30. Betrothed

Betrothed

Rose

“You shouldn’t wear your hair like that,” Tristan snaps. I flinch back at the venom on his tongue. My hair is down in ringlets, except for the sides which are pinned up the way I wore it at the festival. The way my mater wore hers. I wasn’t quite daring enough to wear it the way the beautiful blonde woman had at the festival, down and free.

“You don’t like it?” My gut sinks. I should have asked him how to wear it. I should have known how much it meant to meet his familia. I’d agonized for hours over my dress and hair.

And I’d chosen wrong.

“It’s common. Plebeian,” he spits.

I don’t know what to say. I am a plebeian. I look down at the flagstones in his familia’s garden. The citrus and grapes around us fill the air with a heady fragrance. The twins have both departed, casting us in the indigo of twilight.

I’m already making mistakes.

“Did you hear me, Rose?” Tristan grabs my upper arm, squeezing tightly. I bite my lip to keep from crying out, more with surprise than pain, at first.

“Yes, Tristan,” I say.

“And?” He demands. He draws me closer, and I conceal a wince as his grip neatly overlaps the last bruise my pater had left. “Are you a common meretrix or are you my betrothed?”

They sink in slowly, the words I’ve heard many times before.

Whore.

Meretrix .

Sabine.

I’m not sure which hurts worse. His words or his hands.

“Your betrothed,” I answer softly, refusing to let my voice crack.

His grip tightens and a gasp escapes my lips without my permission. Tristan leans closer and drops his voice to a whisper. “Then act like it.”

“I’m sorry.” My voice finally betrays me, cracking over the words. It shatters something in Tristan’s expression. He drops my arm, then grabs my wrist, gentle.

“Stones, Rosebud. I’m sorry.” He folds me into a hug and I stiffen, unsure. “Did I hurt you?

“No,” I lie. “It’s okay.”

Tristan straightens his arms so he can peer down at me. “She ruins everything. I just… I thought she wouldn’t ruin this.” His mater had upset him. Was it her words, her view of me, or the way she had called Augustus princeps ? Perhaps it was all of those things.

“You’re not close with your mater?” It feels dangerous to ask, but I think that maybe, just maybe, it’s more dangerous not to know.

Something conflicted and ugly passes through Tristan’s eyes. It breaks my heart when he says, “I wouldn’t say that.”

“What would you say?” I lift my hand to his cheek, urging him to come back to me. Begging him to be who I know he is. The man who saved me from the Sabines. From my father. From my future. The man who loves me.

And maybe, the man I was made for.

At first he’s frozen, and I fear I’ve stepped into the minotaur’s maze, only for the entrance to be swallowed in hedges behind me. Then he leans into my touch, closing his eyes. “She’s… she favors my brother. Her precious princeps .” I sense the bitterness in the way his eyes narrow and his shoulders tighten. “And she never lets me forget it. That I’m not him. That I’m my pater’s son.”

“She doesn’t care for your pater?”

He laughs, turning in to bite my palm. “I spent my childhood learning all the ways she didn’t care for him.” He’s so beautiful like this, his face open, eyes hooded. Like he’s being himself for the first time ever, and he’s amazed at it.

“I think I understand,” I say. “My pater feels the same about me. That I can be the target for him, now that my mater is gone.” I’ve never said it out loud before, but I know it’s true.

Tristan steps forward, resting his forehead against mine. “Did he punish you, for what she’d done?”

My eyes flutter closed against the memories; against the pain I've hidden from Daisy. From myself. “Yes.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, but when I nod he interrupts me. “For that, but more for me.” He tips my chin up, gold eyes searching mine. “I don’t want to be my mater, or my pater. I don’t want us to punish each other. I want to break it.” His eyes flare, as if small candles are consuming the oxygen behind the iris with each word.

“Break what?” I whisper.

“Break the cycle. The chains. This,” he gestures to his golden, privileged domus. It’s a beacon of Divus, but I understand. We could fix the broken things we inherited. “Whatever it takes to be free of them. So, we can give our children what they deserve. You and me.”

I let out a soft breath, and the butterflies that have been lying dormant since the day Tristan offered to marry me seem to wake. They stretch their wings, tentative.

I rise to my tip-toes, lips finding his. “You and me,” I promise.

We could break the cycle. We will.

Because I was made for love.