Chapter 29
W hen a golden mark in the shape of a crescent appears on my skin, Charlie cries.
We’ve been sitting in her room for half an hour, staring at my wrists. The apothecary told us the results could take up to five hours after drinking the vile liquid.
It had only taken one.
I hardly hear Charlie sobbing next to me, hardly feel her grab my shoulders and pull me sideways into her chest.
If you had told me four years ago I’d one day have married my Mate and discovered I was to bear his child, I would have thought this would be a joyous occasion. A milestone I never expected for myself, but would have felt honored to experience.
I would have pictured my Mate picking me up and twirling me around, shouting for joy.
In reality, I feel nothing at all. Just the gentle caress of that familiar numbness that I’ve so often found respite in.
I’d always pictured myself holding my belly when I found out. But I don’t want to hold my belly. Don’t want to acknowledge what will only be ripped from my arms.
“It has to be a girl,” says Charlie, still crying. “It has to be.”
“What has to be a girl?”
The voice has Charlie and me starting. We whip around to find my rain-soaked husband standing in the doorway.
My heart stops in my chest as I find my husband’s moonstruck face in the doorway.
Charlie beats me to speaking.
“Captain, I’m so sorry.” She jolts from the bed and runs toward him, but stops halfway, her feet skidding on the rug. She stands there with her hands out, like she doesn’t know what to do with them.
“I didn’t mean to,” she says. “I didn’t know. The Sister tricked me.”
She’s rambling now, tears spilling down her face. I long to go to her, to wrap my arms around my friend and comfort her. But I’m frozen on the bed, still numb with shock.
Nolan looks just as stunned. He stares at her, then swallows, a pained look in his expression. He turns away from Charlie and shifts his attention toward me.
“Are we having a child?”
The only reaction I can manage is to nod, but I’m trembling so fervently, I can’t be confident it looks all that different than shaking my head.
“Very well.” My husband’s voice is devoid of any reaction whatsoever. He stares at me blankly, then glances down at my stomach, his forehead crinkling in consternation.
“Captain,” says Charlie, her voice a plea.
He doesn’t look at her. “Charlotte, I need you to leave me with my wife.”
“I’m…” She stops herself, shame constricting the muscles underneath her jaw, then scurries out the door.
Nolan steps into the room and closes it behind him. Now that I’m alone with my husband, there’s a chill in the air where there shouldn’t be. There’s no window in Charlie’s cabin. No draft to speak of.
“When did you discover this?” His voice is firm but not demanding. Practical, if anything.
“Just a few hours ago,” I say. “Charlie and I went to the apothecary to get more of the contraceptive. Apparently what I’ve been taking… Well, it’s not a contraceptive. We think the Middle Sister tricked us. Whether she sent one of her servants or appeared in a different form, I don’t know.”
Nolan neither shakes his head nor nods, still processing.
I wish he would come closer. I wish he wouldn’t just stand with his back pinned to the doorpost like that, his hand still on the knob.
“And you’re certain the pregnancy has taken?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say, holding up my wrist to show him the insignia, then letting it fall limply back into my lap.
Nolan lets out a deep sigh, then runs his hand through his dark hair. The gesture itself is innocuous, but it might as well drive fangs into my heart. I miss being the one to do that—tousle my husband’s hair.
“Are you going to leave again?” I say, unable to look at him as I do.
Because of this, I don’t see the reaction on his face—only feel the pause in the room. Finally, boots traverse against creaky wooden floorboards as he finally crosses the chasm between us and finds his place on the bed next to me.
We sit like that. Both straight-backed. Frozen.
I want nothing but to melt into him, and though there is heat radiating off of him, I get the sense that touching him would result in scorch marks.
“No, Darling,” he says. “I won’t leave again.”
I close my eyes, squeezing them shut. It’s the answer I wanted, yet it aches all the same that I even have to ask.
“I thought this moment would be different,” I whisper.
Nolan turns his head toward me, though I still can barely look at him, so I have to sense it out of the corner of my eye.
“Do you know how far along you are?” he asks.
“No.”
“Do you know if there’s a way to find out?”
“Does it matter?” I ask.
What I don’t say is that the Sister will be taking this child, regardless of how far along my pregnancy is. I’ve no desire to count down the days to the birth of a child I’ll never be allowed to hold.
“I suppose there’s a possibility it could be a girl,” says Nolan. He does not sound hopeful. Not like Charlie, who sounded as if she believed herself single-handedly capable of willing it to be true.
“It doesn’t seem that we have that sort of luck, does it?” I ask.
“There are Seers,” says Nolan, “who specialize in determining this sort of thing.”
I don’t answer. I just sit there, straight-backed, staring at the clock on the wall, watching it tick.
“It wouldn’t change anything,” I say. “Knowing or not knowing.”
Nolan falls quiet. After a long moment of silence, he turns his head toward me again.
Tick, tick goes the clock on the wall.
“My anger at you wasn’t fair,” he says. “At least not in the extremes I took it. When I recovered, when I was lying in that bed on the brink of death, and all of a sudden I felt my Mark heal, when I felt the warmth flow back through my skin, the life breathed back through my lungs… all I could think was she did it. My wife did it. My wife saved me. There wasn’t an ounce of anger in my body then.
I didn’t care that you had left me. All I cared about was the life I would get to spend with you.
All I could think about was that you scaled that mountain and found a way to save me.
I didn’t care that you had ignored my wishes because it had turned out for my good. Or so I thought.
“It wasn’t fair of me to approve of you then, only to change my perspective of the very same action just because the results revealed themselves to differ from what I previously thought.”
“Are you saying you should have been mad at me to begin with?” I ask.
Nolan lets out a wry chuckle. “That would have been more consistent, wouldn’t it?”
“I suppose.” I chew my lip, hesitating before I continue. “Maddox told me about yours and Iaso’s system.”
“It works well for me,” he says. “Did he tell you why I go away?”
My answer is clipped. “Yes.”
“And do you understand?”
“I understand it,” I say, and then turn to look at him. “I simply don’t accept it.”
He blinks like a burst of air has gushed into his face, but he waits for me to explain further.
“I’m glad you and Iaso found a system that worked for the two of you,” I say, my voice trembling.
I wish I sounded stronger. More resolute.
But resolute words are the best I can do right now, even if my demeanor is nothing of the sort.
“But you leaving? That’s not going to work for me.
I don’t care that you’re telling me when you’re coming back.
I don’t care that you keep your promises and that you’ll return exactly by the hour you say you will.
I can’t. I can’t be left,” I say, shuddering. “Especially not by you.”
A wrinkle etches its way across Nolan’s face.
“I understand,” he says. “I’m sorry, Darling. I fell back into what I was used to. But I should know better than to expect our marriage to operate in the same way as mine and Iaso’s. I should know better than to impose her rules upon you.”
I nod, clutching the quilt on the bed, letting it crinkle in my hands.
“I can be sympathetic that you have anger boiling up inside of you. Really, I can. I know what the warden did to you. I know what it meant to lose your father so early—well, I don’t know, but I can try to understand,” I correct myself.
“But we’re going to have to come up with a different way for you to handle it. ”
“I’m sorry, Darling,” he says, taking his hand and placing it upon my knee.
At first I cringe underneath his touch, but when I glimpse the pain that slices its way across his tensed jaw, my heart softens, and I place my hand on top of his. His shoulders—so stiff—finally relax.
And just like that, something thaws between us. It’s not warm. Not yet. But melting, all the same.
“I feel so stupid,” I say.
“What for?” he asks.
“For believing that I could outsmart the Sister,” I say. “For not questioning the brew that Charlie gave me.”
“You have every reason to trust Charlie,” says Nolan.
“I know. But it’s not about trust,” I say. “It’s about the fact that we’re playing a game for which we don’t know the rules. And the being we’re playing against created the game herself. I should have double-checked. I should have been more careful.”
“The same could have been said of me,” says Nolan. “I didn’t question it either. I just wanted so badly for our marriage to be…”
“Normal?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “No, never that. I’m no fool. But I wanted our marriage to be… good. Not just for me. But for you. I wanted to give you everything any other wife would be able to expect and more.”
“Maybe we could still have that,” I say, my hands finding my belly for the first time.
I tear up as dreadful, horrifying hope buds inside of me.
“The tapestries,” I say. “Our alternate future. We were supposed to have a girl, were we not?”
Nolan nods.
“There’s just as much chance of that as having a boy,” I say. “What if? What if, for once, we could be lucky? What if the flip of the coin was tossed in our favor? Just once.”
Nolan’s face softens, tears forming in his eyes. “Then I suppose we could have everything we wanted. A happy little accident. A perfect ending.”
“I’ll do it. I’ll go to the Seer,” I say.
Because now, images are pouring into my mind. Ones I don’t know how to put up a fortress against. They’re hopes I’ve denied myself for so long. And now that I know there’s a flip-of-a-coin’s chance at happiness, I can’t help but dream of it.
A little girl. With dark hair the color of Nolan’s that falls in waves like mine. His green eyes. Hopefully, his wit and determination as well.
“We’ll start on the path tomorrow,” says Nolan.
I nod.
“Tomorrow,” I say.