“You make so many bold statements, Jess, but all I want from you is something so much simpler.”
“What’s that?”
“I only want you to talk to me. Truthfully.” She crossed her hands over her heart. “You protect me more with the truth than you ever could with secrets. I can handle it, whatever it is. Do you think a weaker woman would have survived what I’ve been through?”
His betrayal would follow her for the rest of her days. He didn’t know what to do, other than protect her until it was safe for her to hate him. “I may not know every detail,” Jesstin said, “but I understand enough to know what you went through would have broken most men.”
“I’ve never talked about it. It all lives here.” She tapped her head. “And here.” Her stomach. “And sometimes here.” Her heart. “Terror festers more when starved, and sometimes it feels like it’s rotting me from the inside out, and I wonder how no one else can see it or smell it or taste it. I go back and forth about which was worse: killing five men or letting myself be their victim for so long. It all started with Taven, and I was just so young; I never learned to protect myself until it was too late.”
She wasn’t looking for his vengeance, but not killing Taven was a mistake he wouldn’t make twice. “No, Elloven, you’re not owning their crimes for them.”
“Doesn’t matter much now, does it?” she said with a joyless grin.
Jesstin tightened, waiting for his anger to pass. “You can talk to me. You never have to, but you can.”
She said nothing for so long, it seemed to be an unfortunate end to their little interlude. He made eye contact with a group waiting for their table, but then she did speak.
“It’s a mistake to assume abuse is about desire or lust. Men like Fabrien, Castien, they have no trouble finding women eager for a turn in their bed, but there’s no challenge in it. The act isn’t enough to satisfy a monster. There’s no pleasure for them unless they’ve inflicted pain. For them, the only way to receive is to take. The deeper Fabrien’s cruelty, the more amorous he was. The greater my trauma, the greater his lust. His friends were the same, most of them. A couple only went along with his antics because they wanted to remain in his favor. One even said to me that he felt sorry for me. An hour later, he had me on my stomach while the rest watched.” She looked up. “Do you know I hated him the most? At least the others were firm in their convictions.”
Jesstin wanted to throw up. He had plenty to say about men like them, but she needed to speak.
“Do you know how I ended up at the Reliquary?”
“Sort of,” he said cautiously. Whatever she said next would require more of his restraint. “Rumors.”
“Taven started visiting my bedchamber when I was fourteen. He didn’t force himself on me, and he was never violent, but I didn’t choose it either. He decided who we were going to be. He decided how it would go. He decided how big or small our world was. My father was gone by then. My mother’s addictions were in their early days, but they were stronger than her from the start. Taven was the unofficial master of the house, and in the pressure to keep him happy, to keep the peace, I learned to be whoever he needed me to be. I would have married him had Mathias not intervened.”
“Mathias is the one who had you sent away?” Jesstin hadn’t heard that.
“His deputies used to collect our rent, but one day, he came by the house himself. He said he wanted to check in on Esme, on the state of things, and his concern seemed genuine. But when he saw the way Taven hovered over me, an unmarried girl barely of age, as steward it was his duty to intervene. And so I was sent to the Reliquary as an abbess to ‘work through my shame.’ Taven, of course, had no shame to work through.”
Most of the abbesses in the Reliquary had similar stories; young women who had “stained” their family name. But as Rhiain had discovered in her tenure there, what the Reliquary was really doing was supplying Castien Edevane with enough satisfying distractions to keep him from terrorizing the community at large. “You were there a year?”
“A little less. More than enough time for Castien to set his sights on me. I will never forget, never, how open he was with his predilections and how those in authority allowed him to continue. He had me moved to his own chambers to ‘serve’ him, and no one in power said a word. Not one. Some looked at me with pity in their eyes, but none offered protection. For ten months he terrorized me, isolated me, and ground me down so far, all I could see was him. I learned later he usually discarded his amusements after a few months, that I was the longest. Some were rescued by Asterin, paid, and sent away for another chance at life. The others disappeared, and no one knows where. If Fabrien hadn’t visited and taken a shine to me, I wouldn’t be talking to you now. I was under no illusion that a man who would choose a wife from a woman in my position would be a gentleman, but had I known what awaited me in Whitechurch...” She rolled her lips. “I came to envy those girls who disappeared.”
Her story was not the same as the young women in Sestinn Edevane’s cellars, but it was close enough to rhyme. How many ways were there for rotten men to spread their terror? For all the girls Jesstin and Sesto—and Gennady, but he kept thoughts of him stored away—saved, there were many more they hadn’t. There’d always be more. A breached dam was not fixed by catching the water in buckets.
“If no one has told you this, you were very, very brave,” he replied. She needed his calm, not his chaos, and it was all he could manage to get out without losing it.
Elloven bowed her head. “At first I thought if I were to get with child, Fabrien would have to leave me alone, but he told me if I had a child, and it didn’t look exactly like him, he would take it to the top of the perch, high in the trees where they lorded over all of Whitechurch, and drop it at my feet.” Tears splashed onto the table. “I could do nothing, and he knew it. He knew with the way he passed me around it would be like rolling dice. I tried to seek out remedies to prevent pregnancy, but I had no friends there, Jesstin. Not a single ally, except my sweet handmaiden, but even she wouldn’t go against them, and I wouldn’t ever have expected her to put her entire family at risk for me. Eventually, that fear subsided though, because... After all that was done to me, it’s unlikely I’m even capable of bearing a child.”
Jesstin had to remember to breathe. “I’m so fucking sorry, Elloven.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“Forgive me. You brought us here to have fun, not dredge up the past.” But how could he be anything but a reminder, he realized, when he shared blood with one of the monsters who had terrorized her?
“You’re the first person I’ve ever been able to share this with,” she said. “And I shouldn’t have said you’re like Sestinn and Castien. You’re nothing like them, not even on your worst day.”
“I’ve made the choices I have because I’d rather die than be like them.”
Her expression froze. She blinked hard, frowning. “You really believe their blood is that powerful?”
“Blood is blood. Maybe...” He opened his hands out. “Maybe I’m not like them, but what if my child is? Sestinn Edevane has four sons, at least the ones he recognizes. Theo and As are good men. Castien is just like our father. I’ve done the math. If the rot skips me, my child’s odds are even worse.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works, Jesstin,” she said softly. “Castien is like his father because he’s who taught him. Any son of yours would have a strong heart, like his father.”
“Elloven.” Everything he wanted to say jammed his throat, trapped by shame. “I need to tell you... My feelings for you...” He massaged his neck. Every little hurt he’d inflicted—upon her, himself, others—flew in the face of her comfort, which he had not earned, and even that was an injustice against her. “The man who kissed you tonight was the man I wish I could be always. For you.”
