“That’s wonderful!”
She squeezed my hand.
“He left you a gift.This baby.”
But her joy couldn’t pierce the cloak of sorrow wrapped tight around me.
Not when the world had already taken him.
Not when this child would be born into ruin.
Suddenly, a cacophony exploded from the hallway—shouts, crashing, the jarring clatter of something heavy.
Mary’s head snapped toward the door, her hand tightening on mine.
Then—
The door burst open.
It slammed against the wall with a force that echoed in my bones.
My father appeared in the doorway, propelled forward by a servant, his face a twisted mask of fury.
Silence fell—charged, suffocating.
He sat in a wheelchair, an iron-rimmed chariot of suffering, more prison than a tool.
Sunlight streamed through the tall windows, bathing the room in gold—but it felt wrong, offensive against the darkness he brought with him.
His once-proud visage was a ruin of angry scars, twisted and unrecognizable, a remnant of the man I once feared and loved.
His gnarled left hand clutched the armrest with a bone-white grip, the veins bulging as though the wood might splinter beneath his wrath.
His right arm lay limp and lifeless, twisted awkwardly in his lap, a cruel mirror of the power he’d lost.
The man who had once lifted me high on his shoulders, who had filled our halls with laughter—before it turned to commands, punishments, and fear?—
Now filled the room with raw, unspoken fury.
I couldn’t move.
I couldn’t breathe.
His eyes burned into mine, and in the stillness between us, I felt it?—
The tremble of the room, or perhaps just my bones, under the weight of his rage.
“Elizabeth.”
The word scraped from his throat, each syllable a shard of broken glass dragging across my nerves.
A shiver cut down my spine—cold, sudden, involuntary.
I told myself—I should not be afraid.
It played in my mind like a fragile mantra.
But it couldn’t silence the pounding of my heart, a frantic, erratic beat that echoed the throbbing guilt coursing through me.
