3: 3
"You've still got time to play on your phone? Get over that threshold and take your humbling ritual, now."
Zara Lambert reached out to grab me. I stepped back out of her hands.
I looked at her, cold, my voice all mockery. "Did progress just skip this whole town somewhere back in the day? Your heads are stuffed full of feudal relics, and now there's a humbling ritual too. If you're all so happy keeping these rotten little rules, keep them yourselves. I'm not an idiot."
"Let me be clear. You can talk yourselves blue, and I still won't go through with this wedding."
Zara's face twisted at once. She pointed at me with a look that said she'd kill me if she could. "You lawless woman. You've come into our town and you're wearing our family's wedding dress. It isn't over just because you say it's over."
"Take the humbling ritual, now, or don't blame us for what comes next."
I took a step back and closed my hand over the car door. "What are you saying? You'd actually force someone into a marriage?"
They said nothing, but their eyes told me plainly: yes, that was exactly what they'd do.
A chill ran through me. I yanked the door open, dropped into the wedding car, and slammed the lock down. "Driver, turn around. Get me out of here."
Before the driver could react, a crowd of burly men had surrounded the front of the car.
Zara hauled at the door and screamed through the window. "You little slut, get out here. You're doing this to shame me today, aren't you?"
"You think getting in the car means you can run? Let me tell you, once you're in our town, nobody leaves."
With that, the crowd swung their bamboo canes and hammered at the car like madmen. Terrified, the driver unlocked it fast. "Miss, don't drag me into this. I just bought this car to make a bit of money. I can't let them wreck it."
Zara dragged me straight out of the car and slammed me down on the ground.
She sneered. "Weren't you going to run? What happened to running?"
I looked over at Matthew. He was hiding behind the crowd, not daring even to look at me, and certainly not coming to help me up.
"Matthew, are you really just going to stand there and watch them do this to me? Did you forget what you said to me yesterday?"
"You said you'd protect me for the rest of my life. You said you'd never let me be hurt. Is this how you protect me?"
Only then did Matthew creep over to me. He'd barely reached to help me up when Zara blocked him. "Are you even a man? Are you going to let her jerk you around your whole life?"
"She kicks up a fuss over one little thing and calls off the wedding. If we hadn't stopped her just now, she'd have run."
"You're a man. Stand up straight and act like it, understand?"
Matthew's hand, already reaching for mine, pulled back in that instant. "Rebecca, apologize to my mother, then go through the rest of the rituals properly, and we'll forget today ever happened."
I stared at him, unbelieving. "What did you say? After all this, you still want me to go along with these rituals?"
"I already told you. If accepting these rituals is the condition, I won't marry you."
I didn't expect him to suddenly flare up. "Rebecca, that's enough. I've put up with you long enough. Who around here didn't come through this same way? I'm only asking you to go through the motions like everyone else, and you're bent on humiliating me, aren't you?"
"You say I don't protect you. What about you? You said you'd always love me, but the moment you're asked to follow a few rules, you want to cancel the wedding. Have you ever put me first at all?"
I looked at him, dazed. This was the first time I'd ever seen Matthew lose his temper, and it wasn't to protect me. It was to make me obey his town's rules.
I'd expected too much of him.
I held out my arm and showed him the welts running across it. "So these rules of yours mean letting me get hurt?"
Matthew looked at the marks on me, and something like pain flickered in his eyes. He'd just opened his mouth when Zara cut him off. "So what? Who didn't come through it the same way?"
"Today you take this humbling ritual, no matter what. Sisters, pick up the canes. We start right here."
