Page 36 of Gilded Shackles
"It's already crushing my organs," I mutter.
The seamstress gives me an apologetic look before following orders. I gasp as another inch of my ability to breathe disappears.
"Beauty requires sacrifice," my mother says, like she's reciting from a Victorian handbook on How to Torture Your Daughter.
"And all I do is sacrifice," I say under my breath.
Her eyes flash to mine. "What was that?"
"Nothing." I fix my gaze on the ceiling, counting the crystal teardrops in the chandelier.
She gives me the look. The one that saysdon't embarrass me.
"If you had behaved yourself," my mother says, motioning at the women to bring out my veil, "you wouldn't be in this position."
"What was so wrong with wanting one night to myself out of my cage?" My voice comes out tight because if I let it slip, I'll scream. "One night. One."
"I knew it would bring you trouble."
Something snaps in me like a wire pulled too long.
"Are you seriously blaming me? Not the fact that you kept me locked up like a prisoner?"
"Enough." She cuts in sharp, like she's scolding a child, not acknowledging a grown woman. In that moment, I realize she does not, for even a second, think she is wrong.
And that's when I say what I mean, for once in my goddamn life.
"You locked a little girl in a tower for twenty-six years and you're surprised she set it on fire the first chance she got?"
Her face turns to an inferno of rage, eyes blazing wide. "Just get through today without yapping that mouth of yours you think is so smart. Look pretty, stay quiet. That's all you're good at."
Her words land like little needles and tears well in my eyes. Idon't know what I was expecting on my wedding day. But that wasn't it.
I swallow any more words, humiliated enough already.
She snatches the garter from the table. “Lift your leg.”
“I can do it.”
Her hand feels like a manacle on my wrist.
I do what she wants. She slides it up my thigh and I wince when her nails dig in. But I don’t show any reaction. I won’t give her the pleasure.
"Come," she says, motioning to the door. "Hold your head up. You are a Donovan."
And I follow, because Mother succeeded in doing what she does best: crushing my spirit with surgical precision and walking away like she barely noticed the mess. But every step toward those chapel doors, my blood starts to boil under my skin.
I'm not calm.
I'm fuming.
I know I'm meant to love my mother, and some broken part of me still does. She raised me. Did everything she thought was right.
But she also ruined me. She never trusted me to live, choose, or want anything for myself. Even now, even in this, the matter of who I'll spend my life with isn't mine to decide.
It could have been so much worse than Nikolai. My soon-to-be husband isn't a fairy tale come true, and he's a devil indisguise. But I have a voice around him. That's more than Egor would have allowed.
Something inside me hardens completely.
