Page 21 of Vengeance Becomes Her

When the carriage finally pulled away, Rhiannon walked as quickly as she could into the tree line that provided her some cover from prying eyes. There she was able to let her guard down and mourn her loss.

Her sobs came so hard and fast that she had to stop and kneel in the grass to let it all out. She let out a scream, raw and ragged, that pierced her own ears. She pounded her fists into the hard ground until they throbbed. She let out her hopes. She let out her disappointment. She let out the betrayal and the grief.

When the tears finally stopped flowing, she gulped down new breaths, rose to her feet, and set off back toward her house as if nothing had happened. The walk home was a blur of pain, exhaustion, and anger. But somewhere along the miles, she hardened.

She was done living at the mercy of men. Like she told the council, if they wouldn’t make Silas pay, then she would do so for herself.

Not just herself. All the rest of them too. She would do what they didn’t have the chance to do. She was going to make Silas pay. The rightness of it seeped all the way down to her bones, pounding through her veins, and moving her feet forward.

Despite how long it’d taken her to get home, she still felt more alive than she had in so long. Determined by her new purpose, she sat down and wrote an oath to herself— a vow of vengeance to bring Silas to an end by her hands.

She took a final steadying exhale and read the letter over once more. She had never felt so sure of anything as she clutched the parchment in her shaking grasp.

She knew what she needed to do, but how to go about it would be the challenge. Fortunately, she knewwhere to start.

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