Burn My Past, Bury Your Love

The medicine that would give Clara Runder her voice back belongs to a family who will part with it on one condition, that Julian Reid marry into them. Julian is Clara's husband, a man who came up from begging in the street to the position he holds now, and he takes the deal. The offer is a trap. The family he is marrying into steers him against Clara, and to show them where he stands he stabs her three times in front of a crowd. On the wedding day he locks her inside a burning building. Clara is dragged out alive by an association chairman who takes her in. Her voice comes back while she is healing, and she starts over on her own, selling fish at the market. Julian finds her again later and will not let it go. He wants her back, and the way he goes about asking humiliates her a second time. Then the rest of it comes out. Clara lost her voice to charcoal burns she took saving Julian, and the medicine he married for was never real.