Spearcrest Saints by Aurora Reed EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: Aurora Reed
- Language: English
- Genre: New Adult & College Romance
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
White Rook
Theodora
MY VOICE IS LOCKED inside my chest, and my father holds the key.
It’s always that way when he’s around, although he’s not around much. I
see him maybe once or twice every few years. He’s a busy man, and he
lives in Russia. He’s involved in politics, though I’m sure he’s not a
politician. I don’t know because he never talks about work. He never talks
about much at all.
And since I’m being educated in England, where I live with my mother
and grandmother in their ancestral home, my father and I rarely see each
other.
Sometimes, I wish I saw him more often. Part of me is just a little girl
who wishes her dad would spend time with her and hold her when she’s sad
or scared.
Most of the time, I wish I never saw him at all.
When he comes to visit, my father always brings gifts. Perfect gifts for
perfect little girls. Dolls, dresses, jewellery, all packaged beautifully in
pastel paper the colour of sugared almonds, bound with thick satin ribbons.
The receiving of the gifts is a ritual: I must take the box and thank him, I
must sit at his feet in the parlour and slowly pull on the ribbon to undo the
bow. I must lift the lid and delicately set it aside, then push aside the tissue
paper, which crinkles like desiccated skin underneath my fingertips.
Finally, I must lift the gift from its pastel coffin and widen my eyes and
say, “Thank you, Papa.”
That’s the hardest part. Because during the entire ritual, my voice is a
marble egg in my throat, suffocating me.
It happens every time my father is near, and his dark eyes are fixed on
me, and his hard face is set in that permanent scowl of his. All it would take
is a smile from him for the egg to melt and my voice to become my own
again.
But my father never smiles.
So I swallow and swallow, trying to shift the marble egg—it doesn’t. It
never does. When I speak, my voice comes out strangled and warbling, like
I’m about to cry.
Except that crying isn’t allowed. Crying would draw my father’s wrath as
suddenly as the awakening of an angry god. Crying would shatter the ritual,
which would end suddenly.
“I must accept that God did not give me a son,” my father would say.
“But I refuse to accept that God would give me such a weak child.”
There lies the key to my father’s dissatisfaction. He only ever had one
child with my mother, and he’s a pious man, too pious for divorce or affairs
—so I am his only child.
Not a son, strong and bold and proud. But a scared, weak little girl who
can hardly bring herself to speak without weeping.
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