Total pages in book: 208
Estimated words: 209645 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1048(@200wpm)___ 839(@250wpm)___ 699(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 209645 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1048(@200wpm)___ 839(@250wpm)___ 699(@300wpm)
He cocked his knees, rested his wrists on them and said quietly, “I must explain something to you.”
“Hmm?” she hummed, pretending not to care when he knew she cared a great deal.
She’d grown fond of him.
He had no idea how.
But she had.
“I do not wish to do it,” he went on.
She turned her head at that, and her voice was sharp to hide the hurt when she replied, “Then don’t.”
“I do not wish to do it, Ellie, because it is vastly unpleasant and the knowing of it is a burden I do not want you to bear.”
He saw the surprise light on her features before they softened.
Yes, as he was finding with Elena, she did not hold her pique. She did not make him work to gain her attentions after he’d (somewhat) spurned them these past days.
She opened immediately to him.
For she was Elena.
“I keep telling you, I’m stronger than you think,” she replied with the softness he saw in her face.
“You do not know, my lamb,” he replied.
“Tell me.”
His eyes moved over her beautiful face and his lips whispered, “I hate this.”
It was then, her expression grew alert, as did the air about her.
“By the goddess, Cassius,” she whispered back, twisting to him and reaching out to wrap her fingers around his thigh. “What is it? Tell me,” she urged again.
He looked to her hand, felt her touch hot as a brand, left it as it was because he liked the feel, then he turned his gaze to the slowly rolling brook.
“You know my mother is dead,” he said.
“Yes,” she replied.
“She died of a chill.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“That was what I was told.”
Elena did not reply, but the awareness he felt from her enhanced.
“It was a lie.”
Her hand spasmed on his leg.
“I remember, nights and nights of hearing the noises,” he shared. “I remember, lying abed, listening, fear paralyzing me, my mind a turmoil, not understanding, but knowing those noises were not right. I remember, the night before it happened, Trajan screaming in the middle of the night. I remember, the day after he did that, we were moved from our chambers to ones far away from my mother and father in another area of the castle. I remember, lying awake then, not able to sleep for fear of it happening without me there, as if my closeness to her was some balm. So I remember getting out of bed so I could go to their room. I wanted her to know I was close. I only intended to open the door enough she could see me and know I was there. But I saw them.”
“You saw them…what?” she prompted when he stopped talking.
He looked to her then. “I saw my father raping my mother.”
She swayed back, then forward, her hand clutching his thigh.
“Cassius.”
“I was six.”
And then he saw what he’d feared he’d see.
The dread in her face that he so wanted to protect her from.
“Cassius,” she breathed in horror.
“I knew, even then, it was not an act of love between partners. The violence. It was obscene.”
She moved closer, taking her hand from his thigh to press it to his chest.
“That was why Trajan was screaming,” he explained. “He told me, later, in whispers, for we knew better than to talk about it openly. He’d had enough. He was older. Understood what was happening. He’d gone to save her. To stop it. Father forced him out and had us moved.”
“I hate that for him,” she said. “I hate that for you.”
“She saw me. In the door.”
“Oh goddess,” she breathed.
“He was in the act, forcing himself upon her, and her face was twisted in pain, but nothing like how she looked when she saw that I saw. That pain…” He blew out a breath. “Ellie, there is no word to describe the depths of that pain.”
Elena moved again, pressing herself to his side, wrapping her arm around his stomach.
“She was dead the next morning,” he declared.
“No.” This came out almost silently.
“Killed herself, drowned herself in her bath. Not because she couldn’t take it, because she did not want her sons to see her like that. Not again. And she had no control over it, nowhere to turn, no one who would help her. It would happen again and again and again, and we would know it did.”
He closed his eyes, opened them and continued speaking.
“But she was already dead inside, Elena. I knew it. I saw it in her eyes that night. Because when she saw me, she knew she’d failed at giving us the only thing she could give us, keeping that from us.”
Elena trailed her hand up his chest, his neck, to cup his jaw.
“By the mercy of the goddess, that’s the most tragic thing I’ve ever heard.”
“I’m born of rape, Ellie.”
She dropped her head, resting her forehead against his shoulder.