Page 51 of Liar's Heart
I fight. I fight so hard, but my limbs are growing heavier and heavier, and my eyelids long to close. Alec is standing over me now, looking down with his hands still in his pockets. I need to not let him out of my sight. I need to find Ender. But all the fight I have left in me isn’t enough anymore, and everything goes black.
The air is cold.The air is cold, and my head fucking hurts, so maybe it’s not such a bad thing that it’s so cold in here. Shit, my head hasn’t felt like this since the morning after the wedding. I slept like the dead, but it hit me like a… That’s when the memories start coming back into focus. Coming home. Alec. Being drugged. Not knowing where Ender is.
My eyelids feel like they’re glued shut. I raise a hand to clear the sleep away from them, only to realize it’s heavy. Not heavy from exhaustion either. It’s weighed down by something. Something cold and unyielding circles my wrist; the swing of something burdensome hanging from it shifts the metal as I move. Manacles? I’m in chains. But where?
Rubbing at my eyes, I hear a familiar voice. “Good. You’re awake. I was getting tired of waiting.”
I force my eyes open, not surprised at all to find my father-in-law standing next to the bed I’m in. Wait. I remember this bed. Looking around, trying to hide my rising panic, I take in the cold stone walls of the Binding Chamber. Its basic configuration is unchanged, but many of the finer touches are missing or moved to the sitting area. The space nolonger resembles a honeymoon suite but a luxury prison cell, rose-gold chains and all.
I push to sit upright and feel metal cutting into my ankles. Of course. Shifting to rest against the headboard, I pull my legs into me and test how much length I have on the chains. Not a ton. I don’t think I could get out of the bed, but I have enough room to move freely on top of it. Maybe enough to wrap around Alec’s neck and?—
“You might want to drink some water,” Alec says as he nods at the side table next to me. There are three bottles of water and a plate of crackers there. “They’re not drugged, if you’re wondering. No need. That was just to get you down here and keep you comfortable while they took this out.” He pulls a hand out of his pocket and shows me a thin, white rectangle roughly the size and shape of a matchstick. “Did you know your fertility returns immediately once you remove a contraceptive implant?”
It’s then that I realize my arm is stinging right where that little piece of plastic should be under my skin. I look down and see that it’s bandaged, covered with gauze instead of the bandage I had on it earlier.
“Of course,” Alec continues, “it’s not such a fast turnaround with these things.” Reaching back into his pocket, he produces a small, white plastic T. My missing IUD. “You’re still well within the timeframe it could take for your fertility to be restored, which I was generously going to allow you to wait out on your own, but it seems that’s not an option anymore.” He’s frowning, his lips slightly downturned, like this is horribly inconvenient for him.
Grabbing a bottle of water, I open it and take a few careful sips, mindful that my stomach might riot. When that stays down, I clear my throat. My voice still comes out grainy. “So, what? You want grandchildren this badly?”
He laughs, a cold sound that bounces off the stone walls. “Grandchildren? Mrs. Sinclair, have you ever noticed thatmany society families only have one child? Or, at least one male child? Why do you think that is?”
He pauses, waiting for me to actually answer him. “Because of arranged marriages? No one liked each other enough to bother after they’d secured an heir?”
That smile returns, and his teeth look downright malicious. “Not quite. You see, when two families join in marriage, they are permanently enmeshed by Society law, yes?” He demonstrates his point by taking his hands and interlocking his fingers as he clasps them together like a zipper. I nod. “What’s one is the other’s, all communal property of both lines.” He looks at me, waiting for acknowledgment that I’m following, so I nod again. “That same law applies to everything within a family, not just marital assets. So when your boyfriend bought you out from under me and then transferred your bridal contract to my son, the council saw no issue. Technically, there’s no difference between you marrying me or my son as far as they were concerned. As long as you married into the Sinclair family, the result was the same. The transfer stood. And if I attempted to do anything to interfere with Ender executing his contract, I could expect to have my heart find itself outside of my body as a result.
“It’s why most families stop at one son. If you have two and one marries, his bride becomes part of the family line. She’s communal property, so to speak. Now, most people wouldn’t step on toes like that, especially those who are already married. But it’s happened enough where an unmarried brother decides to take advantage of that particular law, whether or not his brother and sister-in-law are agreeable. More often than not, one brother ends up dead, and the surviving heir claims his prize. But there are checks and balances, guidelines that help keep everything from turning into an all-out bloodbath. The council will usually turn their head the other way for one such murder, but two? Not even being part of the Pantheon can help you there.”
He lets his words sink in, my brain desperately scrambling to finish dissipating the fog. Then I realize what he's saying. “You can't kill Ender because he'd be your second. That's why you couldn't interfere.”
Alec nods. “I had a brother. Thomas. Older than me by a few years. We were never particularly close. He wasn’t cut out for the family business the way I was.
“When we were in our early twenties, a bridal contract came across his desk. A young woman whose family had harbored fugitives from Ferrymen. Her parents were dead, but the debt still wasn't satisfied. Charon had first dibs since the debt was against him, and my brother requested my father let him claim her.”
I breathe the word more than I speak it, like if I say it too loudly, I'll awaken her ghost. “Elora.”
He nods. “Elora and Thomas married, satisfying her family's debt and strengthening our family line. But Thomas wasn’t well-suited for marriage. He had all these silly notions about love and trust. Respect. He took his time wooing his new bride, trying to get her to fall in love with him. It was months before he actually bedded her.” I push down the smile that wants to appear. He sounds so much like Ender.
“I had my opinions, of course, but I mostly kept them to myself. On the rare occasion I did say something, he wouldn’t listen, saying one day I’d meet someone who would make me understand, someone who would change my whole worldview. I sincerely doubted that, but it was clear that he bought into his own bullshit based on his behavior. Things remained much like they’d always been for a while. Thomas focused on his wife and the more business-related pursuits of our family, while I focused on our true legacy, Charon. It mostly worked until our father died.
“His passing wasn’t exactly expected, but in this line of work, it’s never really a surprise, so Thomas and I had a plan for when the time came for us to inherit: I would take the titleof Charon, and he would take lead on our business dealings with me as a silent partner. It’s what we had already been doing. It should have worked.
“Except Thomas had a secret. He’d been thinking, he said, about all the ways the Society controls us. Holds us indebted to it and at its mercy. That it’s not sustainable. That it’s not the kind of world he wants to raise his child in.”
Alec pointedly looks at me before continuing. “Elora was pregnant, something they hadn’t announced yet due to the delicate nature of the first trimester. But he said impending fatherhood really made him question if this life was what he wanted for his child. If it was the legacy he wanted to pass on. Thomas said no, it wasn’t, but knew better than to think there was a way out. Instead, he decided that if the system was inescapable, he had to change it from the inside. By taking the title of Charon and using his position ‘for good.’”
My heart hits the bottom of my stomach. “Ender isn’t yours,” I whisper.
Alec smirks. “Oh, he’s mine. In every way that matters. I’m on his birth certificate. He’s been my son since before he was born by Society law. I made that boy in my image, but biologically? No. He’s my nephew and stepson.”
I bring the bottle of water back up to my lips, taking a few sips while thinking over what he’s said. Alec picks up the plate of crackers and holds them out to me. “Here. You were out for quite a while. If you can keep some of these down, I’ll send for something more substantial.”
I grab three crackers off the plate, eyeing him warily. “Thank you. That’s… kind of you.”
He smiles at me and sets the plate back down. “Manners will get you far, Merrick. Remember that. It’s not entirely altruistic on my part though. We need to keep your strength up.”
My blood runs cold, but I force myself to say the words toget to the point he’s been trying to make this whole time. “For the pregnancy.”
That lupine smile unfurls again. “You really are a clever little fox.” I’m going to be sick.
