Chapter Forty-Five
Lenora
They’re taking too long.
It’s unclear how long, exactly, but the spears of pain are increasing with frequency. Almost overlapping as I kneel in the center of a large, four-poster bed and try to breathe through each one.
I’m unsure where Veyn sent us. The room is none that I’ve seen and I don’t believe we’re in Usher House. What little I can see of the world outside the French doors it’s a starry night, and the city below glistens with a million golden lights.
The room itself is homey. Furnished with patchwork blankets and a thick, foam mattress. It’s been silent and no one has come to see why there’s a random woman giving birth on their bed.
I kneel near the foot, clutching one of the carved posts watching the tall, oval mirror propped in one corner. It’s the same one we’d come through and the same one Marcus had returned in.
What if neither came back?
What if I sent Marcus to save Veyn and I got him killed?
Another twining pulse of agony that has me cutting my nails down the post. My watery gaze never leaves the gleaming surface. I try to bite back the hysteria building up the back of my throat, but it keeps bubbling up my chest.
“Please,” I weep. “Please. Please. Please.”
I don’t know who I’m praying to, but I sob and plead as the pressure builds to push.
“Marcus!” I scream as the weight anchors at my pelvis. “Veyn!”
My knees widen on the ruined sheets and I bear down.
I have no idea if I’m doing it right, but my body wants it out.
Wants to heave, and I listen. Bloody heat gushes down my thighs to soak the fabric bunched beneath my trembling knees.
Waves of hot and cold rush up and over with the urge to throw up.
But all I can do is grip the post and do my best to bring this baby into the world on my own.
“Linny.”
My head jerks up and I nearly faint with relief when Veyn steps out of the glass with Marcus tossed over his shoulder. My euphoria at seeing them is short lived by the sight of all the blood smeared across Veyn’s chest and drenching Marcus’s top.
“Oh my God,” I gasp, wishing I could run to them, but unable to move.
“He’s fine,” Veyn says quickly, dumping Marcus down on his feet before reaching for me. “Lie back, little one. Let me look.”
I shake my head, crying from relief and pain. “I can’t. It hurts. This is easier.”
He doesn’t press.
Without a word, he and Marcus coordinate without saying a word.
Veyn drops to his knees before me. Marcus slides up behind me and gingerly pulls me back to rest against his chest. His hands twist around the hem of my T-shirt, and the fabric is lifted up and over my head, giving the kneeling demon a clear view of the mess.
“I see the head,” he says firmly.
Together, as if they’ve done this a million times, they get me through it. Each supports and guides me along every contraction, every push. There is nothing but their quiet murmurs as I bring our baby into the world with an indignant wail straight into Veyn’s waiting palms.
He swaddles the bundle of pink flesh in blankets as I slump against Marcus. Hours of the worst pain I’ve ever felt vanishes the moment the tiny creature is placed against my chest.
“A girl,” Veyn says with a tightness in his voice. “She’s beautiful.”
He’s not wrong.
Everything about her is perfect. All ten fingers and all ten toes, and soft, pale eyes that contrast with the thin, dark wisps matted to her scalp.
“You did wonderful,” Marcus murmurs into my sweat-slick temple. “What do you want to name her?”
I skim my fingers along the downy curve of her cheek. Emotions thick in my throat.
“Ella Gloria Usher.”
Marcus presses a kiss into my cheek. “It’s perfect.”
I nod but say nothing as I hold the gift I’ve been given.
A piece of my boys forever with me. A piece of them I can continue loving until I can join them one day and tell them about the daughter we had together.
A precious bundle named after both her fathers and her grandmother.
Who has her fathers’ eyes and their hair.
They would have loved you so much, I think with fresh tears.
I hold her tight to my chest and release her only when Marcus takes her from me to clean.
Veyn does the same to me. Changing the sheets and using a damp cloth to pat me down.
I’m bundled in a fresh top he unearthed from the dresser and tucked beneath clean linen.
Ella is returned and carefully placed in my arms. Both men flank either side of me as we peer down at the tiny miracle fast asleep against my chest.
It’s hours later that I’m tickled out of a deep slumber to the soft whisper of voices. The room sits in a murky hue of deep twilight. The kind where not a soul stirs, except the stars.
I blink and focus on the ceiling of my room at Usher House. The sight momentarily confuses me, and I lie still and listen as the hushed conversation continues somewhere to my right.
“I always knew we’d make beautiful babies.”
“Has my nose.”
“We have the same nose.”
My heart kicks up even before I lift my head and see them bathed in the soft kiss of silvery moonlight.
Ames with his hair unbound, grin crooked and mischievous. Eliah stands at his side, paint splattered and grinning. The sight of them together, peering down into a small bassinet draped in lace kicks me square in the gut.
“Ames? Eliah?”
Their names are choked whispers, too afraid of being too loud and breaking off in a weak sob when their heads come up in my direction.
“There’s our girl,” Eliah teases. “Hey, baby.”
“You did good, Lenny. She looks just like her momma.”
Pain lances through my very soul and I’m scrambling off the bed. Ames catches me and I wrap my arms around his neck tight enough that I know I’m crushing him.
“You came back. You came back,” I sob into his shoulder.
I’m pulled away just long enough to get pulled into Eliah’s chest.
“No, baby, this is just a dream, but you’ll see us again. Promise.”
I wail into his chest, fingers fisted in his top.
“No, please. Please, don’t leave me again. Please.”
Ames circles my waist from behind and nuzzles the back of my neck.
“You have to go back, Lenny. Our daughter needs you.”
“Hey.” Eliah forces my face up to his. “We’re not going anywhere. We’ll be right here watching her grow up.”
“We love you,” Ames whispers. “Always. Forever.”
My chest won’t stop heaving as I clutch them tighter and beg them not to go.
“Take care of Dad,” Eliah murmurs, pressing his brow to mine. “He needs you.”
“And live,” Ames adds almost playfully. “We will be very upset with you if you cry for us anymore.”
“I don’t want to live without you,” I weep.
“Then live for her.” Eliah gestures to Ella, sleeping soundly in her tiny bed. “Day by day. Then, one day, when it’s time, we’ll be right here waiting for you.”
“Why can’t I see you again before that?”
“Because you can’t stay in your dreams.”
“Promise us, Lenny,” Ames urges. “Promise that you will live fully and without reservations. That you will give our daughter a life full of everything we promised we’d give her.”
I nod even as I hiccup. “Promise.”
They both smile and I feel the whisper of their mouths over mine.
“Also,” Ames tips my face back to his, “I better not see you without your hat when you’re in your garden. I will be watching.”
“And put our caskets back in the cemetery. Ella doesn’t need to see that.”
I promise that I will and hold them even tighter, desperate to drag them back to the other side with me.
“Love you,” Eliah murmurs.
“Love you,” I cry harder. “Love you so much.”
“Tell Ella her daddies love her.”
I nod. “I will. Love you.”
My eyelids spring open and I gasp as the entire world drops down on my chest. The crushing weight has me bolting upright, breaking into a million pieces.
Two sets of arms find their way around me. It’s not the same, and still I cling to the comfort. To the love.
It’s not the same.
It will never be the same, but I made a promise and I will do my best to fulfill it day by day. Even when the thought is unbearable. Even when all I want is to return to that dream and stay with my boys…
They’re right.
I have to keep going. I have to live for Ella.
Our daughter.
She needs all the love they can’t give her in person. It’s up to me to give her everything we were supposed to give her together.
“Lenny.”
“Easy, little one.”
I close my eyes and draw in a slow, shaky breath before answering, “I’m okay.” I’m not, but I think if I say it enough, I’ll begin to believe it and that has to be enough. “Where’s Ella?”
“Sleeping,” Veyn assures gently. “Hasn’t stirred once.”
I open my eyes to peer up at the two leaning over me.
A demon and a man.
The humor in that statement isn’t lost on me, but the echo chamber in my chest refuses to let me laugh.
Instead, I touch their faces. Light brushes of my fingertips along the lines and curves of their cheeks.
They are not my boys, but they have somehow balmed the torn and jagged edges where my heart once lay. And I love them in a different way.
“Are you okay?” Marcus asks. “You were crying in your sleep.”
Fresh, hot tears skirt down my temples and vanish into my hairline, but I nod.
“Just a dream,” I murmur.
“Do you need something?” Veyn pipes in.
I shake my head. “Just stay with me.”
“Always,” Marcus says immediately.
“Not going anywhere,” Veyn adds.
“Talk to me,” I plead, the restless, jittery feeling to get up and pace worming through me. “Where are we? Who lives here?”
“Don’t know,” Veyn confesses. “I wasn’t concentrating when I opened a mirror. I only wanted you safe.”
“It’s someone’s summer house,” Marcus answers. “A cottage. It doesn’t look like anyone’s been here for a while. There’s dust on everything.”
“We’ll have to leave them a note apologizing for ruining their bed,” I say.
Marcus touches the side of my face. “I’ll take care of it.”
I settle my palm over the back of his hand and press him closer before turning my attention to Veyn.
“What happened with your brothers?”
“They will not harm you ever again. I have made certain of it. They are gone.”
“I’m … I’m sorry about that,” Marcus murmurs. “I didn’t realize I was making an offering.”
Veyn sighs. “They were manipulative. Since you refused to destroy my altar, binding you to them in the way of a sacrificial offering was their only other option.”
“They were shitty brothers,” Marcus mumbles. “No wonder you kept them locked up.”
“I didn’t always. After first creating them, they were by my side.
My brothers. Inseparable. But the more they witnessed the worship of humans and their weakness, the more they turned into something I couldn’t trust. In their minds, humanity was placed on earth to worship us.
That it was their duty to be slaves. That wasn’t what my temple was for.
It became clear quickly that I would need to contain them which I did by binding them to me. ”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, reaching for him.
He shakes his head. “It was a lesson. There is a reason my kind exists alone.”
I consider his explanation, contemplating the best way to explain that he’s not alone. That he has us.
Marcus beats me to it.
“Well, you’re not alone anymore so…”
“No, I suppose I’m not,” Veyn murmurs so quietly, I nearly don’t hear him.
“And I will try not to kill you,” Marcus continues.
“Marcus!” I scold.
But to my surprise, Veyn laughs. “You nearly bled to death because of a scratch. I feel confident I can kill you first.”
“It wasn’t a scratch,” Marcus gasps with outrage. “I was bleeding all over the place.”
“Wuss.”
I smile as the two bicker over me. Ella continues to sleep in her makeshift bed crafted from a dresser drawer and blankets.
The sky outside is a flawless, cloudless navy that spans into miles of possibilities.
An unknown future waiting for us to navigate together.
I may not know when I’ll be with my boys again, but for now, until that day, I will live my life the best I can with the people … and demon, I love.