Chapter 12 #2
But he never responded at all. I wasn’t even sure why I had hoped that he would. It must have been pure desperation, because he’d always just gone along with whatever my mother wanted when it came to me. Or anything, really.
“Sadira, that was…” Aleda started quietly when it became clear that he wasn’t going to respond, but she seemed unsure how to finish.
“I knew your parents must be difficult, but I’m pretty sure your mom could at least place as a solid runner-up in the Terrible People Awards if that was a thing someone could win awards in.
” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I don’t have any problem with arranged marriages—we both know I’ll probably end up in one myself if I don’t find a husband fast enough for my grandmother’s liking,” she added, “but in our teens?! That seems extreme. We’re not even twenty yet!
You’re barely nineteen. And that whole tirade from her?
That was basically a masterclass in emotional manipulation. ”
I didn’t even know how to respond. I just stared into the middle distance, feeling shell-shocked as the horror in my gut settled into dread and made me feel like I was going to vomit.
She took a seat on her mattress, and we stayed like that in silence for several minutes before she continued.
“Maybe… Maybe this could work out,” she said, raising the pitch at the end of her sentence like it was a question, or maybe just trying to sound hopeful.
I couldn’t tell. “Maybe he’s hot. And you would get to live far away from your parents this way. ”
I closed my eyes and tried to shut out the ringing in my ears, considering for the briefest moment what that would look like for me, if I just took the path of least resistance—to submit to my mother’s demands—because that’s what they were.
Not suggestions, not requests, not “guidance”, they were demands.
I could follow her directions, finish this last exam I had scheduled for today, and spend the spring getting to know this wealthy son of a foreign diplomat.
There would be no visit to the cottage this summer.
We would be married before the end of the year, surely, and I would be a perfect little kept wife in a land where I knew nothing and no one, but hey, at least my mother’s social standing would increase.
I gritted my teeth so tightly that my jaw ached.
I would have the perfect dark-elf husband, and a perfect little dark-elf child, so I could have my wish of growing up to be just like this vicious woman I’d looked up to for most of my childhood.
And I would never, ever see Lorn again… except in my dreams at night after I’d cried myself to sleep.
Maybe my new husband and I would vacation on a beach somewhere, and I could sit and watch the waves roll in and wish it was him I was with and not this foreign man.
The person who’d been my closest friend, my lifelong obsession, my first love if I were truly honest with myself—would be gone from me forever.
I couldn’t breathe through the pain of it. I covered my face as tears spilled over and ran down my cheeks. I was furious.
“Okay, so, clearly not that,” Aleda said, and I tried to get myself under control.
“I still have one more exam to get through,” I said, standing and pacing to my dresser before frantically scrubbing at my face and pulling my clothes out. I had to think about this later and focus on what needed to be done right now.
Aleda followed my lead and began getting ready for the finals she had scheduled today, too. “What are you going to do?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I responded through my teeth, feeling hollow and bitter and enraged.
“She can’t make you marry him,” she said, simply pointing out the obvious as she pulled on her clothes.
“Obviously, she can make your life hell, and she can disinherit you, but she can’t make you do anything.
Plus, you just passed your majority birthday, so she can’t even make you be here if you don’t want to be.
We’re legally adults now, Sadira,” she said with a one-shouldered shrug.
My hands froze on my dress buttons. I glanced up at her with my mind racing, but she just shrugged at me again and began to work on her hair, placing bobby pins between her teeth and sliding them one by one into her hair as she twisted it back into place.
“Will you tell Instructor Gimben that I’m sick today?” I asked. What was the point of taking the exam if I wasn’t even going to be allowed to finish the class?
“Mhm,” she said around the bobby pins in her mouth, a tight smile on her lips.
She pulled them out and finished placing them in her hair.
“And then I’ll go tell the RA that you’re going home with me for break,” she added, watching me over her shoulder in the mirror as she took a ribbon from her desk and tied it into her hair.
“You’re still welcome to do that, by the way,” she said sincerely.
“I know my parents would host you.” She’d offered many times over the years, but I’d never felt comfortable accepting.
I shook my head, grateful all the same, as I flew through the rest of my buttons and then practically lunged across the room to gently grip her face and plant a kiss on her cheek, making her burst into shocked laughter.
“But I need you to come back. I don’t want a new roommate next semester,” she said with a mournful frown.
“Maybe you can just take out a loan for school?”
I huffed and shook my head, too angry and frustrated to formulate coherent thoughts, moving instead to pull my suitcase out from under my bed and toss it onto the mattress.
If I took out a loan to attend school, it wouldn’t be for one as expensive as this.
I hadn’t even asked to attend this one, my parents had made the choice.
“I’ll be right back,” Aleda said. “Don’t leave before I get back.” And then she was out the door.
I didn’t really have a plan. Not a solid one. I just knew I was done with this. She can’t even make you be here if you don’t want to be.
I didn’t want to be.
Those words had tripped something in my brain, like a light switch flipping on a light, illuminating everything in an instant.
I’d spent my entire childhood trying to please my parents, trying to be exactly who they wanted me to be, wanting to be who they wanted me to be.
And for what? For them to trade me away to some stranger against my will for an increase in their social standing?
I was grateful for what they’d provided for me, obviously, but I hadn’t asked for any of it.
I was done trying to earn their approval.
I was done doing what I was told and being the perfect little elven daughter—pushed aside and sent away every school year only to be trotted back out whenever they needed me to play the part they expected.
Aleda was back before I finished throwing my belongings into my case, with a muffin and a steaming cup of tea in hand from the cafeteria.
She handed me my bracelet of lockets after checking to be sure the one with her snipped off curl was still on it and then dug through my baskets until she found my calling stones, handing them to me with a sigh.
“Call me when you get to your cottage,” she said, already guessing at my plans, “so that I know that you’re safe.
And I want every detail about what happens with your merman. ”
We weren’t a particularly demonstrative people, and I’d already kissed her cheek which was beyond the pale for my culture, but I held out my arms in case she wanted a small hug because I found myself too overwhelmed to respond verbally.
She accepted, leaning in to wrap her arms around my ribs, and laying her head on my shoulder, giving me a quick squeeze before releasing me.
“Every. Detail,” she emphasized, raising her eyebrows at me as she slipped out the door to head to class.
My first stop was the bank, where I emptied my personal account and had the contents returned to me in paper currency.
Legally, my parents couldn’t withdraw money that belonged to me, but my father owned another branch of this same bank and had access to a lot of things that most people wouldn’t have. I wasn’t going to risk it.
I didn’t have much, but I’d been provided a stipend over the years for my expenses while at school, to be able to keep up with the beauty standards of elven society.
I’m not sure where my parents came up with the amount they deposited, but I assumed it had been based on whatever my mother thought I should be spending on the newest clothing fashions and blowouts and luxury nail decorations.
And I loved all those things as much as the next girl, but I simply hadn’t had time for them while studying at the academy and then while attending my first semester at college.
I’d always kept my long hair healthy with basic trims, my nails shaped with simple manicures, and of course, I’d replaced my clothing whenever I needed to.
I’d just assumed I would get around to the luxury treatments someday when I had more time.
So my stipend had just kept piling up in my account every month, unnoticed.
Now I had a small emergency fund for when my parents cut me off.
Then, as a cold, steady mist began to fall, I went straight to the train station, where I was lucky to be able to purchase a ticket this close to our winter break.
Tomorrow, when classes were officially out, it would have been impossible.
We boarded an hour later, and I was once again watching raindrops chase each other across the window next to me.
It reminded me of the summer when I’d first met Lorn all those years ago, when I’d been trapped inside the cottage that whole first week by a horrible storm.
Rain was an everyday occurrence during this time of year though.
This was the first time I’d ever traveled to the vacation cottage alone.
I wasn’t sure what I would do once I got there, since like I’d realized earlier, I had no real plan.
I hadn’t even really known what I wanted when I left, at least not in the long term, and still didn’t.
All I knew was that I didn’t want to be there anymore, doing exactly what was expected of me.
I pulled the tiny game-piece figurine of the pretty elven queen that Lorn had given me so long ago out of the pocket of my rain cloak and turned her over in my hands.
Her details were a little worn down now, with her facial features and her pointed ears a little less sharp than they used to be, probably a result of how often I held her and absently rubbed at her polished exterior with my fingers.
Lorn and I had traded her back and forth every year, with him giving me possession of her in the fall and me returning her in early summer when I returned.
She had a few rough places where he’d had to scrape off a baby barnacle or two as he returned her to me, but I didn’t mind.
He told me one time that she was his most treasured possession, because he thought she looked like me.
My cheeks heated at the memory nearly as intensely as they had when he’d said it.
That small gesture of sharing his favorite trinket with me had gotten me through so many difficult times as I’d held it and thought of him, but I needed more than that right now. I needed him.
No one would be waiting at the train station for me when I arrived, because no one knew I would be there. No one would be at the cottage to open it for air or start the fires in the hearths for warmth, but that was fine. I didn’t need that—I could figure it out.
I had grown up coddled and pampered, just like this little elven queen would have been, and I’d been raised to know that I would continue being coddled and pampered in perpetuity, whether by my parents or by whatever wealthy man they married me off to.
But that coddling was a cage. It was a leash that kept me in line and denied me any ability to make choices for myself.
If I wanted to remove myself from that gilded cage, I was going to have to learn to do things for myself.
In the game of Kings and Queens, the queen was the most capable piece on the board. I wasn’t a queen, and I would never be royalty, but I could learn to be more capable.