Page 60 of Fathom

All I had to do was pass the burden of forced marriage and generational control onto my children and feed them into the family that used addiction and wealth to try to control me. I had married a woman who wanted the same, who wanted to control me, to force me to live a life that provided her with wealth. She didn't care about our future children. All she cared about was herself, and I was so blind as not to have seen it.

I didn’t know how I could face her.

She wasn’t what I thought she was. She wasn’t a soft, innocent prey creature clutching at safety, needing my protection.

What she did at that table…

It was grotesque.

All this time, I thought she was a sweet, innocent thing that desperately needed me, and all this time, she was a predator, lying in wait, ready to trap me. The man I called my Uncle, his friendship and support in helping me get free from my family, was just another trick, another way to control me, to keep tabs on me until they found a way to force me to come back. I couldn’t trust anyone in my life, especially not the woman who I thought was mine.

I stared at the door that lay between us, to the bedroom where my wife waited for me.

I didn’t have to go in there.

I could’ve gone to one of the many guest bedrooms andavoided her. The house was big enough for us to exist like ghosts, haunting separate wings, never crossing paths. If I really wanted to, I could abandon her in this house, leave her here for my family to play with like a new toy.

But that would’ve been cowardice dressed as strategy.

She was my wife.

Even if it was a marriage of convenience, inked in desperation and sealed to protect her, it was still a vow. It was still real to me. I couldn’t pretend that was the only reason I’d choose her. I wanted her. I took her, raw and bare. I was desperate for her. I didn't have to marry her after I took her, but there was no part of me that would have chosen differently. My desire for her struck me like lightning, bright, undeniable. I had wanted her from the start. The only thing that held me back was the fear that I would harm her. And the second I saw that I could have her, keep her, that I wouldn't hurt her, I'd leaped for her claws bared.

Avoiding her now, because she’d revealed a side of herself I hadn’t expected, would be idiotic.

Even if it was a side that terrified me, because it mirrored the part of childhood I loathed the most.

My mother stepped out of the room, closing the door behind her. Her eyes lit up as she saw me there, hesitating at the door. My feelings toward my parents were always mixed. I couldn't remember my life before them, except for the cold dark of the box I had been transported in. For the longest time, I thought they had saved me. I thought they had rescued me from a fate worse than death, lifting me up from nothing to be raised as their own. I loved and adored them, even tried to steel myself to the thought of a life married to someone who I knew hated the idea of marrying me just as much.

Then I found out that they had ordered me, like a product.They bought me for a breathtaking sum, and I still didn't fully understand why. I didn't know anything about my species or why my parents thought I was so special. Part of that was my fault. I could have made an effort to leave the system and its controlled news sources, but leaving my family to go try to support myself was daunting enough.

I thought I had found a reason good enough to leave all of this behind.

"Your wife is quite reasonable," my mother said with a smile. "You'd do well to listen to her."

"She is a surprise to us both," I said.

She gave me a knowing look.

As much as I was raised by tutors, my mother still had a hand in my upbringing. Warmth flowed from her when I fit into the mold of her choosing, and the chill of her disapproval was a cool sting that lessened as I matured and realized how calculated she was in both of those choices. A part of me still craved her affection, but that part had grown smaller and silent when I first fully realized that she didn't torment the servants because she had high expectations.

She tormented them because she liked the flavor suffering brought to the meat.

I opened the bedroom door and stepped inside, closing the rest of the world out behind me.

Leija stood before the mirror, and for a moment, I forgot how to breathe.

The gown she wore looked spun from moonlight, liquid silver that clung to her body like it worshipped her, pooling at her feet like mercury longing to return to the stars. Gemstones glittered along her neck, her wrists, her ears. No expense had been spared to adorn her, and the message was clear.

It was a declaration.

She had been accepted, bought, and paid for.

And the ache in my chest, sharp and radiant, like my heart was breaking into a thousand pieces, dropped to the ground to shatter right after I'd just finished patching it back up. Even as my body lit on fire at the sight of her, a cold numbness grew inside of me, a sick gnawing in my stomach that I had made a choice I didn't know how to escape from.

It was true, what my mother had said at dinner.

Leija was perfect.