Chapter 39 #2
“Is there another child?” I ask, my voice desperate. For a single foolish moment, I picture a baby I’ll be allowed to keep, allowed to raise.
“No,” says Malia, dashing my hope. “And you need to stay there. At least until you’ve passed the afterbirth.”
The afterbirth. I’ve forgotten about that. It’s a word I’ve heard, but I’ve never actually considered what it meant.
“There’s always a risk of hemorrhaging,” says Malia, voice still calm. Concerned, even. “If we’re gone before you pass it, there’s a potion in my satchel. I’ll leave it here. It should help the blood clot. Keep you from bleeding out.”
My mind should hang up on the words bleeding out , but instead, it gets caught on if we’re gone .
“You’re going to take him to Nolan, then,” I say. “You’re not bringing my husband here.”
Malia shakes her head, her long silver hair swaying behind her.
“Please, could you just let me see him?” I say.
There’s another sound and then a whimper as Malia removes my child from her breast. She slips her tunic back over her shoulder, recovering herself.
When she turns to face me, there are tears streaming down her face.
Again, I’m struck with the notion that something is terribly wrong. But before I can ask, another contraction rips through me.
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” she says. And there’s genuine sympathy in her eyes. There’s something else there, too, a guilt I can’t quite grasp.
This isn’t her doing. In fact, it’s exactly what Nolan and I are paying her to do.
Perhaps if I had not been through what I’ve been through in this life, I would mistake that guilt for a deep sense of empathy, for someone who takes others’ burdens upon their own hearts and blames themselves for pain they did not cause.
But I am not so na?ve a girl anymore.
“You’re not taking my baby to Nolan, are you?” I ask.
Malia purses her lips as if to hold back a sob. My sluggish mind works to put the pieces together. Why? Why would Kendra betray us like this? It doesn’t seem the type of thing that would be good for her business.
Unless… unless someone paid her more.
“The Sister,” I say. “She gave Kendra another offer, didn’t she? To take my baby to her instead of Nolan?”
Malia pauses. “That would be the easier story,” she says.
“But Kendra rescued me from a dire situation. I won’t put the blame on her, especially when I know what your husband is capable of.
Kendra knows nothing. When I told her you could only have been with child for three or four months, she believed me. ”
“Then why do this?” I say.
“The Sister has my child,” she explains.
“She took him from me. This was before I met Kendra. The Sister lets me see him, but only enough to feed him. Once he grows and becomes more dependent on solid food and less on me, I’ll see less and less of him.
My time is running out with my son. So when the Sister told me to take up employment with Kendra and bide my time, I did.
“She knew your husband and Kendra had a history that went back years, that eventually he would come to her for help. She didn’t believe she could get Kendra to compromise their business relationship, so instead, she planted me—just as she planted others.”
Malia waits for me to catch up.
“You mean the apothecaries? At the stands where we bought my potion?” I ask, reeling.
“I didn’t know what the Sister wanted from you until you came to us that day,” she says.
“All I had heard was that your husband was a privateer—a ruthless one at that. I thought nothing of taking a job against someone so violent. Though… I’m learning that I would do much more horrible things so I can get my son back. ”
I watch Malia, her soft face, hear her soft voice, and think that she was not born for a life like this. I wonder where the Sister found her—cast out on the street with her newborn child, no doubt.
“So you would trade my son for yours,” I say.
“Yes,” she says. “Though it grieves me to do so.”
“Do you know what the Sister is going to do to him?” I say, hardly able to look at my little boy as I say it. “Do you know what she wants him for?”
Malia bites her lip, and for once, hope buds within me.
Of course, the Sister had not told Malia the entire story. And with a compassionate heart like hers, maybe the truth will sway her. She may even aid me.
“The Middle Sister is under a curse cast by the Eldest,” I explain. “She falls in love with every firstborn male in Nolan’s line. She’s going to raise my little boy to take him for herself.”
Malia’s pale face turns a shade of green, and she swallows, the disgust evident on her face. In her arms, my baby trembles.
“You can’t hand him over to her,” I say. “Surely you can’t subject a child to that sort of fate.”
But something flares in Malia’s eyes. It’s not sympathy or compassion, but something sharper, glowing hot as a blade placed into the furnace.
“No. I cannot,” she says.
Relief swells up in my heart, but then she continues. “But I was not the one who consigned your son to such a fate. Had you not made your own bargain—had you not struck your own deal with the Sister, the one you now wish to renege on—he would not have been taken.
“He’s six months old,” she says. “And it won’t be long before the Sister forces me to wean him. So while I regret that your son is to meet his fate, he was never my responsibility. That belongs to my son. And I would have never struck the bargain that you did.”
A pain pierces my belly, one stronger even than the contraction that sweeps over me.
What I first assumed was anger in Malia’s eyes, I now interpret as something different: a cold judgment. Not one she wishes upon me, but one she cannot save me from, either.
Again, my son begins to cry.
Tears sweep down my face, and as I try to stumble toward her again, something warm slips between my legs.
There’s a plop as what appears to be a bag of blood hits the floor. A trickle of blood down my inner thighs follows.
“Like I said,” says Malia, “there’s a potion in the satchel.”
Again I stumble toward her, but my legs are still wobbly.
“Please, just let me hold him once,” I beg.
“So you can do what?” she asks. “Turn him over to the Sister yourself? So that you can give away your own child and also take away my chance of getting mine back?”
“She’ll find a way to trick you.”
Malia shakes her head. “You don’t understand. She already did. But it is not my child she desires, and he will not suffer for your decisions. I’m sorry, Wendy Astor.”
And then she turns to go.
As she’s about to curve down the tunnel, she cranes her head over her shoulder and looks at me one last time. “If your husband ever chooses to hunt me down for this, tell him to spare my son.”
And then she is gone.
I let out a grunt, finally able to push myself upward. But the trickle of blood down my legs has accelerated into a stream. The loss of blood has my head spinning, and I collapse back onto the floor, barely avoiding hitting my head against the boulder.
On my elbows and knees, I crawl toward the cave tunnel, but again, my vision begins to spot.
My instincts have me crawling toward my child. I would bleed out if it meant getting him back to his father. But somewhere within me, reason takes over.
I cannot chase him down if I am dead.
So I use what little energy I have left—what little consciousness—to crawl over to the satchel.
Inside it, I fish out a vial.
My eyes are crossing, so it takes me a moment to find the one that says “for hemorrhages.”
I’m not sure what this is, or the dosage, so I swig the entire bottle, gulping down the foul liquid.