Page 87 of The Gilded Survivor

Crossing to my bed, I nestled atop the covers and read. When I opened the news source, I found a list of article after article about La Chica Dorada.

Red is out, Gold is in

Here are our top five selections of husbands for Renata Valarde, AKA La Chica Dorada.

Looking to bet on the next tournament? Allow us to introduce you to this year’s favorite: Renata

I wondered what criticisms would be painted through the words written about me by people I’d never met, how I would look in photos taken of me by cameras I couldn’t remember.

Then I saw a title too good to pass over.

Canciller Duarte weighs-in on rumors about La Chica Dorada descending from the royal family.

After swallowing hard, I clicked. My heart was racing, so I ended up skimming most of it. That is, until I got to the very end.

“Renata Valarde is an interesting girl, to be sure, and she looks decent when someone paints her up. But, the… royal features? They aren’t there. One look at her would dissuade anyone from considering her a relative of Reina Lucia, may she rest in peace.”

I could just see the interviewer nodding eagerly. My cheeks burned, and I clicked away and curiously selected the feature for messages.

It was empty.

And suddenly, the sadness returned. It mixed with the nervousness to create a large hollow cavern gaping right in the middle of me. Embarrassment was also floating somewhere along the surface of my thoughts. The chancellor had told someone he thought the best evidence for royal blood was my ugly face. I was hardened, so it didn’t hurt me the same way it would’ve years ago, but I hated the way that people publicly pitted me against the looks of other women. Why did it always come back to that? Was beauty truly the most important thing?

It served as a reminder that I did not belong in a world where women didn’t even let their husbands see their faces without makeup. I should have been discouraged.

And yet, when I looked back at the docufone, there was a glimmer of potential. Though, rationally, I knew that a romance with a man I didn’t even know the name of was foolish, I would take it as a substitute for friendship. It would mean increased power over my own life.

Marriage was relentlessly beaten into my thoughts. If I felt this way after a month, how did the others feel after an entire childhood? In one book Ana had given me, it laid out details describing the Canciller-approved committee, the Marriage Council, which assigned and approved matches. It wasn’t uncommon that a couple would submit for approval, only to be rejected and placed with someone else. Another lecture explained that most matches would come from my very own group of competitors.

Something had told me many times that the Canciller was likely planning my match already. Lining up my future like a good little pawn.

My stomach roiled.

I put the docufone on my desk and went for a walk.

Chapter33

Isaac Was A Way Out

Amelancholy weight carried itself with me for the rest of the day. I had a fear that the docufone had been sent by a powerful, fat Élite with the expectations I would reciprocate somehow.

“You’ve gone all sad again. ¿Qué tienes?” Isaac huffed alongside me as we jogged together on the track in the training center.

I managed a smile between measured breaths and shook my head. He had arrived unusually playful today, while I was quiet and pensive in a way that I rarely was around him. “Today a… gift arrived for me.”

Isaac laughed. “You are upset about a gift, Renata?”

We rounded another curve, and I let the rhythmic sound of our pounding feet draw me away from all other concerns. When he said it like that, I sounded capricious and vain. But he didn’t know the last several hours were spent silently analyzing how dangerous that gift could be, and my conclusions was I had every right to be sad if my future included a superfluous, inessential, unnecessary husband.

Instead of responding, I spiraled away within my mind, trying to make sense of the guilt I felt for being catapulted into a life filled with garish luxuries, impractical traditions and fastidious rules.

Isaac filled the space where my response should have been. “Well, underneath the sadness, were you at least excited to get a new docufone?”

I stopped right in my tracks, leaving Isaac to jog ahead of me. He halted as well a meter or two ahead and turned around. Isaac was handsome, in the perfect way that reminded me of marble statues and oil paintings. His tan cheeks were pinkish from the exercise, and his mouth had fallen out of the normal smirk he wore from day to day, like an acorn might fall to the ground in late summer.

“What did you say?” My eyebrows drew together as I wondered how inLa Dama’s Black Slopeshe knew I had received a new docufone.

He raised an eyebrow, accentuating the severe beauty of his chiseled features. “I was trying to ask you about your new docufone and why it makes you sad.”

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