Page 66 of This Cruel Fate

A week passed, and there was not a single story about the general’s dead daughter. Xolia obsessively checked the news at every point in the day, whether it was working with Bridget and Peter, while they planned public outings for Xolia, or organizing their campaign.

By Friday, Xolia had stopped worrying so much and was instead focused on carefully applying mascara to her dark lashes. She and Adonis were going to a highly publicized charity event that night, suggested by Bridget and funded with Persion money. The cause of the evening? Raising funds to rebuild some of the decimated residential buildings that had been damaged before the final battle and had been left to further decay in the years since. It had been a nice neighborhood. While it hadn’t been as elite as Juthian Heights, it had been more expensive than the neighborhood she and Marshall had lived in.

She slid into a floor-length carmine gown and left her room, needing Adonis to zip up the back. He was standing in his large walk-in closet, adjusting a silver set of cuff links on his suit.

She didn’t need to ask—their eyes met, and he nodded. She turned around, and his fingers grazed her skin as he pulled up the zipper. He dropped a soft kiss to the base of neck. “Ready?” he asked.

Xolia nodded. Parties were easy. She knew how the evening would go, what to expect from the people around her, and what they would expecte from her.

They made it to the elevator before Adonis spoke again. “By the way, my parents will be there.”

“What?”

Adonis shrugged, the tense set of his shoulders betraying his true feelings. She didn’t know the last time he’d seen his parents, but she knew how he felt about them.

“I’m sorry you’ll have to see them,” she said, placing a hand on his forearm.

“Don’t be. We were overdue for a visit, and even as their CFO, I can’t give to any charity without their approval. I just wanted to give you the heads-up.”

“You won’t have to deal with them alone. We’re partners,” Xolia said.

Adonis nodded and tangled his fingers with hers. They walked through the lobby to the sleek limousine waiting for them in the cold, the driver already standing by the back door, ready to let them in.

Cameras flashed as Xolia and Adonis made their way up the red-carpeted steps of the Risian Museum of Art, the rented venue for the evening. People she didn’t recognize made polite small talk at the front entrance while event planners ushered them inside, where all the exhibits were open for guests to meander around until the dinner and speeches started later in the evening.

Xolia had never been inside of the Museum of Art before. During the war there’d been no reason to, not even Silas had wanted to destroy a millennium of art, whether it was created by human or variant hands. Afterward, it hadn’t really been the sort of thing she, or Marshall and Rowan for that matter, was drawn to. Now, she dragged Adonis from painting to painting, waiting to see whether any of them had such an effect on her like the one at the church—that tether that ground her to the spot while she stared at a figure immortalized in oils.

She was enraptured by a series of paintings that had come out right around the end of the variant monarchy when Adonis pulled away from her.

“Mother. Father.” His voice was brittle, and Xolia’s heart hurt for him. Every day, she was glad that she had resolutely rejected any form of reunion with her parents.

“Adonis,” greeted his mother. Her voice was low and raspy. Xolia snapped her head away from the painting and slipped her arm through the crook of Adonis’s elbow.

Even from the first glance, she could see the similarities between Adonis and his parents. He had his father’s jaw and his mother’s nose. They had both given him his dark hair and green eyes. Despite the animosity between them, the familiarity struck her. Biological family was such a foreign concept to Xolia it almost held no weight to her, but now, looking at this trio of people who shared blood and a name and facial features, she realized they could never fully sever their connection. Not with all of them left living anyway.

No wonder Adonis was so desperate to overtake them. Persion had always been his birthright, and it should’ve been given happily, along with their love. Their protection. Xolia didn’t understand how someone could look at a piece of themselves and throw it away like it meant nothing. She gripped Adonis’s arm tighter.

“Please introduce us to your friend,” his father said, staring down at her in a way that wasn’t unlike Adonis. Though where Adonis had a fire behind his eyes, his father’s stare was cold. There was nothing but icy hatred and feigned civility.

“This is Xolia Stone,” Adonis answered stiffly. “We’ve known each other since we were children.”

Xolia held out her hand for them to shake. Both immediately wiped their hands against their thighs. “Are you enjoying the evening so far?” she asked.

“Quite,” his mom said. “It was a tragedy that so many innocent Atalians were displaced by that ghastly business. And even more so that we can’t rely on our government to fix it.”

Xolia had nothing to say to that. All she could do was restrain her anger with shallow breaths. Did his parents believe humans were the only ones who’d lost something during the war?

Silas had always made it a point to evacuate the area of civilians before they would attack. Xolia had always believed in that; those humans in the apartment buildings hadn’t been in the army, they hadn’t deserved to die, but looking at Adonis’s parents with their frigid postures and demeanors, Xolia couldn’t help but wish Silas hadn’t spared civilians. They had been complacent, after all. Their hatred had burned just as much as the army’s, as the government’s. It wasn’t like there had been thousands of humans clamoring to join their cause. It had just been them.

Xolia couldn’t voice that, though. People like his parents would never understand, and it’d only hurt her own end goal to ostracize them. “Naturally.”

“Perhaps we should find our seats for dinner?” Adonis segued the conversation, and their quartet, to the main hall, which had tables and displays of ice sculptures and fountains of sparkling wine stacked in delicate flutes.

On a stage, performers danced in sequined costumes. It was excess to a degree that any FAR event could never hope to match. Xolia clenched her fist. Why was it fair that these people had so much when she’d grown up with so little? They could’ve rebuilt the apartments five times over with the amount of expenses they’d thrown into renting the oldest museum in the country and all the pageantry they’d stuffed into it.

Adonis had told her that plates started at $15,000 per person. Insanity. A small fear weaseled its way to the forefront of Xolia’s mind. What if these people had more power than Peter? They threw their money into whatever project they deemed important, stuffing their faces all the while. The general’s party hadn’t even been like this.

Xolia shook her head. She had never felt this vitriol toward money before. They can take everything away from me with a word. A check. Nothing she worked on would matter if they shot her down. Why did Bridget suggest this?

---