Maybe it frightened them, to admit that a woman could be master of her fate.

Maybe that was the root of my dislike for her: she had what I wanted, which earned her my jealousy, and since I was ashamed of myself for wanting it, my scorn, as well.

A woman isn't a whore for wanting pleasure. If it were unnatural, we would not be born with such drives.

I couldn't tell anyone how I felt because I knew they wouldn't understand. Oh, poor little Christina, falling for the bad man who treats her like dirt because she didn't know any better. And isn't it a pity that they don't still teach sex-ed in schools? Or, oh, Christina, that filthy slut, if she puts out for a man like that, I imagine she puts out for anyone. You stay away from her. It wasn't like that at all. Maybe it would have been easier if it was, just like ticking a box. Are you the Madonna, or the whore? The victim, or the vixen? The Sabine, or the skank?

But nothing in life is ever that simple.

So you choose him?'
'Cal betrayed me, and I betrayed him. And you betrayed us both, in a thousand different ways.' The words are heavy as stone but right. So right. 'I choose no one.

Heritage was everything: it was a golden skeleton key, gleaming with power, able to get the wielder through any number of locked doors; it was the christening of the marriage bed with virgin blood on snow-white sheets; it was the benediction of a pristine pedigree, refined through ages of selective breeding and the occasional mercy culling.

It was life, and death, and all that spanned between.

It was his birthright.