Chapter Thirty-Four
Lenora
Ichoose one of the guestrooms.
It’s the only one across from mine with wide, French doors that overlook the ocean. The wallpaper is a deep, paisley green that reminds me of a forest, but the wood is a rich brown. Fresh, like nothing has touched it.
I don’t think anyone has. Not since I’ve been here, at least. We never had company. All the guestrooms were forever made up only for no one to ever stay in them.
But this one will be for the baby.
Close enough that I can get to it at night. The four-poster bed will need to be replaced by a crib. I don’t know what else a baby needs, but there are books. Though, I don’t know how much more time I have left before it arrives.
Already the fronts of my dresses have begun to strain. I have ballooned overnight. A high globe that prevents me from picking things up off the floor. It was only two days ago that I could easily cover the bump with both hands.
Now, it’s large enough that the weight forces me to shuffle when I wake. It pulls on my lower back, arching my spine.
The book I found explains that I am roughly at the end of my third trimester. An impossibility, given I was barely three months twenty-four hours ago. At this rate, I’ll have the baby before the week ends.
“There you are.”
I turn at the sound of Marcus coming up behind me. His gaze — as it has begun to — drops to my midsection before returning to my face.
“How are you feeling?”
My hands instinctively go to my middle.
“Fine, I think. Was thinking of making this into a nursery.”
He glances past me to the room.
“Why don’t you pick a room closer to mine?” His large hands cover mine. Enormous in comparison. “I want you both with me.”
I study his face. Still so handsome. So much like my boys’. The silver at his temples seems far more prominent in the light radiating from the windows behind me.
“You still want me?”
I tease, but it has been a reoccurring thought since finding out. This could be too much for him. He never asked to be a father/grandfather. And I understand him being uncertain about raising it so soon after losing his sons.
Plus, it’s all happening so fast. Neither of us have even had a chance to properly process how this is even happening.
“So much,” he murmurs. “You and the baby. That will never change.”
It’s hard to kiss him with the bulge between us, but I manage somehow and smile up at him through a wall of emotions. It all brews up in my chest, a rising ocean threatening to swallow me whole.
“I’m scared,” I confess out loud for the first time.
It occurs to me to also mention that it’s not the idea of bringing this life into the world that terrifies me. I’m sure that’s what he thinks. I’m scared that once the final Duval falls, Veyn will have no reason to let me live.
A deal is a deal.
I doubt a baby is going to mean much to him.
But maybe I can convince him to let me give birth and see the child at least once before he takes me.
Maybe even let me watch it grow up through the mirrors the way he can.
I don’t even know where he’s going to take me.
Maybe he’s just going to eat me, and I can become a ghost.
“Mon p’tit?”
I focus back up into Marcus’s face, but the corridor is gone. We’re in the bedroom. All around us, versions of me stare back with confusion and fear.
“What…? How did I get here?”
Marcus tilts his head, brows furrowed in confusion. “What do you mean?”
I stumble back a step and turn to face the room. The windows with the miles of night pressing against the glass.
“We were at the nursery.”
Even through the mirrors, Marcus looks baffled. Concerned. “That was hours ago.”
Panic has me spinning to face him. “We were just there.”
He shakes his head, concern deepening. “No, Linny, we weren’t.”
Hands shaking, I press them into my middle and I swear … I swear, it feels bigger. Tauter. The weight is unmistakable.
And the nudge.
The roll and kick.
Tears slip from my lashes as I stare up into Marcus’s frightened expression.
“No, this isn’t right. I keep … I keep missing time and…” I suck in a breath and glance around the room again like the answer is hiding somewhere. “This baby keeps growing. It’s too fast. I don’t think … I can’t…”
The shame is immediate.
The guilt of being too paranoid and emotional. How can I know anything when I know nothing? When everything keeps spinning. It’s all too much.
Losing the boys.
Veyn.
The baby.
The bargain.
It all just keeps happening too fast and I can’t keep up. And there is a wheezing noise that keeps getting louder and I can’t think.
“Hey.” Marcus grabs my arms and I realize it’s me. I’m wheezing.
I can’t breathe.
My skin is burning and freezing and everything is too dark where my vision keeps narrowing to fine points.
It’s all crashing down on me and I can’t process.
I can barely stop him when he scoops me up and marches with me to the terrace. The doors are kicked open and I’m flooded with an ocean of frigid, Pacific air.
“Breathe. That’s it. Slow. Inhale. Slower. Inhale. Let it out. That’s it. Good girl. Nice and easy. Again.”
I follow his gentle cadence. The hypnotic rhythm of his heartbeats. Every inhale pulls sharp claws of air down into my lungs and expels a plume of breath in return.
“Okay?” he asked when I’m no longer hysterical.
Ashamed, I nod and let myself be led back inside. I’m taken straight to the bed and tucked securely beneath the covers with him molded protectively around my back.
“I have you,” he tells me gently against the back of my shoulder. “I will never let anything happen to you or the baby. You will never be alone.”
He doesn’t understand.
And it’s not his fault.
How can he respond the way I need when I can’t tell him without getting him killed? How can I voice my fears when I don’t know what they are?
I shut my eyes and let the steady patter of his heart against my back guide mine to the same pattern.
“What if I die?” I whisper, blurting the words into existence. “What if I don’t see the baby and it grows up never knowing who I am or the boys?” Tears slip the corners of my eyes and soak into the pillow. “Promise me that you will keep it safe and…”
I open my eyes to darkness and silence.
I’m still in bed. Marcus’s arms are still securely tight around me, but there is a familiar weight of deep night pressing into the room. That hum that only exudes through time and space when it’s well after midnight. The way Marcus is snoring, he’s been asleep a while.
I don’t shut my eyes again.
Too afraid of losing more time. I can only lie here, still and broken as the life inside me rolls and kicks the top of my belly. It’s sharp enough that Marcus grunts and shifts, loosening his grip.
I take the opening and slip off the mattress. It’s not as easy as it used to be. There’s a bit of wobbling before I’m on my feet. I cross quietly to the door and slip out into the corridor.
The candle and iron holder are right in front of me as if waiting. Both sit on a table I don’t remember. Lit. Tiny flame bobbing excitedly as I approach.
I question nothing.
I gather the light and move through the rows of endless rooms. The miles of turns and stairs. I move past blank windows looking across a world layered by snow and darkness.
All the while, my brain hums. My thoughts are a white noise pushed so far down that I don’t think I’m having any, or I’m having them all.
It’s a melting pot of everything and I just let it all melt.
Dissolve from existence. There is nothing I can change and no one I can turn to who will understand.
I am truly alone in a way that carves a hole in my chest. A gaping wound that burns at the edges as I follow the familiar path between the rooms that meant the most to them and pray that this time … this time they will be there.
But they’re not.
It’s only me.
“And you now, I guess,” I whisper, brushing my hand along the bump.
“I’ve brought you into this cruel world and I am sorry.
I’m sorry for the pain you will suffer. I’m sorry for all the days you will be sad and alone.
” I wipe my cheeks. “I’m sorry that I may not be here to tell you that you are loved and wanted.
That I would give anything to hold you and kiss your tears. ”
My feet move from solarium to war room.
“Perhaps one day, you can find it in your heart to forgive me for my reckless choices. I don’t know how I would have done things differently, but I would have found a way to be with you.”
I drift from war room to solarium.
“There is so much we have wanted for you. Your fathers and I. We would spend hours talking about you, about all the things we would make sure you had. The experiences. We argued about names to no end.” I chuckle wetly and turn on my heels.
“Yet, despite all the things we disagreed on, the thing we did agree on was how much you would be loved. So much that it would never even be questioned. And they would have loved you.”
I freeze in the foyer.
Heart a million powdery shards bleeding through my fingers. Tears, hot and sticky drying on my cheeks.
I will not die.
I will not leave my baby.
What kind of mother am I if I simply roll over and let this be the end? To leave my baby alone in the world without even bothering to fight? How dare I wallow in my own self-pity and abandon the gift my boys gave me?
No.
I will not.
Fingers tight around the iron handle, I march the familiar path through the corridors. Marble dissolves into wet, sticky carpet that guides me deeper into the heart of the manor.
Veyn stands at the top of the incline when I throw back the curtains and step into his domain. A beautiful silhouette enveloped in shadows despite the overabundance of candles. His dark eyes watch me, unsurprised by my appearance.
“I want my soul back.”