Anna could no longer see anything. She felt as if a hand of ice was squeezing her heart inside her chest. Why had Greta been sentenced to death? She knew that only one person could answer that question, without fear of retaliation. Adam. She opened the kitchen door and ran up the stairs. She knew that Adam would rather see a three-day-old dead possum in his room than her right now, but she had to face him and save Greta. She was in the hall when Ryan saw her and came to meet her.
"I really needed to talk to you. My cousin has only given me until midnight tonight for you to agree to be my wife..."
"Not now, Ryan. I need to talk to Adam urgently."
He looked at her curiously.
"You speak his name with alarming intimacy..."
Anna looked at Adam's bedroom door, and her anxiety increased.
"Can we talk later?"
"Why not now? He's not here. He's gone out to... To sort out some business."
Anna felt her eyes water.
"Take me to him, please?"
"Have you gone mad? Even the men who accompany him don't know where they're going until he decides to talk."
"You said it wasn't just Adam who gave the orders. Order them to take me to Adam, please."
"That was before Allister died."
"So, am I to assume that you can't save Greta's life?"
"Maybe I can, but why would I?"
"Because she's innocent. She didn't do anything, she..."
"She almost revealed things that you're not supposed to find out until it's too late."
"What, am I going to find out?"
"I don't want to suffer the same fate as Greta, so you'll have to wait."
"Would you save her for me?"
"No. Because there's no other way to save her life without giving mine in return, and what will my reward be if I'm dead?"
"How do you know what we talked about?"
"The walls of this house are thin."
His lie was so obvious that Anna felt insulted.
"I think I'm in a position to know your secrets. I'm not getting out of here alive, right? So... Go after Adam and get him to spare Greta's life, please?"
"I've already said and repeated that I won't do that."
Anna felt like falling over sitting down, and let the tears roll down her cheeks.
Ryan stared at her indifferently.
"Let's talk, Anna. We have a wedding to plan."
Anna followed him downstairs to his office, and as soon as she entered, her gaze caught on the shelf with several drinks, and she pointed at them.
"Can I?"
Ryan followed the direction of Anna's finger and smiled.
"Adam hasn't put any limits on what you can do on the estate, so..." He said, shaking his shoulders.
Anna walked over to the shelf and picked out a green drink. She opened the bottle and drank from the neck. She liked the taste. It was better than wine.
"Anna, I guess I wasn't very romantic. I hope you understand that... people like me don't feel the need to be nice to... people like you. We grew up learning that only women of our species deserve consideration..."
"Are you talking about noble blood? Are you related to Queen Elizabeth? Have you checked your blood color? Do you consider yourselves better for having blue blood? Well, I have two observations to make about that expression... Firstly, the horses are distributed according to this blue blood precept... Do you consider yourself a horse? Secondly, the people who really do have blue blood, literally, are some crustaceans. Are you a crustacean? So, Ryan, if you're not one of those animals, we're the same, differentiated only by our ability to think and what's between our legs."
Ryan smiled.
"You are bold! Your tongue is as sharp as a knife and your words are as poisonous as a cobra's saliva... That's what Adam saw in you. Nobody talks to men in our family like that..."
"Maybe that's why you feel like gods, masters of death and life." She said contemptuously and poured her glass and drank in one gulp, then refilled it and did the same.
"I didn't even know about this virtue of yours, and yet I think I'm in love with you."
Anna stared at him and picked up another bottle. This one had emptied quickly.
"You said that as if you'd stained your expensive shirt."
"You can have a lot more than you realize, I can..."
"Stop it, Ryan. I'm not going to marry you." She said, filling a glass with more of that drink.
"Let me talk about the advantages..."
"Don't waste your words on me. I'm not going to marry you. It doesn't matter if you promise me the stars."
"Why not?"
Anna finished her drink and looked at Ryan, already completely drunk.
"Because I love Adam."
Ryan couldn't disguise his surprise and his hands clenched into fists. For a second, Anna thought she saw his eyes glow yellow.
"Did he blackmail you into telling me that, or... Is it the effect of the drink?"
"The effect of the drink? Maybe. It may have helped give me courage, but blackmail? Ryan, what can he do to me? Kill me? Put me in that green house? Torture me? I don't know if I can expect anything good from life anymore. Let me be what I was born to be. Let my destiny flow."
"You think you were born to be... That?"
"I no longer have opinions or desires. Maybe my existence was an unfortunate accident, and since I'm here, why not let people who are a privilege to humanity have fun doing whatever they want with me?"
"I can make you happy."
"I don't doubt that you'd strive for that, Ryan, but I don't want to. I want Adam. And I don't care what he wants me to be. I love him."
"You loved my uncle too, and by the looks of it you've managed to fall in love all over again, you can do it one more time, Anna."
"No, Ryan. I can't, because even before All died, I wanted to jump into Adam's bed. I hadn't realized it yet, but... I already wanted him with all my might, but I wouldn't admit it. But now I no longer care that everyone knows the truth through these thin walls. He's all that exists in my head. It's as if he lives inside me."