Page 41 of Rise of the Gods: Vardor's Destiny
"The worst," my voice was barely a whisper, betraying how scared I was of that place and the fate Thomas had planned for me.
"I will slay him," Vardor stated, this time with a finality that sent shivers down my spine.
"Please don't," I heard myself say. It was true. I didn't want Thomas dead. I liked him; I may have even grown to love him if we had been given more time. On some level, I even understood him and his motives.
"You're pleading for the peacock's life?" Vardor frowned.
"He had his reasons for?—"
"Reasons?" Vardor came closer, making me take a step back.
I swallowed. "Yes, he didn't?—"
"How did your father blackmail Thomas into marrying you?" He interrupted.
"He was in financial trouble. My father offered to pay his debts."
Vardor roared, and I sank on the bed because it was closest. My body shook, and my blood rushed through my veins from my hard-pumping heart. He was scaring me again. Reminding me that he was insane.
"That coward. That pompous little shit. He took a payment foryou!" He stared at me with eyes burning so intense they made my stomach flutter again. This time not in fear, though. No, this was something else entirely, something I couldn't quite define. "He took a payment for you, when he should have been the one payingforyou."
I swallowed once again, enraptured by his words, which rang true when they shouldn't have. They were balm for my hurt soul.
"He got himself into financial difficulties, and when he found someone to bail him out, he was going to have you caged like an animal?"
His words sparked a long-dormant anger inside me. He was right. Every word he said was true. There was no justifying Thomas' plan for me. Had he been a man, a real man... I swallowed, where hadthatthought come from?Real menwere the type I had always stayed away from.
Why?
Why? Because they were scary. They could... they could...
Yes? What?
Force me to... force me to... to do things.
Now how do you know that?
That was an interesting question. I had never met a man like Vardor before. But for as long as I could remember, muscly men had filled me with dread and fear. Like the men who brought in our wares. They were loud and boisterous. But not one had ever mistreated me or even looked funny at me. So why in the world was I so frightened of them?
It didn't matter. Not then. There were other things I needed to digest. Vardor was right. Thomas had agreed to a deal and then sought a coward's way out. Unbidden, a memory came up.
Did you arrange this?
One of the happy memories between Thomas and me. The moment the Great Belzoni had asked me to come on the stage.
Did you arrange this?
Thomas had looked happy and proud of himself. At the time, I thought it was because he had done something to please me, but suddenly, the gesture took on a different light. I saw the faces of the other nobles in their boxes, the smirks on their faces, and realized that noladywould have gone down on stage like I did. With it followed an avalanche of moments where Thomas had taken me to public affairs where he made little to no effort toraise me in the eyes of his peers. An ice-cold hand reached for my heart. He had been setting me up all along.
She is not feeling too well tonight, he told the Duchess of Southerland when we left one of her parties early. I thought it had been in consideration for my feelings, since all the women had snubbed me openly once again. But now I remembered the looks passing between him and Harriet. Her’s could have been called pitying. Or the one time I laughed too loudly at one of Henry's jokes, and Thomas took the port from my hand, saying,easy, darling. He had laughed with his friends and mouthed, too much wine. It was one of the many memories I had willfully ignored because they didn't fit into my narrative that I could win him over. Make him fall in love with me. When all the while, he had been setting the stage of howunfita wife I was. No noblewoman in her right mind would walk on the stage with a known charlatan. What had I been thinking?
Deeply regretting not having killed her husband-to-be, I watched Roweena sleep, wondering if Vaelora was awake inside her or if she too were slumbering. Had taking a mortal form cost her to surrender her consciousness? Was she in there, aware of the woman's ignorance? Was she beating her fists like she had against the crate I put her in?
The intensity with which I missed her frightened me. Nobody should have such power over another being. And yet. If she had willingly done this to herself, didn't that mean that she loved me too?
Besides Roweena being a mirror image of my lover, there were times when I saw Vaelora breaking through the surface. For a moment yesterday, her vengefulness had shown through, but the woman had declined my offer to avenge her. It was those moments that gave me the hope to carry on and fulfill Vaelora's request to wake her up.
It had been a long time since I pondered the difficulties of mortals. I was stunned and angered by Roweena’s tale of being forced into a marriage and of her fear of being put into an insane asylum. The very notion of it made me want to break Thomas' neck. Coward! Painted whelp.
