The Black Prism(174)

She’d thought being drunk would help her be docile, quiet, malleable. It had worked, and she didn’t know why she was so bitterly disappointed about that. When she’d turned her face away from his kisses, he’d mistaken it for shyness and kissed elsewhere. When he’d pulled off her slip and she’d covered herself with her hands, he’d mistaken it for modesty. Modest? When she’d been with Dazen, she’d gloried in his eyes on her. She’d been bold, shameless. She’d felt like a woman—though now she knew she’d only been playing at being a woman in so many ways. With Dazen, she’d felt beautiful. With Gavin, she was filled with such unutterable despair it choked her cries in her own throat. She couldn’t remember if she even protested, if she’d asked him to stop. She’d wanted to, but her memory was fogged. She didn’t think she had. She’d kept thinking of her father saying, “Our family needs this. Without this marriage, we’re ruined.” And she hadn’t fought.

She remembered crying, though, during. A gentleman would have stopped, but Gavin had been drunk and young and horny. There was no gentleness in him. When she wasn’t ready and he was hurting her, he’d ignored her protests and thrust with a young man’s need.

Far from keeping her awake all night as he’d bragged, he’d soon finished. Then he’d told her to leave. The casual cruelty of it had taken her breath away. And she’d taken it. She should have clawed his eyes out.

He hadn’t wanted Karris. He’d wanted to show that Dazen couldn’t have what rightfully belonged to him. Karris might as well have been a tree for him to piss on after the last dog, reclaiming his territory.

She’d stumbled through the halls in that beautiful dress with half its buttons undone—the damned thing required the help of servants to button. She’d been seen, of course. Somehow she got home, not their home on Big Jasper that had burned to the ground, but to their apartments nearby. Her father had been waiting up, but he didn’t say a word, just stared at her. Her room slave had undressed her with trembling fingers, and when Karris had finally fallen in bed, the doorway of her room was darkened with her father’s silhouette. He wobbled, leaned against the doorframe.

“I could challenge him to a duel,” he said. “But he’d kill me, Karris, and then you’d be ruined. Hopeless. We’d lose everything our fathers have fought for for fifty generations. Maybe tomorrow will look better.”

She’d been winesick for two days, and when she’d emerged, Gavin had kissed her in public, seated her at his right hand, and treated her like a queen. It was like the night had never happened. Or like it had been beautiful.

Later she’d decided it was because everyone had been talking about the two of them as such a perfect couple, of how beautiful she was, and Gavin had decided she suited his image. So instead of casting her aside, he’d decided to go through with the marriage. But then he’d left and soon after fought the final battle at Sundered Rock.

When he came back, he seemed like a different man. He treated her with a genuine warmth, respect, so unlike the man who’d banished her from his bedchamber after he took his pleasure of her. It made Karris doubt that the night had happened at all. She could have convinced herself that it had all been a nightmare—until she found out she was pregnant. The very day she’d become aware of it, before she could tell him, Gavin had broken their betrothal.

She’d been sixteen, pregnant, and without any prospect of marriage. In other words, her father’s perfect nightmare. As soon as she was certain she wasn’t going to miscarry, she’d told her father. He demanded she see the chirurgeons and get it taken care of.

For the first time in her life, she’d refused her father. To hell with him. He moved to strike her. She pulled out a pistol. She told him she’d hollow out his skull if he dared to strike her. She told him he was a coward. She was going to bear Gavin’s bastard and let the world know it was his. To hell with him, and to hell with her father, and to hell with everyone. Bearing that child would be her first free act, and her revenge.

Her father had gotten down on his knees and begged. Literally begged. Please save our family, we can’t be the ones who let down all the generations of White Oaks who sacrificed everything to get us here. We and us, he said. He meant, I and me. He was the one who had destroyed the family and he knew it. He looked so small and weak, cold sweat gleaming off his balding head. Abruptly, she despised him. He’d been the absolute lord over her, and he was disgusting. She refused his pleas, and she felt pleasure at the sick, slack despair in his eyes.