by Nora Cobb
Johanna paused. “So, you are really considering marrying one of these assholes?”
I rubbed a hand over my face. “I really don’t know. If I want my trust fund, I will have to.” And hope that I didn’t pick the wrong king to satisfy my father’s will.
Me, married at eighteen. This wasn’t like Sara’s situation. She was in love with a guy who wasn’t just after her money, but truly wanted her for her.
I was looking at three kings who really didn’t know me to begin with but saw me as the unattainable prize that they felt like they had to conquer. It was all kinds of wrong, but I wasn’t likely to get away from it anytime soon.
“What about Isauros?” Johanna said. She, too, had heard the rumor about the headmistress killing the young student but had chalked it up to just a rumor. After all, it was crazy to think that a woman in Isauros’ position would even consider risking her entire career by murdering her own student.
Of course, stranger things had happened.
I opened my mouth to speak but a knock sounded on the door and we looked at each other. “I bet you it’s one of the kings,” Johanna mused. “Probably Royce.”
I unfolded from my position on the bed. “I bet it’s not.” I was a bit perturbed that he had gone nearly a week without contacting me.
I missed him.
Not so much Arthur. He stressed me out far too much for me to miss him right now.
“Well if it is him, then you owe me a frappé,” Johanna called out as I walked to the door. Rolling my eyes, I twisted the knob and pulled it open.
“Miss Komita.”
I swallowed. “Headmistress.”
She looked over my shoulder, meeting Johanna’s astonished gaze. “Get out.”
Johanna didn’t waste any time scrambling off my bed and grabbing her bag. “There’s something I need to study for in the library. I’ll be back later, Anna.”
I wanted to tell her not to leave me here alone with the woman who wanted to kill me, but I couldn’t do that. Despite our personal connection, Isauros was still headmistress and if she wanted to be alone with me in my dorm, she had every right to be.
The headmistress moved into the room and allowed Johanna to pass before shutting the door. “Sit.”
I moved to my bed as she chose the chair at my desk, carefully lowering herself onto it. My mind was whirling with possibilities of why she would seek me out like this.
Was she about to kick me out of the academy?
Was she going to tell me something about my mother? My father?
Was she going to throw me off the nearest turret and leave me to the birds?
She straightened her skirt before looking at me, her shrewd eyes meeting mine. “I’m sure you are wondering why I am here.”
“It’s crossed my mind,” I answered weakly.
She lifted her chin. “You are a woman who does not give up, I see, not only with your information, but also with the kings of the academy.”
Hearing her discuss the kings sounded odd. Did she really refer to them as such? “I’m not sure what you mean, headmistress.”
She let out a sharp laugh. “Oh, come now, Miss Komita, the entire academy knows that you have fucked two out of the three. I even hear that there are bets hedging on when you are going to complete the trifecta.”
I squirmed on the bed, not liking where this discussion was going and the fact that the entire school knew I had slept with Royce. I thought I had done a good enough job of keeping that one private.
“But I don’t care about your whoring,” she continued, not even paying attention to my discomfort. “I’m here to talk about your mother.”
My lungs seized. She was actually going to tell me something, and likely something important given the fact she had sought me out like this.
“I have finally decided that it is best for you to hear the truth,” she said, picking off the imaginary lint from her skirt. “From me, of course.”
I wetted my lips. “All right.”
Isauros stared at me, her eyes glinting in anger. “You are the daughter of Alexei Kameno, even if you are a bastard.”
I loosed a breath. That was something I had already figured out.
“Officially, you could be recognized as the last living heir to the Roman empire.”
Again, nothing new there.
Seeing that I wasn’t reacting to the news, Isauros’ eyes darkened. “But what you do not know, Miss Komita, is that your birth is rooted in death.”
I sat up straighter at the words. Death? Was she talking about my mother’s or my father’s?
Or my own? “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t,” she snapped. “How could you?”
I swallowed. “I’m sorry.”
That seemed to placate her, and she cleared her throat a few times, moving around in the chair. “Your mother was a graduate student when she met my husband. She was studying the historiography of Greek mythology, and Alexei always loved anything to do with the Greek gods. He thought himself one from time to time and his wealth only reinforced that belief before he died.”
She cleared her throat again. “Somehow, your mother got a job as the personal assistant to my husband, which put them together a great deal of the time. I was pregnant with my son at the time, and the pregnancy had me staying in bed more than getting out and about.”
I watched as she struggled with the words, wondering how she had come to the realization that she needed to tell me this. This was something deeply personal to her, a part of her past that I was sure she would like to forget. I knew if I was in her shoes, I wouldn’t be sitting before me.
“She was a welcome distraction for us both,” she continued after a moment, her eyes getting a faraway look to them. “Alexei saw an able assistant and I saw a good companion, one who was always out to please everyone.” The headmistress frowned. “Everyone including my husband, apparently.”
I didn’t dare move, afraid that she would end the conversation and I wouldn’t learn anything else today.
“I gave birth, as you know,” Isauros stated, her jaw clenching. “My precious baby boy who died in my arms before he could even take his first breath. His little hands cold as they clung—lifeless—to my thumb. But that wasn’t the only thing I lost. I lost my ability to have more children, and by extension, your father’s love for me.”
That I didn’t know. I wanted to comfort her, but also wanted to keep my distance. She was the enemy at the moment until she proved otherwise and just like the kings, she had her own reason for telling me this.
I just had to wait and see what that reason was.
“Your father turned on me,” Isauros said, her voice soft now. “He saw me as an empty vessel that had served its purpose and failed. I was no good to him, no good at all. He started having affairs, though I suspect they started before I ever lost our precious son. Your mother was just one of his many conquests.”
Not what I wanted to hear. I had held onto the hope that maybe, just maybe my parents had been a love match that was held back by my father’s marriage to Isauros, and the social differences between my mother and him.
That clearly wasn’t the case.
The headmistress laughed. “Your mother was naïve like you. She believed in love and affection, that good will overcome the bad in the world. It’s sad, really, that you haven’t seen the ugliness of the world.” She tapped her finger to her chin, regarding me. “Or have you, Miss Komita?”
“I’m not what I appear to be,” I finally said, carefully choosing my words.
“Perhaps not,” she answered with a haughty sigh. “But you will never be what you want to be.”
I didn’t know how she could already make that determination when I didn’t even know what I wanted to be.
“Your mother thought she could trust me,” she said. “She thought that I was her friend and maybe once upon a time before she started fucking my husband, I was. The day she came to me with tears in her eyes,
I knew she was pregnant. I took her to the hospital and during the ride, forced her to tell me that it was my husband who put the child in her belly.”
I couldn’t imagine how frightened my mother must have been, having to say that to this woman. She would be confessing that not only had my father strayed from his marriage, but also that he had committed the ultimate sin against his marital vows.
No wonder Isauros didn’t like me.
“Your whore of a mother dared to tell me that my husband forced himself on her in the room where my son’s crib was,” the headmistress continued, a disgusted look on her face. “Because I could no longer give him what he wanted, what he needed.”
I felt like I was going to be sick. My father, the man whose image I had built up in my head, the man that I had so desperately wanted to get to know, was a rapist.
“He made it clear what he saw in me—in your mother. Nothing but a womb on a pair of legs,” she continued on, like she hadn’t dropped the biggest bomb on me to date. “I didn’t want his money or title, I wanted him. But he saw fit to make certain I never graced his bed again.”
I watched a malicious smile crossed her lips, her eyes darkening. “So, I took away from him what he wanted most.”
“What did you do?” I whispered, unable to find my voice. “Did you kill my mother?”
She grinned. “I wanted to. Oh, how I wanted to! She ruined my life, ruined my marriage! I had every right to take your mother’s life.”
“You had no right.”
Isauros waved a hand at me. “Ever the American. Do you know the people you currently gather with, Anna? Do you know what they have done, what their families have done? We are all evil in our own ways.”
I didn’t want to believe her, but deep down, I knew she was right. Hadn’t I seen glimpses of that evil from the kings, from Johanna?
“What did you do?” I forced out.
Isauros’ eyes narrowed. “I tried to give your mother a way out. I gave her a razor, urging her to kill herself if she wanted a shred of dignity left. She nearly succeeded, but Alexei stopped her before she could. You see, her life didn’t matter to him. Yours did. He had her chained to a bed at our country estate, the months ticking by you were born. He visited her each night—the same way he used to visit me when I was pregnant. I couldn’t stand it any longer. So, I forged documents for her and smuggled her out of his house in the dead of night.”
Surprised, I let her words wash over me. It was because of Isauros that I was still alive… Yet she was also trying to kill me at the same time.
“When Alexei found out, his rage was immeasurable. Oh he made me pay.” Katarina’s eyes closed and she shuddered. “You have no idea how cruel he could be.
“But I comforted myself in the knowledge that he would never have what he wanted, I made it my life’s purpose to forget about both your mother and you after that,” she said, sneering. “Even though my dear Alexei divorced me and never remarried, I imagine he had other bastard children such as you. You were nothing but a speck of dirt under my nail and I hoped that you would never show up again. Yet here you are, attempting to be a royal.”
“I never asked for this,” I said softly, my heart breaking for what my mother must have gone through. “I didn’t even want to come here.”
Isauros stood, smoothing down her skirt. “Yet here you are. I should have slit your mother’s wrists for her.”
Horrified, I stared at the cold woman. What sort of person talked like that? Why did she feel the need to rub her words deep into the wounds I already had about my parents?
Isauros reached into the pocket of her jacket, producing a small silver object that she laid on the bedside table. “I told you: you knew nothing of the kind of man your father was, nor of the things he was capable of. I will offer you the same choice I gave your whore of a mother.”
With that, she walked out, shutting the door behind her. I waited until I could no longer hear her heels clicking down the hall before I let out a shuddering breath. That had to be the strangest conversation to date with the headmistress, but it had revealed things that I hadn’t wanted to hear. Things that I had denied up until now.
I looked over at the bedside table, all the blood draining from my face as I saw what Isauros has left me. It was the final nail in my coffin, a sign that she fully expected me to rid this world of myself so that she could finally be free of her bitterness:
A razor blade.
Chapter 20
Anna
I don’t know how long I sat there, staring at the blade.
A thousand thoughts ran through my mind, replaying every word that Isauros had said to me. I was the product of a horrible moment in my mother’s life, yet she had birthed me anyway. She had suffered through my father raping her, a bitter wife offering her suicide to ease her own conscience, and being chained to the wall by the one man my mother had likely trusted.
I didn’t know what to think.
Leaning back on the pillows, I fought the steady stream of tears that seemed to never stop. I had known that my father wasn’t a perfect man, but I had hoped that he might have found happiness in my mom. I thought that maybe she had broken through his façade and they had fallen in love.
Then I had come along, and my mom had fled to keep their love a secret.
But none of that fairy tale had been the truth. Instead she had endured horrible things at his hand, only to flee so that he wouldn’t kill me in the end.
Had she understood it all? I couldn’t help but wonder if my mom had gotten too deep in a game that she didn’t understand.
Heck, I was in a game that I didn’t understand. My understanding of the royals and how they functioned was fractured at best. Every day I learned something new, something disturbing about how they thought, about how they attempted to be the one on top in the end.
And after what Isauros said, I was starting to think that they might not be human sometimes.
Dragging a hand over my face, I stared at the razor blade on the table. What had my mother thought before she picked up that blade and attempted suicide?
Had she not seen the light at the end of the tunnel? I certainly didn’t.
Had she been scared of Isauros? I was.
Had she been scared of my father? I was, and he had been dead a long time.
What about her future? Had my mom thought about what she could provide for me with my father’s life hanging over her head?
To commit suicide was the ultimate act of simply giving up. I had never considered it before, never gotten to a point in my life that I didn’t think I could get through.
But now, I wasn’t so sure. I was the product of a rape. I had no friends save Sara. I couldn’t even bask the glory that I had found my family now that I knew my father had been a cruel, evil person and my mother had suffered so much that she couldn’t keep me.
More than that, the kings only wanted my birthright. No one cared about me or what I needed. No one even gave a shit if I woke in the morning or enjoyed my company.
No, I was just some crazy pawn in this weird life that these royals lived in. A life that I didn’t belong in.
It wasn’t going to matter if I did follow through with my father’s will. They would never accept me.
A bastard.
I was never going to fit in. I couldn’t relate to their rich-kid problems, couldn’t even talk the right way to keep the frowns at bay.
And I sure as hell couldn’t pull off the fact that I should be in their world because honestly, I didn’t.
And I couldn’t leave. Where would I go?
Would Isauros track me down and get rid of me anyway?
What if I was around Sara or had found someone to spend my life with when she did?
I would be putting them all in danger, something I couldn’t live with.
Biting my lip, I picked up the razor blade carefully, the light glinting off the sharpened edge. I could make it all go away. I could make myself go away and no one would have
to figure out who I was going to marry or if I was going to take the throne.
Poor little orphan American taking the sorry way out. I didn’t see it as sorry. I saw it as ending the pain that was blooming in my chest, finishing what should have happened before I was born.
If Isauros hadn’t stepped in and given my mom that paperwork, then I would have been killed by my father.
Before I had a chance to live.
I thought about everyone who would miss me. Sara, of course.
Would the kings? Likely they would see their ticket to a better future gone from their grip, but the memories of me would fade rather quickly.