Chapter 32
W e barely make it down the street from the Seer’s house before I collapse. My knees hit the ground, pain reverberating through my joints. But I welcome it. I deserve it, after all.
Strong arms catch me before my entire body goes entirely limp, before my face can hit the cold earth.
“Darling,” says Nolan, though there’s nothing else to say as he sweeps me into his arms and pulls me into his chest.
“I’m just like them,” I croak into his shoulder.
“Darling?” he asks.
“I’m just like them,” I say again.
“Just like who?” he asks again.
“My parents,” I say. “Don’t you see what I’m doing to him? To our child?”
My stomach cramps as I grab at it. “I’m doing to him exactly what they did to me. But it’s worse this time. When they bargained my life away, they were doing it to save the life of their child. Nolan, I bargained away our little boy’s life into the hands of a predator.”
“To save me,” he says, his jaw set against my cheek.
I weep into his shoulder. “No, no. It was to save me. It was because I couldn’t bear the pain.
Nolan, just think of the life he’s going to have.
You and I—we’ve both suffered. Me at the hands of the men in my father’s parlor.
You at the hands of the warden. But what I’m giving him over to…
it’s even worse. She’s going to take him as a child.
As a baby. She’s going to raise him, and then… ”
But my mouth won’t even let me speak the words. The dreadful truth. And then she’s going to take him for herself.
How long will the Sister delay until she demands what she feels is owed to her? Will she wait for him to grow up? And even if she does, what will that do to my child’s mind? To have the figure who raised him demand him as a husband?
I feel as if I could vomit, and I think I would if I had more food in my stomach.
My voice is a broken reed, whipped around in the wind. “What have I done?”
“You didn’t know,” Nolan says, clutching the skin between my shoulder blades. “You thought we could avoid it. You said yourself you didn’t think you could have children.”
“It wasn’t worth the risk!” I scream, that truth so clear to me now. Even as I declare it, guilt pangs me.
“I don’t mean—” I can’t finish my sentence. Can’t think about what my bargain saved Nolan from.
Something rips within me. The desire to protect my husband from further torment, the aching protectiveness for my child, splitting me in two.
Before having a child was a reality to me, I’d have chosen Nolan every time. But now?—
“It wasn’t worth the risk,” I whisper again. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
I don’t even know what I’m apologizing for anymore. For saying that saving Nolan from his fate wasn’t worth it? Or am I apologizing for conscripting his only child to a worse fate than either of us has dreamt of?
“I used to hate them,” I whisper. “I used to hate them for what they did to me. But I’m not any better.”
I know that there was a part of my parents who were still my parents when they forced me into the hands of my suitors. But another truth exists as well, parallel to the one I’ve always let myself believe.
I don’t know where my parents ended and their bargain with the Sister began, controlling their actions and morphing their minds with desperation.
“What they did to me, they did for me,” I say. “As cruel, as awful as it was. They did it thinking they were protecting me. What I’ve done to our son, to our baby boy…” Again, I grope for the words but can’t find them.
“We’ll fix it,” says Nolan, grasping me so hard he’s almost digging his fingers into my back. It hurts, but I say nothing. Not when I so badly want to be held. Want to know that there’s someone out there who doesn’t despise me for my wretchedness.
Though I don’t tell him, a part of me feels I deserve for the touches of my loved ones to ache. It’s the least of the penance I can pay for what I’ve done to my son.
To my innocent little boy.
“We’re going to fix this,” he says again. And he sounds so sure.
I glance up at him, tears blurring my vision.
“Don’t you see?” I ask. “We can’t fix it. We could try to find loopholes. But she’s always one step ahead of us. There’s no way out of this. The Sister made sure of it. She’s beaten us at every turn, Nolan.”
And then I realize that even my lack of hope feels like a betrayal to my son.
“It’s not that I won’t try,” I say. “It’s not that I won’t do everything I can to keep him out of her hands. I just know, deep down, that it won’t work.”
“It will work,” he says.
“How can you be so sure?” I ask. It’s a moment before I realize I screamed it. That I’m digging my fingernails into his shoulders, though my anger is nowhere near directed at him.
“You can’t be sure,” I say, this time with a sickening quietness.
“Darling,” he says, cupping my cheeks in his hand. “I will not let her take our son.”
There’s something about his determination that makes my heart ache even more. He truly thinks there’s something he can do.
The gold of his healed Mating Mark peeks out over his collar, stirring a thought within me.
“You’re healed now,” I say.
There’s a dread creeping up within my heart, as if my feelings discover the truth before my mind does.
“Yes,” he says, watching my eyes intently as he sees through them, watching my brain work.
“You’re going to offer yourself in his place,” I say. “That’s why you’re so calm.” I swallow, my mind both wanting to make it impossible and aching for it to be possible at the same time.
Nolan grimaces. “She’ll want me more than she wants him. The only reason she bartered me away to begin with was because she thought my life had been shortened.”
“But you’ll still die eventually,” I say. “She can’t make you immortal. Not when she’s cursed not to be able to interfere with your tapestry. You’ll die, and you’ll have spent the remainder of your life…”
There’s a war within me. Inside, a voice cries out, No. You can’t. You have to stay with me. You can’t give yourself up to her. I can’t lose you.
But then I think of our child. Our little boy.
And it’s not just him I’m thinking of, but a little Wendy, whose parents never quite figured out how to save her.
“It’s not fair,” I whisper.
“Wendy Darling,” says Nolan, “what else could a man hope for in his life than to give his up for his family?”
I fight to swallow the lump in my throat but find my effort unsuccessful. “It will be torture.”
“I know,” he says.
I want to fight him on it. Beg him not to leave me. But both of us know that the torture he used to endure at the Sister’s hand would be nothing compared to the torture in our minds, knowing that our son was cursed to live out such a horrific fate.
“We were never meant to have each other, were we?” I whisper.
Nolan stares at me, a sadness in his green eyes that extends into my husband’s soul. Guilt pangs me as I remember the guilt Nolan must feel for the moment he asked the Seer to transfer his Mating Mark. The moment that took away our one chance of living happily.
My husband strokes the hair from my wet cheek. “Let me fix this. Darling, please.”