As Amber exited the side door, she saw the back of Denari running away. Behind him were all the people who previously praised him and mocked. She could hear them quietly jeering at Denari as she walked past them. She didn't care about the opinions of these types of people. They are the kind of people who praise you while you're successful and kick you down further when you fall. Fake fans, fake sincerity. The whole time it was clear that a part of them hated him and were jealous. To make themselves feel better about their lack of accomplishment, they decided to tear him down at the first available opportunity. She had no love or patience for these types of shallow people.
It hadn't been easy for her to make friends, people found her personality cold and abrasive. Most people found her precise, logical, and self serving even; perhaps she was. She wouldn't apologize for it though. She could see through people's fake exteriors and it made them feel uncomfortable. Creepy she's been called. Let people think of her as creepy then, that's also fine.
Amber sauntered after him at a relaxed pace with a smirk on her lips. She wasn't concerned about him getting away, since even while trying to escape, he still waddled. He was furiously bobbing back and forth, but still wasn't widening the gap between the two of them. It reminded her of a hungry penguin trying to quickly get to the water so that it can catch fish. His breathing became erratic with his struggle to escape.
She kept her hood low to cover up some of her appearance, but a predatory gleam still shined out from her violet eyes. As she followed his frantic footsteps, his long white robe twisted around his ankles and tripped him. He landed on his face and groaned with his nose in the dirt. As Amber approached him, she heard fast footsteps converging on her. She looked over and saw Denari's three concubines coming.
The red haired girl who wanted to attach herself to his arm, runs ahead of the other two who are going at a slower pace. The girl with the golden hair looked bored and was the slowest to reach him.
"How did this happen?" said the girl with dark auburn hair.
"Ah, my little Poppy," he said while pulling hard on the auburn haired girl's arm, trying to stand up.
Poppy stumbled under his weight, just as the blonde girl walked up to him. He grabbed hold of the blonde woman's dress to help himself stand up. A look of concern flashed on the blonde woman's face. Then she took hold of his arm and forced him up with the help of Poppy.
Once he stood up and released the blonde's dress, she stepped back while straightening it and checking for tears. She soon forgot all about him while looking at a stubborn wrinkle on beautiful yellow dress. Meanwhile he was breathing heavily with a flushed face, but she didn't glance in his direction once. Amber looked at her with curious eyes.
The peach haired woman didn't even glance his way until he was standing on his feet. Then she walked over to him while holding out a handkerchief.
"Ah Momo my beauty, you're always the most thoughtful," he said while smiling at her and taking her handkerchief.
Poppy stepped back while he rubbed his free hand along Momo's side and looked at her adoringly. Momo's facial expression slightly flashed into disgust before she put a gentle smile on her face. "My lord husband is the greatest man in the world, obviously it's this humble concubine's pleasure and honor to serve master.
His aged hand traveled down Momo's side and slid down to cup around her firm butt. He harshly squeezed through the fabric of her dress, his knuckles turning white with the strain of his grip on her. Amber could see Momo's jaw clench in hatred, but her eyes remained clear and the gentle smile on her face didn't waver. To someone that wasn't paying attention, she would appear like a pure angel, with her clear beautiful peach colored eyes. She looked like a refreshing and pure beauty.
Poppy's eyes become watery while watching his look of adoration focused on Momo. Her lower lip quivered, and her hands shook as she held up her long dress and walked around them.
She bit her bottom lip and held back her tears. Her husband became angry whenever he saw her cry and wouldn't allow her to accompany him. He won't glance her way or even speak her name for weeks afterwards. When he disapproved of her, he acted as if she had long been dead and the mourning period had passed. She might as well be a ghost that can't be heard, because he refused to respond to her in any way.
Still, he was Poppy's first and only love and she loved him with all her heart. He saved her life at an impressionable age. She couldn't shake herself from thinking of him and the whispered compliments he'd given her. After her debut, she begged her parents to arrange her marriage to him. Although they initially resisted, they didn't feel they could complain too harshly, considering that he was unmarried and widely respected. However on her wedding day, he refused to take her as his official wife. He drank throughout their wedding, broke items that were part of her dowry, and said they weren't good enough for him.
Afterwards, he ran off into the night before the first rays of sunlight hit the horizon. She didn't know where he had gone, but the next morning he brought Momo back with him to become his second concubine. He said that Poppy was on the same level as a cheap whore, so he had purchased Momo from a foreign slave trader to give Poppy the company she rightly deserved. The slave traders had been planning on selling Momo to a local brothel, but he offered them a higher price. She remembered standing by the doorway all night anxiously waiting for his return and accidentally falling asleep in the doorway.
The following week, he arranged a massive celebration to welcome Momo in as his second concubine. The celebration for Momo was three times larger than the one thrown for Poppy and less than a month after her own marriage to him. During the celebration, there was no dowry and no family of hers to be seen. Everyone speculated and argued about Momo's origins.
However, everyone agreed that there must be something wrong with Poppy and loudly gossiped about her whenever Denari wasn't around. They cared very little if Poppy herself could hear them or not. They all looked down on her and assumed that she must be so lacking as a woman, that he had to desperately search for a replacement bride. He had run away on their wedding night and had a new wife before they'd been intimate even once. Was she supposed to publicly admit that her husband refused to touch her? Her pride couldn't bear it and so she was left with suffering everyone's scorn in silence.
Then a year later, he met Anwen and was captivated by her beauty. He followed Anwen around like he was a lost puppy and threw money at her like it meant nothing to him. She was breathtaking and had a great deal of suitors. Proposals to her came in furiously, but she was only a concubine's daughter.
Shortly after her debut, her family's proper wife quickly arranged for Anwen's marriage to Denari as his third concubine. Her own twin daughters were making their debuts and she wanted Anwen out of the way. It irked her that one of the concubine's daughters was making such a social splash and gaining enviable attention. She wanted to punish Anwen, and so when she saw Denari's generous offer for marriage, she quickly accepted. He seemed like the perfect punishment, as there had long been whispers about his more private and peculiar tendencies.
Soon after Denari's marriage to Anwen, he sent over a dozen heavy trunks full of rare treasures to the proper wife of Anwen's family. She greedily took the previously arranged bribe and added the treasures to her own two daughters' dowries. The rumors of the huge dowries became the new gossip of the season and soon marriage proposals came flooding in for her twin girls.
However, her jealous rage had not been fully appeased. So she paid people to spread rumors that Anwen had been a shameless social climbing slut. She had them say that Anwen seduced Denari and had gotten pregnant before she'd even debuted. When asked about these false rumors, Denari felt his pride inflate and would only say that he'd made an honest woman of Anwen. To everyone else, these words seemed to be a confirmation of those rumors, which made them spread more vigorously.
This however, made an impact that Janice was not expecting. Because Anwen's reputation had been thrown into the mud, some of that public scorn splashed onto her own two daughters. No one wanted their family name to be connected to Anwen and so they soon retracted their marriage proposals from her twin girls. It soon became so difficult to marry them off that she removed them from the social scene in order to allow the rumors to die down. Now a year later there were still whispers about Anwen's so-called seduction skills and no one had seen the twins during all of that time.
Poppy continued to bite her bottom lip and walked around to stand near Anwen. She knew she shouldn't be jealous or greedy, but she wanted him to look at her that way at least once. Her heart longed for it more than she could ever say, but she kept all of her feelings bottled up so that he wouldn't see her as a burden. She had grown up praised for her sharp mind, but love could make fools out of just about anyone.
He huffed indignantly once he'd secured on his feet and pointed at Amber. "This little slut pushed me over and rigged the competition to make it look like I lost!"
Amber looked at him with her eyelids half closed and yawned. She raised up her jade-like delicate hand to cover her mouth. "Are we done with the theatrics yet? I'd like to get down to business.
Anwen's eyes met Amber and a shiver traveled down Anwen's spine. She felt like a rabbit that was eyeing a large snake in tall grass. She instinctively took a step back and was only released from the hold of Amber's gaze when Amber looked towards Denari.
After hearing Denari's rubbish, Poppy took a step to rush Amber, but Anwen grabbed hold of Poppy's sleeve and tugged her in closely beside her.
"Stay still, she's not someone you can go up against," Anwen whispered into the aggravated Poppy's ear.
However, Poppy knew that Anwen had a strange sense about these types of things. Since Anwen warned her off, there had to be a good reason for it. Otherwise, she would just look at Poppy as being immature and not her problem. Poppy had no other course of action than to stand there in silence and believe that Denari would prevail.
As Denari huffed with an angry red face, he decided that there was no reason for a big shot like him to escape from an immature and helpless young girl. He puffed out his chest proudly. They were away from the rest of the crowd already and he'd already made this girl into his fourth concubine by saying so. He'd just fill out the paperwork with whichever family she came from. There was no reason to hold back. It's better to show women their place early on. Since he'd already claimed her as his property, he has no reason to show her any signs of weakness.
"Woman! I order you to kneel down in front of me right now. Kiss my feet and apologize for trying to fake a win and discrediting my name. If you do so, I won't resort to violence against you. There's no reason why our marriage needs to start off on a bad note. As long as you learn to obey me in all things from now on."
"He he he he he." A slow grin spreads across Amber's face, making her look like a goddess of death. She held out her delicate left hand and an eerie blue-gray light shined out from her palm.