Page 3 of Crown of Steel

They have a point. I mean, until four days ago, I lived in the 30, one of the biggestcitésof Nîmes. Until four days ago, I didn’t want to move out of the pigsty Dad and I lived in. It didn’t matter that I owed my tormented mind to the place I called home. Didn’t matter thathomehad turned me into a slave of fear. Of agony. Like a virus seizing my muscles, freezing my heart.Homeis my penance. My shame and my hurt are mine, and mine alone, to bear. I won’t let anyone see these hidden parts of me.

Not my dad, the source of so much destruction. Oh, how I hate and love him in equal measure.

Not my mother, who claims that leaving me was her biggest regret in life.

And certainly not the Deveraux twins,my new stepbrothers.

Arthur’s still looking at me, his charcoal eyes unyielding. Silently challenging me to unravel, to do something stupid.

“It’s now time for the vows.”

The words yank me out of my reverie and back toward the scene currently dominated by my mother and her husband-to-be, one of the wealthiest men in the country. The way they smile at each other, with pure adoration—it’s nauseating.

My stomach churns. My anger, currently repressed, but dangerously close to the surface, sits heavily on my chest.

Thirteen years I lived without her. Thirteen years I lived in that fucking pigsty with Dad until she decided she wanted to be a mother, after all. My chest tightens thinking about the day she showed up like some Princess Charming to get me away from Dad and save me from the poverty she’d abandoned me in when I was just a fucking kid.

Thirteen fucking years too late.

My future is already carved out in stone, waiting for me at the doorstep. I have no interest in altering that future. Not anymore. I’ll be eighteen soon and the plan had been to leave my past behind. Walk away from it all and build a new life somewhere far away.

But the weight of guilt is heavy in the pit of my stomach today. Because of Dad.

When the judge decided four days ago that it was in my best interest to go home with my mother, I should have said no.No!But I couldn’t, my throat sealed with invisible glue. Because somewhere deep inside of me, I was relieved. It scared the shit out of me, but it was true. Even after thirteen years I couldn’t escape the flicker of joy that she hadn’t forgotten me.

After all these years of wondering, I now knew. I used to wonder if she would recognize me if she ever saw me again. After all, I’m no longer the toddler she left behind. Now that she’s here, the shame of knowing that what she got, instead, was a pathetic, older version of that sweet little boy is a bitter pill to swallow.

My eyes shift to the twins. Why would she want me when she can have the twins? They’re more suited to her: Sophisticated. Educated. Rich.

Me, I’m quite the opposite. Some days I’m too scared to walk into the the light, other days I’m afraid of that same darkness and the punishment that lurks there.

Over the past few days I’ve locked myself up in my new bedroom, staring at the bare walls, longing for my iron bars. Forhome.

It’s ludicrous, I know that. But it’s easier to look back to the comforting burn than look ahead of the unreliable sting.

“I finally got you out of here, chéri. Finally got you back with maman. You’re safe now.”

She’s wrong.

I don’t belong here.This suit feels too stiff, my curls a slick, itchy mess.

I don’t belong here.It’s hot and crowded and I don’t know these people around me.

I don’t—

Something inside me snaps.

“I don’t want to be here.” A breeze of whispered words, their implication stifling. No one has asked me whatIwanted.

So what do you want?

I want to get out of here.

The material of my suit is surprisingly compliant as it stretches around my muscles. Because I run. The wooden folding chair, decorated with red flowers, lands with a muffledthud into the grass when I take off. I ignore the gasps around me as I rush down the aisle, but then—

Someone islaughing. A raspy chuckle that thunders through my ears. The sound of disapproval. The sound makes me run even faster in my attempt to get the fuck out of here.

I should never have let them take me. Damn them, I just want to go home.

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