Page 51 of The Darkness Within Us

He hesitates just a heartbeat too long before saying, “No.”

“You do! You have a tail. Let me see it.”

“No! Chrysantha, get out of here.”

“I thought we already established I couldn’t because this is my dream. Now stop being a killjoy and just show me.”

He picks up his pillow and throws it at my head. After a surprised jolt, I add it to the one already beneath me.

“Why are you always in a bad mood?” I ask.

He tries to run a hand through his hair, but it snags on the same tangle I found earlier. His voice deepens. “What is the matter with you? Why aren’t you terrified of me? You’re lying right next to me, vulnerable. Completely open. Don’t you know I could rip out your throat?”

“Oh, will you? Maybe that will rouse me from this horrible dream.”

“Always jokes with you.”

I shrug. “I’ve never gotten to speak them aloud before.”

“What?”

And because this is a dream, and I decide it would be interesting to see what happens next, I tell him the truth. “I’ve always kept it bottled up. The joking. The anger. My temperament. Myself. I had to if I wanted to find a husband.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I learned at a very young age that men preferred women who they could control. So I pretended my whole life to be an idiot so otherswouldn’t be careful around me. When Father was musing about the perfect husband for me, I knew his plans and even was able to direct them. You see, I couldn’t have justanyhusband. I needed a rich one who wasn’t long for this world. Pholios fit the bill. I knew he would die soon, and then I could inherit everything. I just had to let my father think it was his idea. He’d been trying to pawn me off on some of his rich friends. Orrin, Lord Eliades, was one he initially tried. But Orrin was young and healthy, and I didn’t want the match because I would be stuck with him for decades. But I knew about Pholios, and I just needed my father to be mindful of him.

“Do you think my father would have talked business in front of me if he’d known I was paying such close attention? Would he have left me alone in his office when he needed to run out for errands? I stole his seal and wrote letters on my father’s behalf to Pholios, asking him to come up to us and make a proper introduction of himself, because he had a daughter of marrying age.

“Father didn’t suspect a thing. Even when Pholios suddenly started talking to us as though he’d already had conversations with my father, he went with it. Because how could anything different have happened?

“I orchestrated everything. From our first meeting, to our courtship, to our eventual marriage. Every step I played a hand in. Father and Pholios were none the wiser.

“And then Pholios died, and I was free to be me for the first time in forever. I had months to enjoy it with the servants and my lovers.” I turn to Eryx. “Then you showed up. I was brash and intelligent in front of you because I didn’t know who you were, and by then, it was too late. I was stuck with you knowing who I was and unable to use my usual ways to get rid of you.”

“You mean to say that you haven’t found a lover who will have you without the incentive of money?”

I cannot read his tone, but I certainly don’t like the pathetic light he paints me in.

“I’m not in the market for a lover. I’m only interested in having a mistress. Do pay attention, I was talking about my past. You’re focusing on the wrong things.”

Eryx blinks approximately five times before the words make it through his thick skull. “So you had your family convinced you were a simpleton?”

“Not my family. Everyone. The whole court. Everyone I’ve ever met. I’ve been playing this part for seven years.”

“That’s a long time to be someone you’re not.”

“It would have been worth it if you hadn’t shown up. Then I would have had the rest of my life to be happy.”

He rolls his eyes. “Only you would say you couldn’t be happy. You live in complete luxury. You’ve never gone without shoes to wear or food to eat or a roof over your head. You want me to feel bad for you because you no longer can pay a man to suck your p—”

“Don’t you dare finish that crude sentence! It’s not about the money! What I’ve always wanted most was freedom, yet you try to convince me to marry again—taking away what little freedoms I have now. As it is, I’m beholden toyouin too many ways. Just like your grandfather before you.”

“You are not beholden to me in the ways you were to him.”

“Oh, so I should be content to be only partial property, is that it? You don’t get it. No one gets it.”

So many women seem content with their lives. Being traded about for money. Forced to produce heirs. Living lives not wholly their own. They don’t even see it as a burden. Some of themlikeit.

---