Bought By the Wyvern (Monsters’ Bride Market #7)

Chapter One – Tressa

Chapter One

Tressa

It’s past midnight when I realize my father isn’t coming home on his own.

I’m already dressed and out the door, walking quickly through the empty streets.

The spring air is warm against my skin, but the knot of dread in my stomach only tightens with each step.

He should have been home hours ago, and when the clock struck midnight and his chair by the fireplace remained empty, I knew I had to go find him.

The streets are quiet in this part of the city.

Peacekeepers don’t patrol these neighborhoods, because they don’t care about the poor.

The walls keep monsters and dangerous outsiders from getting into the city, but inside these walls, in places like this, we’re left to fend for ourselves.

I walk quickly, my boots echoing on the cobblestones, and I reach the first pub on my mental list of his usual haunts.

The barkeep shakes his head before I even finish asking.

“Haven’t seen him tonight, girl.”

The next three pubs give me the same answer, and with each rejection, the weight in my chest grows heavier. I’m running out of places to look and out of hope that I’ll find him conscious and whole.

He’s drinking himself into an early grave, and I’m barely keeping us both afloat with the money I make. Every coin I earn goes to food or bills, or the debts he racks up. He never thinks about what that costs me.

My father never considers that I lost Brandon, too.

And then I watched our mother die of grief while he drowned himself in ale and self-pity.

I nearly died of grief myself after we lost them, but I couldn’t afford to break down.

Because someone had to keep us alive. That someone was me, always me, and he never once stopped to think about how much I was suffering, too.

I turn down another narrow street and head toward the White Stag, one of the seedier establishments where desperate men go to drink away their wages. The alley behind it is dark and reeks of piss and rotting garbage. I almost walk past it when I hear a low groan coming from the shadows.

I find him crumpled against the wall. My stomach turns at the sight of him. He’s not a real person, he’s a lump.

“Father.”

I crouch beside him and reach out to touch his shoulder.

He groans again. His face is destroyed, covered in bruises and dried blood.

One eye is swollen shut, the skin around it purple and grotesque.

His lip is split open, and when he opens his mouth to make another pained sound, I see a gap where one of his teeth used to be.

Blood has dried on his chin and down the front of his shirt, and his hands are shaking.

“What did you do this time?” I ask. “Who did this to you?”

He can’t answer. He’s too drunk, his breath reeking of cheap ale. The words that try to leave his mouth are nothing but incoherent mumbling.

I grab his arm and try to pull him upright, but he’s dead weight despite being small and withered. He’s hunched over and gaunt, looking like a man twice his age. I can barely remember a time when he was strong, handsome, and capable.

I get my shoulder under his arm and heave him up with all the strength I have.

He groans louder, and pain shoots through my back and shoulders, but I grit my teeth and start dragging him forward.

One step, then another, and the walk home stretches out endlessly before me.

My muscles scream in protest, and blood from his wounds smears across my shirt.

Dirt from the filthy alley clings to my pants, but I don’t stop because there’s no one else who will help us.

Our house sits at the end of a narrow street in a neighborhood that used to be decent before it went bad over the years. The house itself is small. There’s only the ground floor with two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a living room with a fireplace. I shoulder the door open and drag my father inside.

The first thing I see is the small table near the window, where I always keep fresh flowers in a glass vase.

Two paintings hang on the wall. One shows my mother when she was young and carefree, back when her smile was wide and genuine, and she still had hope for the future.

The other shows Brandon at ten years old, captured right before he died and our entire world fell apart.

I don’t let myself look at them for long because if I do, I’ll start thinking about everything we lost, and I can’t afford to break down right now.

The bathroom is cramped, but I manage to get my father propped against the wall.

I fill a basin with clean water, grab towels, and begin cleaning the blood from his face.

I work as gently as I can, even though part of me wants to hurt him the way he’s been hurting me for years.

He winces when I touch the worst spots, but he doesn’t fight me or try to pull away.

“Hold still,” I mutter, and I continue washing away the dried blood until I can see the full extent of the damage.

I spread salve on the deepest cuts, and bandage anything that’s still bleeding, checking his ribs to make sure nothing is broken.

They’re badly bruised but intact, which is more luck than he deserves.

When I’m finished, I help him to his feet and half carry him to his bedroom.

I tuck him in. He groans again, his one good eye fluttering as he tries to focus on my face.

“Stay here,” I tell him. “I’ll make coffee.”

The kitchen is small, and the cupboards are mostly empty because we can barely afford food.

But I always keep coffee. It’s the one indulgence I refuse to give up.

I need it for the nights when I work, when I have to stay awake, alert, and functional while pretending to be someone I’m not.

I brew it strong and black, and the rich smell fills the kitchen in a comforting way.

I bring the cup to my father’s room and make him sit up against the headboard. He drinks in shaky sips, spilling some down his chin. The fog in his eyes begins to clear. He looks at me, and his face crumples as he starts crying.

“Father…”

“I’m sorry.” His voice breaks on the words. He can barely get them out. “Tressa, I’m so sorry.”

The tears come harder, and he’s sniffling and sobbing like a child who’s been caught doing something wrong.

I feel anger rise in my chest, and I set the coffee cup on the small table next to his bed. I cross my arms and stare down at him.

“What did you do? Tell me what happened.”

“I owe money.” He wipes at his face with trembling hands, smearing his tears across his bruised cheeks. “Two hundred gold.”

The floor seems to drop out from under me. For a moment, I can’t breathe. Two hundred gold is more money than I could make in a year, even if I worked every single night. My hands clench into fists, and my nails dig into my palms.

“Two hundred gold,” I repeat. “How did you manage that?”

“I thought I was feeling lucky.” He still can’t meet my eyes, staring down at his hands instead.

“The bets kept going wrong, but I kept thinking the next one would pay off, that my luck would turn around. It never did. I borrowed money from some men, bad men, and now they want it back with interest. They gave me a week, Tressa. Just one week, and if I don’t pay them, they’re going to kill me. ”

I want to scream at him. I want to shake him until some sense rattles into his hollow skull. Instead, I stand there and let the rage pour out of me in words.

“Why do you do this? You have no idea what I must do to put food on the table, what I have to endure just to earn enough for us to survive. Every penny I make, you gamble it or drink it away like it means nothing. I can’t do this anymore, but I have to keep doing it anyway, because no one else will take care of you.

Why do you have to ruin yourself and ruin us both? ”

He cries harder, his whole body shaking with the force of his sobs.

“I’m wretched, I know I am. I’m a horrible man, and you deserve so much better than this. You deserve a father who takes care of you instead of the other way around. I’m the worst father in the world.”

The anger drains out of me as quickly as it came, leaving me hollow and exhausted. I’ve heard these same words from him dozens of times before, always after he’s made another terrible mistake. They never mean anything, because he never changes.

I sit down on the edge of the bed and take his rough, cold hand in mine. I stroke his thinning hair the way he used to stroke mine when I was a child, and he was still whole.

“It’s all right. I’ll figure it out. Like I always do.”

“You’re too good, Tressa.” His voice is thick with tears and shame. “I don’t deserve a daughter like you.”

I stay with him until his breathing evens out and the tears finally stop.

I pull my hand free carefully, so I don’t wake him, then I stand up and look down at him for a long moment.

The bitterness settles over me again. He always does this, always ruins everything and apologizes, and promises to change, and then the cycle starts all over again.

It’s been years of this pattern, years of me picking up the pieces while he breaks himself apart, and I’m so tired of it that I can barely breathe.

I leave his room and close the door softly behind me.

My bedroom is a mess, because I barely have time to tidy up anymore.

The vanity is covered in scattered bottles and pigments, brushes and ribbons, and all the tools I use to make myself look presentable for the men who pay for my time.

I ignore the clutter and pull open the wardrobe, reaching for the dress I need.

The fabric is deep blue. It’s made of rich velvet, and the corset is cut to show off the swell of my generous breasts. I strip out of my bloodstained shirt and dirty pants, and pull the dress on, lacing the corset up the front.