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“I don’t understand.”
“You were running. From your father. From an arranged marriage. Were you simply runningfromhim? Or were you runningtosomething.”
She considered it for a moment. “No. I was running toward whatever life I could grasp. Whatever life might be of my own choosing. My own making. You see, I have never had the luxury of choosing anything. Even though I might choose what I wear on a given day, the clothes were all chosen for me. Choice is an illusion.”
“One might argue that it always is.”
“Perhaps. But for me, even more so. For they are all set out before me. It is not for me to decide who I am, not truly. And so I was willing to go toward an unknown life. I was willing to run into the unknown. Perhaps I would wait tables. Perhaps I would be desperately poor. But I would be free.”
He laughed. He could not help it. “That is spoken like a person who has never experienced poverty.”
The corners of her lips pulled down. “I haven’t. But isn’t making your own choice higher existence?”
“When you must fight for every meal you seek out, you do not feel as if you are living a high existence. I personally have experienced this. I feel you have no concept of what you will sacrifice to survive. You break off pieces of yourself in order to live. There is not a part of yourself you will not sell if you do not know how you will make it through the day otherwise. There is no dignity in that sort of poverty.”
“I see. I feel... Even now, I feel that at least this is a prison cell I walked into on my own two feet. I’m certain that you might find that hard to understand. But I would prefer the cell to the one my father chose.”
“And why is that?”
“Mattias Hamilton is a cruel man. You can see it in every line of his face. He looked at me, and I know that what he saw was something that he could easily break. I have been so protected all my life, all anyone thinks is how soft I am.”
They were wrong, he could see that. She was soft. But there was a strength to her, a steel, that was surprising. Anyone who underestimated her would be doing so at their peril.
She was also intelligent, and stunning. She would make a glorious accessory to his triumphant return.
He was beginning to think that there was only one way that he could reenter the world and not garner pity. There had to be another story. A story so compelling that no one thought to pity him.
Athena was that sort of story.
“Tell me more of your past.”
“I don’t... I don’t know much more of my past. I came to live at my father’s compound when I was eight. I have no memory of what happened before then. There is a sense of fear. Of sadness. Loss. I can only assume that I was an orphan. But I do believe that the trauma of it... I did do some reading on this from some psychology books that were in my father’s library. I believe the trauma of whatever happened to me before I came to live at the compound was overwritten by better memories. By easier things. It is blank and dark and I think it might be for a reason.”
“You think it is to blot out a loss?”
She nodded. “That is my theory. It seems to make the most sense.”
He wondered.
“And this man, this father of yours, he was going to marry you off to a man who you believe to be cruel. Does he believe this man to be cruel?”
She tilted her head to the side, her jet-black hair sliding over her shoulder like a shimmering waterfall. “I don’t believe he thought of it at all. I believe that he saw it as a means to an end, and did not consider even the slightest bit what would befall me after he sent me to Mattias. He knew only that it would solve his problem. He thought nothing of whether or not it would create problems for me. I do not believe he has the capacity to care deeply. I was...” She cleared her throat. “My mother had a daughter. A daughter who died. She was an adult then, she died in a fire. Her husband... Everyone was grief-stricken, is my understanding. But especially my mother, and her husband, Ares. My father gave me to my mother. And only recently he gave Rose to Ares.”
“Who is Rose?”
“She was another girl who was brought to the compound, around the same time that I was. That was the beginning of the end. The beginning of me truly seeing what was around me. My father was going to sell Rose to settle his debts, and then Ares demanded her. He could not deny Ares. He was his former son-in-law, after all. And he’s very rich and very powerful. He sold her. Like she was a commodity. I am... I could not be unmoved by that. And then it became my turn. And I realized that no matter that I was treated as a daughter, and she as a servant, we were the same. A commodity. Now I do question my past. With all of these revelations.”
“Do you exist in the outside world?”
She shook her head. “I don’t. I am not real. If I am married off to a man who is cruel to me, if he crushes me, if he takes what he believes to be a doll and plays with me to his own ends and leaves none of me behind, who would ever know? And no one would seek justice for me. Do you see? Do you see why I had to escape, no matter what?”
If he were a different man, he might feel some measure of guilt for his treatment of her. But he did not feel guilt. He only felt fascination at the evidence of her strength.
“So now I know where you came from. I know you had no plans for your future. But what are your dreams?”
Her expression softened. “I would see the world. Everything that was kept from me all this time. I would watch whatever I wanted to on TV. And read whatever books I chose. I would use the internet. Without anyone watching me. And I would... I would have romance. And I’ll find Rose. She is my friend. My real friend. I would choose what I wore, and I would probably try different kinds of wine. And perhaps a drink with an umbrella in it.”
It was such a charmingly innocent list. There were some things on it he could not give her, but many that he could. And what he could not himself offer... He could set her up for a life where it would be possible after. Not because he was a good man. Because he was a fair man. And because there would be no more women who were used as his victims.
