Page 17 of Salt in the Wound
“Honeysuckle,” Mark said softly. “My grandmother told me once that it was the symbol of a good marriage.”
I stared at it, at the rubies that were dark in the low light of the restaurant, at the twisted vines. It was the most unusual ring I’d ever seen.
It was also the most beautiful.
“Thank you,” I whispered. I didn’t know what else to say, because it was slamming into me just then, in a way that all the plans and negotiations could never have done before.
I had a ring on my finger.
I was getting married.
“Tomorrow,” Mark said, his voice twisted with promise. “We will begin.”
six
We did not begin. Mark was called back to DC on business later that night and sent his regrets via text message.
In fact, he couldn’t make it up to Manhattan for another eight weeks, which should have meant a glorious reprieve while I started attending Columbia, but only meant my nerves felt scraped raw every day I didn’t hear from him. Would it be tonight that I would be summoned? Tomorrow? The day after that?
During classes, during karate, and during my morning and evening prayers. It was like being haunted, but this was no ghost from the past. This was my future, haunting me.
Mark did send me reading materials, however—a link to a digital folder attached to a short email.
Isolde, you may find these useful in supporting our charade. I will happily answer any questions you have.
Yours faithfully,
Mark Trevena
I opened the email while sitting in the cavernous reading room of one of Columbia’s libraries. Chandeliers hung above me, and all around me were sighs and echoes and the soft flutter of turning pages. For a long moment, regret was an axe splitting me in half.
I could be just like everyone else in here, my biggest problem some upcoming paper, my highest stakes a GPA no one outside of the world of academia would ever care about. I could have the rest of my life unspooling in front of me, a beckoning road. I could have choices and possibilities and mistakes to make.
But I was spoken for, my future was spoken for, and instead of fretting over tests or thinking of cute classmates, I was worried about pretending to be a submissive for a fiancé I didn’t want, all while trying to use said fiancé to help my father’s bank so that I couldreallyhelp my uncle protect the Church. It was a tangle of pretense that I already felt anchored and cinched by. Strangled by.
And it had barely even started.
I closed my eyes for a minute, pushing my fear and my anger back down into my stomach.I would make it through this. I had made it through every task that had ever been set to me; how could I fail when Mortimer had made sure I knew how important this was?
I opened my eyes, and making sure no one had a good sightline on my laptop, I clicked the link and began studying kink like it was a class I needed to graduate.
* * *
It wasthe first truly cold day of the school year when Mark texted me.
I’ll be in the city next week. I presume the reading material was sufficient?
I paused as I read his message, the bracing wind seeking my skin through my scarf. Other students brushed past me as I stood on the plaza in the middle of campus; it was the beginning of December and the end-of-semester desperation had taken hold. I too had been mildly stressed about my final projects and exams, but Mark’s text wiped that all away. There now was something much larger to preoccupy my thoughts.
It was.
And then I almost laughed at the absurdity of it all.Sufficient. Like I’d been reading up on how to change a doorknob or make raspberry jam.
I think I understand enough to play the part.
You are a good student. I believe it.
I was a good student. I’d read every word of what he’d sent me, and I could be tested on it, quizzed, cross-examined. I now knew the theory of dominance and submission, the biological responses to pain, pleasure, and deprivation, and the different methods to administer each. I knew more about Mark’s club now too—a glass citadel by the water named Lyonesse. It had just opened a couple of years ago, and was already famed for its exclusivity and utter, utter secrecy. People flew from around the world to go there.
