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THE BETTER CHOICE

Death was so much quieter than I had expected.

I was not sure what had made me think it would be loud. The only dead bodies I had ever seen were laid out in coffins, silently sleeping and smelling violently of Lily of the Valley. I had never been a witness to anyone actually dying.

Perhaps it was less about expectation, and more about a secret desire. I wanted a loud death. Pleading and crying, begging me for mercy.

The same pleas I had uttered in those first months of marriage, every time my geriatric husband had leered over me. Every time those disgusting, twisted fingers had forced themselves into the most intimate parts of my body, bemoaning how I was never “ready” for him. Every time that hacking cough burst through his lungs, brought on by any manner of exertion, launching spittle across my face.

Yes, that was it. As I held the silk pillow down over my pathetic husband’s face, I was not ashamed to admit that I wanted him to suffer, as I had suffered. But I had endured. I had found a way through all those nights. I had stoppedbegging and pleading, forging ahead, all those nights leading to this one.

The night where he was now succumbing.

Slowly, quietly, nothing but a muffled whimper or a rattly groan betraying the fact that his life was now ebbing away, and at my hand no less.

His pretty little bride.

I recoiled as one of his hands came to rest against my cheek, and I jerked my head away from the touch. He whined, his chest shuddering beneath me.

“Just go to sleep, old man,” I murmured, pressing harder as his heartbeat slowed. “Go to sleep, and this will all be over.”

I was doing him a service, really. He was so very old. That hacking cough was surely a sign that he was unwell, and not long for this world. When we had first been married, he would have overpowered me had I attempted this. But his slaps across my face every month when I bled had weakened over the years, until he could barely lift his hand. The crags in his face deepened, the skin blanching til the purple network of veins beneath his skin resembled a worn map. He was so old now, old and weak and feeble.

If anything, these last years of his life had been the happiest, surely. What kind of man wouldn’t be thrilled to spend every night bedding a woman young enough to be his granddaughter? Showing her off to everyone like a trophy, like a prize he had snatched up for himself.

Bile rose in my throat.

Men were revolting. I hated them, all of them. My father, my uncles, and my decrepit old husband. All of them had used me. All of them had seen me as nothing more than a pawn in their twisted plans for power and wealth.

None of them had reckoned with prim and proper little Evie taking that power from them.

I hiccuped out a laugh, pressing my face to the pillow to smother the sound. Even the night was quiet, the sky clear, the moon shining through the window to illuminate the floor in cool blue light. Such a peaceful end. Much better than Acton Caine deserved.

His fingers twitched once, twice, then went still. I kept the pillow pressed to his face for another minute, making sure that all air had been stolen from his lungs.

There was no more movement. No sound. No breath.

Acton was dead.

I collapsed, gulping down air and blinking away unexpected tears of relief. It was finally over. I was finally free.

“It was either him, or me.” I am not sure whom I was addressing in the empty room. The quiet night? God, perhaps? It didn’t matter. “I’m young. I can still do good. I’m the better choice.”

I slowly withdrew the pillow from his face, bracing myself. I expected to feel revulsion, maybe even a flash of horror at what I had done. But even that did not come as expected.

Indeed, Acton looked like an old man who had simply gone to sleep. His eyes were slightly open, a slit of bloodshot white still visible. His mouth hung slack, useless, no breath passing his lips. Just an old fool whose time had come.

I dared not touch him any further, simply drew up the covers, as if he had simply been sleeping, then rose from the bed. I crossed the room to gaze up at the night sky, to my only witness, the moon, which glowed brightly overhead.

“You understand, do you not?” I put a hand against the cold window pane. “You could not blame me for this, could you?”

The moon did not reply.

I closed my eyes, and took a deep breath, feeling, for the first time in three years, that perhaps I was a person after all.Not a wife, a mere vessel for Acton Caine’s heirs. I would soon find my way back to myself, now that I was free, unshackled from this cursed family.

I cast one last glance over my shoulder at Acton’s feeble form, inert in the bed, before turning on my heel and creeping across the floor to the door of his bedroom. My feet found all the places in the wooden floor that did not creak, a path I had memorised, perhaps planning this night without even realising it, all these months. I paused at the door, waiting for any sound, the distant footsteps of a passing servant.