Of Heirs and Havoc ✔️ | Of Crimes and Crowns Book 2

thirty - five: of bullets and bouquets

On a fun side note, go reread the last chapter, and read the first letter of each paragraph.

Music floated through the ballroom, drifting past snobbish courtiers and gossipy society matrons. Despite the hushed conversation, calming music, and beautiful surroundings, Victoria was far from at ease. Her palms were damp beneath the silk gloves she wore, her heart beating too fast in ways that had little to do with the waltz she had escaped from, and everything to do with the pair of cold eyes boring into her from across the room.

"You will never escape me, Victoria," Harold had whispered moments ago, his voice as soft as a lover's caress but as vile and threatening as the brush of a venomous snake against her skin. "No matter how you try... I have marked you as my little pawn."

No! she had wanted to shout, to scream. I am nobody's plaything, nobody's possession! But in this world, really, that was all that women were. Pretty little ornaments to be used and discarded, maneuvered for men's purposes, punished for having wills of their own. In the end, even her own brother had done that to her. Even her own brother had betrayed her--after all, if Blake had never been an advisor to the queen and if Victoria had not been important to him, the prince would never have abducted her for his own malicious intents. If women were not simply a series of levers for men to push in order to manipulate other men, then she would never have been so hurt, so broken, so damaged. So helplessly piecing herself back together.

And for all her dramatic speeches about liberty and independence--the world was a terrifying place to her. In a way that it had not been before the kidnapping. It was terrifying because she now knew the worst things men could do to one another; it was terrifying because she now knew that there were no monsters--only men who acted like them. Only men who created monsters to hide the fact that they themselves were demons.

Man. Monster. Where was the line drawn?

"Evening, Lady Victoria," a servant said, holding a bouquet of flowers--white heather and amaryllis tied with a green ribbon--out to her. "This was sent to you."

In a daze, she took the bundle out of instinct and held it to her nose for much the same reason. "They're lovely. Who sent them?"

She dropped the flowers when he pointed at Harold from across the room--when a serpent sprang out of the sweetly scented petals and made to bite her...

Victoria woke up with a start, her heart pounding even louder than it had been in her dream, and shook off her blankets. She yanked open the curtains with a clatter, not caring that it was a servant's duty, and saw that it was almost dawn, the morning sky streaked with blue and pink and white. Shaking and sweating, she tore at the laces of her shift and ran into the bathing chamber. Victoria threw her chemise to the tiled floor and sank into the cold bath that she had left untouched the previous night before she had fallen into a deep slumber. Now, she was grateful for the chill of the water, even as she leaned against it and found oils and petals on its surface. Recoiling in disgust, she began plucking them out of the water, the bright red of them seeming too garish--too reminiscent of blood. Too reminiscent of her nightmare.

It was an unbearable sight, and so she kept pushing them out, and by the time that they were all gone the bathtub was half-empty. Shivering and damp, her hair plastered to her head in thick curls, she shuddered, feeling the adrenaline and the exhilaration drain from her body. Until there was nothing left but an empty, exhausted shell of a girl. She could not even summon the energy to cry.

Crying is a waste of time, she reminded herself, clutching the bar of soap that was fortunately not scented with flowers and rubbing it over her limbs. Then she busied herself with picking up a towel from the stack by the tub and wrapping it around her chilled body.