’t want to know. It won’t matter in a few minutes.”
