Total pages in book: 197
Estimated words: 186911 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186911 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
I opened my mouth—to give them reassurance. Tell them everything would be okay. Say that their worry was silly.
Nothing came out.
A war wife. The polite, official term for what I would be. The actual term. The one that would be yelled at me in the streets. Branded in the stares I received in the marketplace. Hissed at me as I descended back staircases and crept out of darkened rooms.
Was whore.
Decades after King Kazimir decreed that all women must have their magic bound and rendered unusable by age ten, his son set down another decree. The men who now had to fight alone on the battlefield deserved comfort in the long months and years they spent far from home. They deserved a body to warm their bedrolls, soothe their aches, and sweeten their nights.
Naturally, their actual wives had to stay home and fulfill the only role still available to them in a magical society—raising the next generation of sons to fight and daughters to bear them. Thus, a contingent of women would be sent along with the regiments. The war wives.
Over the years, the soldiers would make more demands of their king—binding the chains tighter around women. A war wife could not be claimed by one man. They were to be shared among whoever wanted them. War wives were not only for soldiers. Nobles and high-powered fae could make use of them how they wished. A noble can take a war wife into their home, imprisoning them with the man who now owned her, and his true wife who hated her. And the law that they fought the hardest for—any children that resulted from their union would be her responsibility.
The men were required to do no more than pay for their sons’ education. But if Jaclan went without food, clothing, and a roof over his head, Xandros Waterdancer was not obligated to do anything about it. A sentiment he proved when we went without all three, and I begged him to help the twins—his children—at the very least. He had me thrown away from the carriage and continued on to his grand manor on the hill.
In the end, when a war wife got too old, when they had too many children, when the sickness took them as it would take every woman of Lyrica, all that was left for a war wife... all that would be left for me was to lie ill and broken in a little room, while my children cried outside—covering their ears.
I opened my mouth to tell my siblings that if I survived the beastly men who slaughtered our soldiers in droves, the life that awaited me afterward was nothing to fear...
...and a sob tore from my throat.
I cried—squeezing them tighter than they squeezed me. I had finally done it.
I ran out of lies.
Chapter Two
“Let’s go, girl.”
Kirwan walked out of my house, his presence imposing and out of place amid our humble home. He tossed a weighty coin purse at Meliora—his final insult upon every exit. Making us take the payments for his time with our mother, even though all payments are supposed to go through the broker.
This is the man to whom you’ll abandon your mother, brother, and sisters.
My fists balled. No.
“No,” I rasped, getting to my feet and taking the children with me. “No crying. I will be back. Nothing will happen to me. I have been there every day since each of you were born. That will never change, faywens.” I meant it with everything in me. “I’ll return.”
Kirwan snatched my wrist, yanking me along.
“I promise.”
Meliora, Jaclan, and Gisela didn’t speak as I was loaded into the carriage. Adan set off before my back hit the cushion, not allowing me a second’s linger in my home. We left Gutter Galley—my faywens becoming still, lonely specks in the distance.
The further we trotted from the Galley, the more noise crowded into the darkened space. Lyrica passed through the sliver in the curtain, warm and alive with the preparations for the royal wedding. The coming faeriken brought fear, but they also brought hope. The hope that the love of a princess and foreign king would save our home and our souls.
I turned away, scooting as far away from Kirwan as the carriage would let me. Shadows danced on the curves and lines of his face, concealing him as well as the unmarked carriage. Kirwan tried to hide his frequent comings and goings from my mother’s hut. Not out of shame. The man did not feel such a thing. And not out of respect to his wife. Him respecting any woman was the one skill this master of magic did not master.
He did it to hide his obsession. It wouldn’t do for the kingdom to know that Lord Dawnbreaker’s weakness was a thin, frail war wife from Gutter Galley.