Choices by Ann Herendeen Read Free Book Online Page A

front of
me, looking comical. If I hadn’t been so close to despair, I would
have laughed. Edwige could not comprehend that my delayed
adolescence was a natural consequence of being among my own kind
for the first time. Her only strategy was to persuade me that my
lover was not the paragon of virtue she thought I believed him to
be.
    “Listen to me, Amalie,” she said at last.
“Dominic Aranyi is
vir
. Do you know what that means?” When
I said nothing, having not really heard her, she took my silence
for ignorance. “It means he loves men—or boys.” She shrugged. “Not
that it matters, except that he doesn’t confine himself to willing
partners. He picks on boys who don’t want him, forces them—cadets
at the ‘Graven Military Academy, boys under his protection.”
    I returned from my own painful thoughts to
what Edwige was trying to tell me. When she saw I was focusing on
her words, Edwige gave me what she was convinced would be the coup
de grâce. “A few years ago, Margrave Aranyi tried to coerce a
first-year cadet, Tariq Sureddin. But he got caught that time.”
Edwige’s satisfaction was plain in her face and her voice. “That
time Dominic Aranyi had to pay for what he did. That’s why he
adopted Tariq as his son and heir. That’s why—”
    But I had at last heard her, not just her
words but the meaning behind them. And somewhere there was still
spirit in me, because I reacted with fury to her attempt to
discredit Dominic.
    “I know that!” I shouted. I was sure that
everyone could hear this, with or without
crypta
, but I
didn’t care. There was nothing worse that could happen, and I was
angry—angry on Dominic’s behalf, which made me more ready to fight
than for myself. I jumped up with resurgent energy. “You mean,
nasty bitch! I know all that! I know about Tariq, and I know about
Augustin Vazquez before him, and I know more than you ever will.”
My voice had gone up an octave with the shrieking. I was pacing
back and forth, wanting to kick the furniture, ready to hit Edwige
if she got in my way, although that was a contest I was sure to
lose, since she outweighed me by fifty pounds at least.
    Edwige was nonplused. It had never occurred
to her that I might truly be so intimate with Dominic that his
thoughts and desires were as clear to me as my own—clearer,
probably. I had been more surprised by his love for me than by any
of the facts she had told me about him, all things he had told me
himself, or that I had learned by sharing his memories. The
incident with Tariq had been the reason for Dominic’s troubled
thoughts that I had sensed earlier, inspiring only my sympathy for
his distress.
    But Edwige was a sibyl, used to dealing with
the unexpected, and she had a logical rejoinder. “If you know
this,” she said, “then you know Margrave Aranyi was merely doing
with you what he does with boys.” She challenged me, stepping in
front of me to interrupt my pacing, forcing me to stop or go around
her. I stopped. “If you know this,” she repeated, “then what is all
the fuss about? Block him out next time. If you need help—”
    The fight went out of me as quickly as it had
come. I shook my head, speechless but no longer hostile.
    Dominic hadn’t been doing the same thing with
me. There was a crucial difference. Dominic had deliberately chosen
Tariq and the others because they were unwilling. He had enjoyed
their pain or discomfort, mental and physical; it had been an
important part of the pleasure for him. But I had been very
willing. Dominic had known that, as apparently everyone at La
Sapienza had known, yet it had not spoiled his enjoyment, or in any
way disappointed him that I could tell. In fact, his sole concern
seemed to have been my pleasure, as his question afterwards had
shown. I had wondered then if he had been able to derive much
pleasure of his own from the experience, as I had not known how to
reciprocate, with only
crypta
, over a distance.
    Edwige’s words had