Page 18 of Their Blood Queen
“Oh,” she says in a strained sound of distress.
Oh indeed.
“I never had any intention to marry,” I confide in her, pitching my voice low as if someone might be pressing their ear to the door right now.
She nibbles on her pinkie, then thrusts her fingers through her hair before clasping them at her front. She has a nervous habit of biting her nails. It doesn’t really bother me, but that bad habit can earn her strikes against the monthly servant quota.
Our entire society runs on a point system. Villages decide their selections based on points. Elite families are ranked by points, living and dying by them.
And servants are expected to maintain a nearly flawless record, or else they’ll be downgraded to stations less attractive than working for an Elite family.
“But you’ve had so many suitors,” she whispers. “You could have any man you want.” She opens her mouth as if to continue.
As if to say, So why would you agree to a courtship with Earl Rinhold, of all people?
But she remains wisely silent and glances around as though she has slipped into my building nightmare.
She must notice the slight shiver I’m trying to hide, because she violates another rule by curling her fingers around my wrist. “Are you okay, Lady Scarlett? You’re shivering.”
A night terror is coming, I think, but I don’t say that aloud.
No one can help me when the night terrors come.
“I’ll be fine,” I lie. “I just… I had hoped the additional earnings in the past couple of years would have gone toward a new settlement.” I don’t voice why that was my hope. Rosie knew that my brother would take on Nightingale Village, and if I was left unwed, I would have the opportunity to start my own settlement. I could have become a new Duchess and taken a husband if and when I felt like it. I sigh. “Instead…” My words drift off as pain squeezes my chest even harder than my corset does.
I don’t tell Rosie that my mother has been in a coma for three days. She doesn’t need the additional stress.
If anything happens to my mother, we’re going to have to severely slim down. My father might even try to sell Rosie.
Over my dead body, I think.
A hideous voice rumbles in the back of my head, laughing at my thoughts. I can help with that, it says.
I bite my tongue hard enough to draw blood. Pain grounds me in lucidity, but it still doesn’t feel like enough to keep my impending night terror from taking over.
But now that my ambitions are crumbling before my eyes, my nightmares have a foothold in my weakened psyche.
That’s when they like to strike.
My father’s words roll back over in my mind in haunting memory.
“I’ve spent all our money on medicine.”
“Every coin.”
It takes all of my willpower not to let the sting in my eyes progress into tears. I can’t even entertain the idea that my mother won’t improve. And, selfishly, I’m upset for myself most of all. Whatever future I had planned for myself is nothing more than a fantasy now.
And my dreams are nothing more than a prayer to a fake God in a corrupt city.
I won’t be praying to you again, I decide.
There’s a strange wave of grief that rolls through my chest, but it’s gone before I can analyze it, so I focus on Rosie’s little sound of distress instead.
“What are you going to do?” she asks.
I clench my jaw before I answer. “I’m going to let him court me.”
That’s all I signed up for.