The Pillars, the Leaders, and the children of the Leaders were allowed to have Favorites, as many as they wanted, and they were allowed to marry as many as they wanted. They could also send their Favorites to Absolution if they decided they didn’t want them as Favorites anymore. Sometimes they did that rather than selling them at the yearly auction. I wasn’t sure why.
I wasn’t Thomas’ first Favorite, all of his had been sent away, but I was his only betrothed. I would be his only wife.
The last thing in this world I ever wanted was to marry, but as was everything in my life, I didn’t have a choice.
My purpose was to marry him, give him children, and then let him share me among the Leaders for the rest of my days. It wasn’t clear yet if I was going to have to give them children as well, but I suppose it didn’t matter if I knew it or not, I wouldn’t be allowed to say no.
That word wasn’t permitted.
As for sharing? It was up to our new husband or wife whether or not we were shared after the ceremony. Thomas had always made it clear that he wanted to share his blessing with the church. He was honoring God by sharing what he was blessed with, which was strange because it never felt like an honor to me.
Up until my fifth birthday, I had only been known as ‘Blessed One’ or ‘Chosen One’ depending on the day. My present that year had been the ability to finally choose my own name. Up until then, I had never gotten to choose a thing in my life, so I took it very seriously. I picked the name because it reminded me of the color red. Red was my favorite color. It still was, although I was not allowed to wear such colors.
My name is Scarlett Harris. My mother is dead, I never knew who my father was, and I now belonged to the church until the day I turned 20.
This was how my story was written since the second my mother had found out I was a girl. She didn’t care about training me to be a Pillar—I would have rebelled against that anyway—she only cared about making me a perfect Favorite to sell to the highest bidder, and I was.
I was the best Favorite, the most behaved, the most beloved there was. Nobody had ever been as good of a Favorite as me.
The Leaders and Thomas proved it every single day when I followed all the rules.
If I broke them, well, I paid the price in blood, but if I followed them? I was not punished.
As I stared at the casket they began lowering into the ground, I think I might have felt glad that my mother was dead. Although, I suppose that if I had the ability to feel anything at all, the fear I would have felt would have suffocated me.
4
Azrael
June 22nd, 2019
Ihadbeen waiting in the hall for quite some time for him to finish his meeting with—
“Azrael.”
I snapped my watch shut, sliding it into the pocket at my hip, looking up just in time to see the back of his latest guest. I watched after the male for a moment before my eyes lifted to father dearest, my hand tightening around the head of my cane.
Malachi stood in the doorway of his office, looking like ever the faithful little Crime lord. “Have you finally made time for me?” I hummed, wondering if he heard the ice in the song or if he disliked me for other reasons, perhaps because his little asylum stunt didn’t quite work out the way he wanted.
Without saying a word, he gestured for me to come in.
I waited until he had turned back to the office before I stood, fixed my Armani jacket, and headed for the door, using the end of the cane to push it shut behind me.
Malachi had already taken his seat behind that desk of his. An upgraded, dark oak version of the one he had 18 years ago.
The room had to look good for all the meetings he had these days. Meetings with people like D.A.’s, doctors, Mayor’s. The corruption of this world was so…deep. The criminal empire he built had roots stretching far and wide; infecting, suffocating, killing, but I knew it wasn’t as solid as he made it out to be, andthat knowledge had been seeping out of this infected wound for a long time.
Building a legacy with the man of the mountains had me poking holes in everything the powerful brothers in charge had been doing all these years. Including, that was, things I had been telling him for over a decade to look at.
If only he had listened to my advice of adaptation.
But, I suppose, when all you did was worry about growing, you tend to forget to perfect what you’ve already built. Growing pains remain growing pains if you don’t focus on what’s causing it and fix it.
His innate ability to push the growth without changing was almost as interesting as Poppy’s innate ability to track me down.
“Do you want to know what the Superior Court Judge and I were just discussing?”
Oh, how interesting. That was not the Judge that just walked out, I was certain of that.
