When Qili opened her eyes, she saw a pair of pale blue eyes filled with worry and tenderness.
"Don't speak. Just listen to me."
Li Jia helped Qili sit up and told her the whole story of how Elia had submitted a marriage petition to the Temple of the Goddess of Marriage.
Qili pressed her lips tightly together, trying to suppress the emotions surging within her, but her tears slipped down disobediently after all, leaving wet trails.
She opened her mouth to say something, but she could not make a sound. She had lost her vocal cords. Qili looked up at the blonde woman standing before her, her lips pale and her body trembling violently.
Qili struggled to get up. She knelt before Hera and bowed down again and again, tears already covering her cheeks. The scar at her throat tore open, spilling great gushes of bloody fluid, and the mermaid's legs were covered in bloody marks as well.
The blonde woman crouched down and tapped Qili's forehead, stopping her bleeding. Hera asked solemnly, "I'm going to ask you three questions. Just nod or shake your head."
"Did you enter your marriage bond with Dorian willingly?"
The girl nodded, her eyes full of pain and regret, though Li Jia felt there was more regret than pain.
"Are you willing to dissolve your marriage petition with Dorian?"
The girl nodded again, and Li Jia nodded along.
That's more like it. Why would you stay with a scumbag after he hurt you?
All she could say was that every version of every story, from ancient times to the present, had made women or female leads into love-brained fools, their fate to become accessories to the male lead.
Li Jia had read plenty of so-called strong female lead novels. The heroine lost her family, her children, her organs, even everything she had, while the male lead only needed to lose her for it to become the selling point of an angst novel. As long as he shed a couple of tears before her grave, every reader would admire his devotion.
Sacrificing a woman's entire life to gain the lifelong devotion of such an ordinary man-Li Jia thought that was downright sick.
Women spent their entire lives desperately trying to prove two things.
One was that they were beautiful.
The other was that a man loved them.
Little did they know how much more at ease they could feel once they stepped outside the need to "attract the opposite sex" and "make the same sex envious."
Girls should study, see the world, and try all kinds of different things, rather than torment themselves with mental exhaustion. They had no need to prove themselves at all.
"The third question: do you want your voice back?"
Qili nodded with absolute determination, clenching her hands into fists, her nails digging deep into her palms, as though she wanted to carve that searing hatred into her very marrow.
"Good. You have some backbone, at least. If you kept being this spineless, Ailisi would probably be furious enough to die all over again if she knew." Hera sighed with a smile.
Ailisi was the ancestor of the merfolk. She had laid down their clan laws with her own flesh and blood, never expecting that someone would still break them so many years later.
A special power flowed through the blood of the merfolk. When they suffered harm or betrayal, that power would awaken, turning into an almost instinctive desire for revenge.
Hera saw that impulse in Qili's eyes, and she was very pleased.
"Debts must be repaid. That's only right. He tricked you into marriage and took your voice. Even death by a thousand cuts wouldn't be too much for him." Li Jia helped Qili up,
and said angrily when she saw Qili's appalling condition and her throat oozing bloody fluid.
Why should she have to put up with it?
So what if he was a prince?
So what if he was a man?
Did he really think the whole world was like Edinburgh?
The more Li Jia thought about it, the angrier she grew. Modern society was full of antisocial people who murdered their wives and daughters. Just having a marriage certificate let them do whatever they wanted, turning malicious assault into a private matter "between husband and wife."
Even if a man beat his wife to death, he only needed a letter of forgiveness from the family to have his sentence reduced and his life spared.
But what had that woman, that wife, that daughter, that mother done wrong?
It was all because of that damned certificate.
"Your Majesty, let's dissolve Qili's marriage petition first and remove her link to that beast from the marriage record." Li Jia tugged at her sleeve, urging her.
She truly did not want Qili to remain on the same marriage certificate as that scumbag.
"This marriage involved domestic abuse and deception. Naturally, it cannot count."
Hera took out the marriage record and erased Qili's name with divine power. The moment Qili's name vanished, Dorian's name ceased to exist as well.
Remembering what Doreen had said, Li Jia asked curiously, "Your Majesty, if the other party refuses to dissolve the bond, can divine power forcibly dissolve it?"
Hera thought for a moment and said, "Though I am a goddess, I am not all-powerful. For me to forcibly dissolve a marriage bond, the applicant must request it of their own free will. As long as even one percent of the other party's heart does not love them, the remaining ninety-nine percent means nothing."
"Love has no need for flaws."
"If the other party's love reaches one hundred percent, would even you be unable to dissolve the marriage petition, Your Majesty?" Li Jia asked thoughtfully.
Hera replied, "In theory, yes. But I've lived for over a thousand years and have never encountered such a petition."
Dorian had no love for Qili, so dissolving the marriage petition was quite easy. In just a few seconds, Qili was free again.
With the marriage petition dissolved, Qili felt a sense of relief unlike anything she had ever known.
Young and ignorant of love and hate, she had received a tiny bit of something resembling love and been so pleased with herself that she revealed every card she held, only for it to become the thorn that pierced deepest into her heart.
"Taking the wrong path, loving the wrong person, doing the wrong thing-none of that matters. Regretting it is just bullying your past self." Seeing how lost Qili looked, Li Jia comforted her. "From now on, live however makes you happy."
"From now on..." Qili murmured. "But I don't have a future anymore. After twelve tomorrow, I'll turn into foam on the sea."
"My only wish is to see my sister again and tell her I'm sorry. Even if she resents me or hates me, at least let me see her one more time."
When she spoke of Elia, Qili's happiness was plain to see. Apart from their parents, her sister was the person in this world who cared about her most and understood her best.
Yet she had argued with her sister over a strange man, creating a rift between them. Now that she was about to die, Elia was the only person she could not let go of.
Li Jia walked over to Hera and poked her shoulder. Every time she poked her shoulder, Hera knew the little one wanted a favor.
Li Jia pressed her lips together and asked, "Is there really nothing we can do?"
She was referring to the fact that Qili was about to turn into foam.
Hera spread her hands helplessly. "These are the merfolk's clan laws. I cannot interfere with another's life or death. Dorian doesn't love her, much less could he give her true love's kiss. Where am I supposed to find true love's kiss for her now?"
All right. Li Jia understood what her boss meant. It was the equivalent of being in the ICU now: do whatever you wanted, just like end-of-life care.
Qili, however, was optimistic and not particularly sad, chatting and laughing with Li Jia.