THE SUNDERING

MATO

He'd already left, gone to do the Queen's bidding. Nyssa, the damning and cruel Dark Queen. How she hated her for taking Sebastian away. And how she loved the deceptive taste of freedom his absence made.

Like the rest of those living in the Colonies, Mato disliked living under the structure of the Regent's tyrannical rule. But having the royal assassin as her fiancé had benefits. Baz made sure she never worked the mines. And he provided and protected her and her family. Yet Mato was twenty-six years old, and the eldest of her clan. She'd have to learn how to survive without him.

What if one day he didn't return from one of those Regent-assigned missions? He was hated in the Colonies, loathed, in fact, all throughout Yrurra. By connection, Mato and her family had no friends. To keep safe, they lived in the roughest, dingiest home on the outskirts of the Vesturin mines. Her family faced the horror of dodging foul words and fouler objects whenever they entered the town. No one wanted a son of Death to come near them or to live in their crowds. And no one wanted near them the woman Baz would soon marry.

The rest of her family glutted themselves with work, into facing disease and destruction by searching for the queen's elusive Shadow's Blood ore, while Mato wallowed in guilt for not having to join them.

The ironic thing? She was the one family member whose lungs filled with the mine's red-dust, with blood, and with the distasteful burning singe signifying the imminent decline to the crypt. Despite her future husband and how he shielded her, Mato wouldn't evade the shadow-kissed woman of the grave. In fact, she was already halfway there.

Baz, for all that he protected them, and with the scanty reserve of affection he gave, couldn't puzzle her back together when she finally fell apart, broken pieces and an empty shell all that was left of her. But if she was broken, it was her fault, too. She wore the badge of his promise. She was contained, his bride of fortune. A minion of betrothal and request. As with most creatures held by a force stronger and bolder and callously indifferent, she didn't struggle or cry out when the hands of her future lay themselves like alms.

Mato sat up slowly as the eternal fingers of dawn rubbed across the sky. Her sister Grace lay sleeping, and gently she kissed the four-year old's forehead. Grace blinked and opened her eyes, half-asleep, before she rolled over with a grumbling pout. Soon her youngest sister would join the others of the Colony, picking rock, sifting ore until the wealth of the vein petered out.
Sweet Grace. Her brother, the spindly, precocious Garth. Her aunts and uncles, cousins, and their wives. All of them met that fate. Except her. She was chosen by the queen's Assassin, the damning desire for her to become his bride acting like an unbearable load upon her back, a millstone around her neck. She allowed it, the ostracizing, the taunts, the pain. It saved them, just as Baz first rescued her from a life of indignity.

She refused to break now. Not for any of them. And not while the youngest still needed her.

Mato pasted the facade of contentment back on her face. The barb of wire symbolizing fidelity and trust wrapped around her finger, cinching tight. A coil of arrogance and lies. Her engagement ring, a pretty, simple silver, bought-mistakenly-a bit too small. The stricture for wearing it bled her dry. She'd never escape, not from wedded bliss, nor from Baz's rage when, or if, he found out the truth of who she truly was.

Frowning as her body winced with pain, Mato stood and wearily pulled on one of her dresses. It was new, and she didn't deserve it. She wished it were worn and threadbare so she wouldn't feel shame.

The only difference between wealth and survival, was that for her survival she hid behind painted-on smiles and the balmy touch of exuded comfort.
With the accepted proposal, she cast aside the shackles of ragged filth and a pauper's fear. Mato wore Sebastian's bond, yet she wished it torn away from her. Beneath the silver band that betrothed her to the queen's favorite, the disease of her deception spread.
Reality beckoned, a metastasized cancer. Her failure strengthened and decayed. In her soul, she knew one thing: she was already dead.