After He Killed My Kin, I Rejected Him

Chapter 3

Dead silence hung over the main entrance of the old castle. You could've heard a pin drop.

Brando's face was ice-cold, fury roiling in his eyes so fiercely it practically turned the surrounding air to frost.

He stalked slowly over to Solenne, his thin lips spitting out words sharp enough to cut to the bone. "Are you trying to coerce me again with this little trick?"

Those words sliced through her chest like a shard of ice, and Solenne flinched hard from head to toe.

Before she could blink, a rough hand clamped down hard on her jaw. The grip was so brutal it felt like he was going to crush her bone to powder.

Brando forced her to lift her head and meet his gaze, every bit of loathing and coldness in his eyes laid bare, no pretense left to hide it.

"After everything that's happened, you still think the Rivington family can push me around?"

Hatred and contempt tangled together into the sharpest of thorns, stabbing straight into her heart until it was a bleeding, mangled mess.

She'd knelt down in public, sure, maybe there was a tiny part of her that had hoped to pressure him, but she'd had no other choice. For her sister, for the unborn baby her sister carried, for the last remaining members of the Rivington family, she'd had to throw every last scrap of her pride in the dirt.

Brando abruptly let go of her jaw, only to twist his fingers around her slender wrist. His grip was harsh and unforgiving, yanking her roughly up off the ground.

Solenne had no strength left in her at all. She was as unresisting as a puppet, letting him drag her along without putting up even the smallest fight.

Brando's brows twitched, almost unnoticeably, a flicker of surprise crossing his mind.

'When had she gotten so thin, so light?'

The thought vanished as fast as it had come, swallowed whole by the rage sweeping back through him again. He didn't care that she was stumbling and tripping over her own feet, looking completely disheveled. He just hauled her straight back into the courtyard.

The second they stepped over the threshold, he flung her away like trash.

Solenne staggered backward, barely catching herself before she slammed into the stone paving.

"From today on, stay put and behave yourself. Don't go out making a fool of yourself ever again."

When she saw him turn to leave, Solenne pushed past the weakness seeping into every bone in her body and darted forward, grabbing hold of his sleeve.

Brando wrenched his arm away hard, disgust practically pouring out of his eyes in waves.

A thousand tiny, stabbing pains exploded in her chest and spread through her whole body, but she refused to let go.

She begged, her voice rough and cracking, "I know you hate me. You hate that my grandfather forced you to marry me, you hate that the Rivington family drove Olivia away.

"Take all of that anger out on me, all of it. My sister is pregnant, she's done nothing wrong. Please, spare her and her husband's family! I'll apologize to Olivia, make whatever amends she wants. I'll even be her maid, her servant, whatever she wants, I'll do it willingly!"

A coppery, burning taste rose in her throat, but she bit down hard on the pain, staring up at the man before her with abject humility in her eyes.

Brando paused mid-step, glancing down at her pathetic, humbled state with unmasked scorn in his gaze.

"The famed noble lady of the House Rivington, celebrated by the entire world? All that so-called pride and dignity you were supposed to have? Amounts to nothing more than this.

"If every last member of the Rivington family had been this quick to grovel and beg, you never would have ended up with your entire family wiped out."

Solenne dug her fingernails so hard into her palm she broke skin, the sharp stinging nothing compared to a single fraction of the agony tearing through her chest.

Brando threw her a cold, indifferent glance and snapped two ice-cold words, "Follow me."

*****

Rosemere Wing was Olivia's private quarters in the old castle.

Four years into their marriage, Solenne, Brando's rightful duchess, had never once set foot in the courtyard where he usually resided. The space was bright, warm, and bursting with blooming flowers, a world away from the cold, gloomy austerity that hung over the rest of the castle.

An intricately carved swing hung in the middle of the courtyard, and Olivia sat on it gracefully, draped in a soft, pale dress.

The second she spotted Brando returning, she stood up quickly, eyes crinkling into a soft smile as she hurried over to greet him. "Brando, you're back."

Every trace of icy hostility melted off Brando's face in an instant. He took her hand gently, his voice soft and doting in a way Solenne had never once been on the receiving end of. "The doctor told you to stay in bed and rest. What are you doing out here in the wind?"

Solenne's chest clenched so tight she could barely breathe, a wave of bitter, searing pain flooded her entire body.

This small, ordinary display of affection was the very thing she had pined after for four long years, a distant dream she had never even gotten close to touching.

Olivia smiled softly, turning to look at the frozen, rigid Solenne standing off to the side, her eyes wide with feigned, innocent confusion.

"What brings you here, sister?"

Brando's tone was cold and detached, every word a deliberate slap to the face. "She knows she's wronged you. Starting today, she's volunteered to be your personal maid, to wait on you hand and foot."

That one offhand comment, paired with Olivia's wide, falsely gentle, startled gaze, shredded the last of Solenne's dignity to tatters.

When she just stood there frozen, Brando's face clouded over with cold fury, and he snapped at her sharply, "Step forward and greet Lady Olivia properly."

Solenne's whole body went ice cold, her limbs heavy and stiff as a corpse. She moved forward like a soulless husk, forcing a faint, hoarse whisper out of her parched, raw throat.

"Maid Solenne greets Lady Olivia."

That one short sentence drained every last ounce of her strength, shattering the final scrap of her dignity into dust.

Olivia smiled sweetly, her voice soft as silk, but every word cut straight to the bone. "I've long heard your piano skills are the finest in the entire kingdom, sister. Would you mind playing a love song for the Duke and me?"

Solenne snapped her head up, her face as white as a sheet, her eyes brimming with humiliation and disbelief.

Olivia was obviously making her play the harp with her own two hands to sing praises of her and Brando's love, forcing her to trample the last tattered remains of her own heart underfoot.

Brando frowned impatiently and barked a cold order, "Someone bring the harp. Let her play for Olivia's amusement."

The coppery tang of blood rose thick and hot in her throat, but Solenne bit down so hard on her jaw her teeth ached, fighting through the searing agony in her bones and the raw ache in her chest to keep from breaking down in front of them.

The servants quickly carried over an ornate European-style harp and set it up just so.

Solenne sat down slowly, her fingers brushing lightly over the strings. Clear, ethereal notes drifted out, each trembling note heavy with a grief too deep to put into words.

Olivia curled up closer in Brando's arms and murmured softly, "Brando, sister plays so beautifully. If I could listen to this all night while I sleep, I'd sleep like a baby, so warm and relaxed."

Brando gazed down at the woman in his arms, his tone so indulgent it was cruel. "If you like it, I'll make her play all night. No breaks, no sleep."

With that, he wrapped an arm around Olivia and turned to head inside the house.

Night fell thick and heavy. The house glowed with warm, bright light, and the paper window panes clearly showed the shadow of the two locked in each other's arms, stabbing Solenne's eyes until they burned and ached.

She forced her tears back, her fingers never stopping their movement over the strings. Every pluck sent a jolt of searing pain lancing through both her torn fingertips and her chest.

For her sister, for the baby growing in her own belly, she had to push through every last humiliation. She had to hold on.

She played nonstop all night. The strings rubbed again and again against her soft fingertips, slicing the skin open bit by bit. Tiny beads of blood seeped out steadily, staining the strings little by little, until streaks of dark, crusted red spread across the entire body of the harp.

No one knew how she was bleeding and screaming on the inside, no one cared how desperate and broken she was. Her pain was nothing more than a tiny, trivial speck in this warm, loving courtyard.

*****

When the first faint streaks of dawn painted the sky the next day, the faltering, hoarse harp notes still drifted through the courtyard, unbroken.

Brando straightened his formal attire and stepped slowly out of the room. The second he stepped into the courtyard, he froze dead in his tracks.

Bathed in the morning light, Solenne sat upright before the harp, her face as white as a sheet, not a trace of color left on her cheeks. Her thin back stayed ramrod straight, like a stubborn lone pine holding its ground through a howling snowstorm.

The harp in front of her was caked in dried, crusted blood. The vivid, scarlet stains blazed so bright they hurt the eye, completely obscuring the instrument's original carved patterns.

Her ten fingers were crisscrossed with cuts, oozing fresh blood. All feeling had long gone numb in them, yet she still kept plucking at the strings in stiff, mechanical motions.

A sharp, piercing snap split the quiet air. The last remaining string had snapped clean in two, drawing a final, brutal close to the entire night of gut-wrenching sorrow.

Solenne stared blankly at the broken string for a long, heavy beat. Then she slowly lifted her eyes to look at Brando standing a short distance away.

Her voice was flat and lifeless, not a single flicker of emotion in it. "Your Grace. I hope the music I played all night was up to your standards?"

The total, dead emptiness in her eyes, like a barren wasteland stripped of every last spark of life, made Brando's heart lurch hard for no reason he could name. A twinge of uncharacteristic panic flared in his chest.

The next second, Solenne pitched forward violently, shaken by a violent, hacking cough.

A gush of bright red blood burst from her lips, splattering across the stone ground before her in a vivid, jarring stain.

The world went black in front of her eyes, and she pitched forward and crumpled heavily to the ground.