Valentine's Dance
Page 6
She doesn’t care for you. She doesn’t care what happens. She just wants the elves to help her take over the world.
In that moment of clarity, Aurelia knew what she had to do.
Be silent. Be docile. Be compliant. Be exactly what she wants you to be.
It was a mantra that Aurelia repeated to herself daily. It got her through the darkest moments of her life. It would get her through this until she came up with an escape. Because, surely, she had some time to figure out an escape. Never mind that Aurelia had not set foot outside Cezara’s forest that surrounded her property since her parents died.
She'd flee and reinvent herself. She'd live out the rest of her days in peace.
Goddess, did that sound divine.
Aurelia had almost let herself fall into that reverie when her aunt shattered that vision.
“We’re on our way to the Chapel. Now.”
Aurelia blinked. “Now?” What happened to planning a ceremony? Or getting to know her future husband?
She was going to be bound to Fane now? Suddenly, she was looking down the tunnel leading into a future that she didn’t want.
Cezara only threw her head back and laughed. She had always taken pleasure in Aurelia’s despair. She seemed to be enjoying this as much as it pained Aurelia.
But now? Now?
Cezara squeezed Aurelia’s shoulders. “Why wait when there’s a glorious future ahead of you?”
Obviously, she and Aurelia had very different definitions of “glorious.” Aurelia was about to puke at the thought.
Her aunt had to have plans for Aurelia that couldn’t wait. There had to be something that she didn’t know but could very well prevent.
If only...
“I knew I couldn’t wait.”
Aurelia’s blood ran cold as she looked up to see the other man striding toward them in her aunt’s great room. Fane Dirk. The man that Aurelia had been betrothed to without her consent.
Fane stopped a few paces from Aurelia and crossed his arms, a low smile coming to his cruelly sensual lips. The wizard was the image of perfection, from his cropped blond hair to his smooth skin and ice blue eyes. He stood a head taller than Aurelia and had a good eighty pounds of muscle on her diminutive frame.
Any girl would be glad to be married to someone as gorgeous as Fane.
But Aurelia also knew that he was a brute, if not a sociopath. She remembered instances when Fane had shown such brutality, it twisted Aurelia’s stomach years later.
This was the man she was to spend the rest of her life with?
Aurelia wanted to disappear here and now, except her magic failed her.
“Hello, my love,” Fane called, emphasizing the word my.
Aurelia bowed stiffly, running through every single escape route she could think of. The walls were closing in on her. There was no escape.
She found herself hyperventilating.
“My aunt has just told me about your plans,” she said softly, pulling her shoulders back. “I’m surprised I wasn’t aware of them.”
“That’s because you’re a witch, love.” Like Cezara, Fane gripped Aurelia’s chin, forcing her to look up into his eyes. “You don’t have a choice in these matters.”
A shiver of revulsion ricocheted down Aurelia’s spine, and she swallowed roughly. That’s where the distinction lay. Fane may have been a wizard, but Aurelia was a witch. Although she was powerful, as a witch she had little choice in the matter of marriage.
Wizards ruled their society. Everyone else obeyed, including powerful witches like Aurelia. What few witches were left among the population, anyway. Aurelia was the first witch in many, many years, which made her a prized commodity to her aunt. And, apparently, to Fane.
If Aurelia’s children bred true—if even a fraction of them were witches rather than the nulls so many families had produced in recent years—then Cezara and Fane could take over more than just the Novakia region. They could impose their cruelty over the entire country of Prochazka.
And that would be just the beginning.
Swallowing down the terror lumped in her throat, Aurelia turned obediently to walk between Fane and Cezara, following them toward what she was certain was not only her own doom, but that of the entire world’s.