“So, I don’t have a choice. It was either the sick daughter to be wedded or the one with her life ahead. Doomed one or both, is that all? Is that what I am good for, a pawn!”
Mama’s face tightened as she took in a sharp breath. “What your father left behind was a massive debt hidden by a good name. This is the only solution we have to use.”
Jaw clenched, I scoffed. “Then, I mean that little to you. You would rather sell me to a heinous man to save our reputation than to ensure I lived to see another day.”
“It is not that simple.” Mama sighed.
I stood, ballingmy hands into fists at my side. “I think it is, Mama. You just don’t want to see it for what it is.”
“And what is it?”
In the many months since the diagnosis, I had planned for the end, but there was always hope that I’d be fine in the end. Enough so that the disdain in Mama’s eyes and her scowls when discussing my illness would disappear. That I can walk side by side with Miriam without the constant rising anger and guilt that came with it. That the loneliness ravaging my dreams and bones would be gone the same as morning’s light.
“That you love Miriam and the McCallister name more than you love me. That you love them more to ensure I become the dirty little secret—the elaborate ruse that’d end upon my death—and you can go on living your life having saved the family name.”
Mama’s lips thinned, twitching with the words hanging heavy in the stifling room searing into skin.
I clutched my chest, striding out of the room.
Mama added, “We do not have a choice.”
Five
Death thrives within the midnight hours, taking souls longed for release in the dead of night on wings swift as a raven. It was on this night, the evening before my wedding, that Death tried to pry my soul from my frail body. My chest heaved, blood gargling from the depths of my lungs onto the soft cotton. Under the dim candlelight, a crime scene splattered across the sheets—a precursor to my own death.
I groped my nightstand, trying to find the medication to suppress the advancing cough riddling my lungs. Every shuddering breath racked my body as each cough left me more breathless and weaker. Blood—so much blood—spilled upon fresh white sheets.
Breathe in.Cough.
Blood surged out of my chest and past my lips, dripping onto the sheets. My chest aflame, each breath harder to take than the last. It’d be easier to swallow needles. Sour metallic coated my tongue, spilling out of my being, where I was to leave my last dying breath.
Breathe out. Cough—
The pain reprieved for a moment.
My bedroom door flew open, and through watery eyes, I glimpsed the shuffle of frantic people fluttering in trying to get the coughing to quiet.
“Quick, someone get Dr. Blachard,” Mama called out.
I curled the sheets around in my fist, and with forehead to the warm fabric, I begged the gods to take me right then and there. To take me from this pain—anything but this pain. As they strapped my body to the bed, I hardly felt anything other than a cool, damp cloth on my head.
“It’s going to be alright, Valeria,” Mama cried. “This will pass, my dear. Shhh.”
Hands cooler than water on a summer’s day tickled my burning body.
I don’t recall how long this went on for, Mama cooing in my ear and hands scraping my body as the prickling of needles in my lungs lessen. Was it minutes, hours, or an eternity? Slowly, the pain became bearable, and the scene came into sharp focus.
Dr. Blanchard was holding a syringe covered in blood, his balding head looming over.
“We’ve done as best as we can to relieve the pressure from her lungs, but as you can see, the only fluid we are drawing out is blood. This episode may be the first of many to come, I fear. There may come a time where she will not live past a night of coughing such as this.” He dumped the syringe off to one of the maids who scurried out the door, out of sight.
Dr. Blanchard’s cold hands pressed down on my chest, and the unsettling pressure nearly forced another bout of coughing. “She appears to be stable, but we should let her rest.”
“There is no time to rest,” Mama snapped, leading the doctor away from the bedside and out of the room.
I dropped my head to the corner of the mattress, gaze drawn to the cracked-open door from where her shrill voice came.
“She is to be married this evening. There is no way we can cancel an event such as this—gods, what would society have to think if this was the case? No, what she needs is drugs and plenty of it—good ones. Not the herb and nettles you are forcing upon my daughter. I employed to cure her not to guess at what is ailing her.”
