Inheritance

Part 2. Chapter 34: Gutted and Broken

While Pollyanna recounted her past, she kept thinking of something she had tried to block out for many, many years, but it kept resurfacing at the edge of her memories.

It was a hairpiece—a pink rose which she never dared to wear as a child because it was so precious to her. She thought it was expensive when she was a child, but, thinking back on it, she knew it was just a cheap accessory.

She remembered turning it in her hands over and over while she lived in the manor with Kline.

She could trace the shape of it even when she wasn't holding it; she could remember the precise shade of pink it was even though she hadn't seen it for hundreds of years.

She remembered spending long amounts of time after her first week of marriage just clenching the rose to her chest and longing for a happy moment like when her father had given her the hairpiece. She had so little as a child, and so whenever she got a present, she worshipped it.

Pollyanna preferred to forget such memories because they made her weak and emotional, and there was nothing she liked less than feeling weak and emotional.

Back then, she was always depending on the kindness of others to help her, and she thought they would, because she thought everyone had the desire to be a hero deep down like she did.

She knew Rory did.

Just thinking about him made her head flare with sadness.

He had made her weak.

It was Fjorn who had picked her up from the ashes of her childhood and made her into the strong and stable woman she wanted to be. He had given her what she wanted, and she was only alive and well thanks to him.

"Are you sure you want to hear more?" Pollyanna asked Eory as she stretched her legs out in front of her and crossed her feet at the ankles. "It gets worse."

Eory sincerely wondered if he did.

His eyes were red from crying for her at her past pain. He felt such a vicious disgust at the world that he felt like crawling back within himself and letting Taylor take over again. However, he didn't want to abandon Pollyanna like everyone else had.

"I want to hear." Eory said compassionately.

Silence ensued.

Pollyanna turned around and faced him for the first time since she entered the room. She leaned her chin on her arms which she crossed on the edge of the mattress. "You're such a cute boy... Do you know what usually happens to cute boys?"

Eory blushed and yet he shivered with fear at the same time. "What happens to them?"

"They get gutted from the inside out." Pollyanna's flirtatious expression changed to a cold, hard one. "That's what happens to them."

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A week had passed since her wedding, and Pollyanna didn't know what to do with herself during the day.

Kline was gone all day on most days and Pollyanna was left alone at the manor during that time.

He would only visit her at night, and then he would leave her, crumpled and broken, to her own destructive thoughts and lonely feelings for the rest of the night and the following day.

Pollyanna didn't know what Kline did during the day and didn't care. She knew he worked a job that made him wealthy, but that was all she knew.

She would stay in her room for most of the day with little to do. She was too frightened to leave.

There was a bookcase in her room, and she spent most of her time reading through the books upon it.

A familiar fairy tale that her father used to read her was on the bookcase. She read it over and over again with her tears dotting the pages.