“Thalia!” Malva hissed in a whisper, drawing me out of my distracted musings. The eleven-year-old rolled her eyes at me as I startled and pressed a hand to my chest. “Are you living in a dream today?”
“I’m sorry,” I said sheepishly, a blush tinting my cheeks. “I don’t know where my head is today.” The night before had played in my brain on repeat since I’d managed to tuck myself safely back inside my bedroom in the early morning hours with no one the wiser that I’d ever been missing.
I alternated between heat-inducing thoughts that made me crave my stranger’s touch once more, and the terror that something had gone horribly wrong. Had he somehow known I was left-handed?
It wasn’t possible for him to have seen something and drawn that conclusion in our night together. To use my right hand when people were there to witness was deeply ingrained in me.
The only time I used my left was to draw, and even then I began with my right and shifted because I just couldn’t sketch properly with my right.
I shoved the thoughts aside, knowing if there were to be some consequence for my rebellion, it would come with or without me fretting over it.
With the wedding only a month away, I intended to enjoy the limited time I was allowed with my sister before it became even harder to see her. In truth, if it hadn’t been for Malva’s safety hanging over my head, I would have run long ago.
I’d have freed myself from the chains of my life and what this marriage promised to be for me. It wouldn’t have mattered if I needed to take out my father’s men to gain that freedom, but I couldn’t risk Malva.
I couldn’t take her with me; not without risking her being harmed or worse in the crossfire. Leaving her behind just was not an option, because I knew what happened when my father lost an outlet for his abuse.
My mother’s death had shifted the entirety of his focus to me for the time before my stepmother came and embraced his darkness.
“Did you have a bad dream again?” my sister asked, concern twisting her features. It wasn’t uncommon for my screams to wake the house and for an urgent banging at my door to startle me awake. The sleep aids they made me take to prevent that usually kept the nightmares at bay.
“I just couldn’t sleep is all,” I said evasively. She pursed her lips but nodded before prattling on about her day at school. I smiled through the bitterness that our lives in the same household were so vastly different. She was the treasured daughter, the one who knew no harm and could do no wrong.
Whereas I’d been born defective and punished for it every day of my life.
After my mother’s death, I hadn’t even been allowed to leave for school, having private tutors brought to educate me without the corruption of outside influences. “And what did Percy do after Cassandra threw the stone at you?” I asked, humoring the crush she seemed to have on the boy she saw infrequently at the gatherings of the families. If my father ever learned of her feelings for him—fleeting and innocent as they were, considering they were both children—there was no telling what he would do.
“He threw it back at her and told her to stop being a nasty hag,” Malva said, bright laughter tinting her sweet voice.
She was older than I’d been when my innocence was stripped away, and the mistake I’d made the night before only made me more resolved to make sure she kept that for as long as possible.
Malva could never know what a pool of blood looked like or the sound of a blade cutting through flesh.
I’d die before I let anything stain her in the way I’d been ruined. Because in a life of misery?
She was the only thing I loved.
