39. The Little One
Chapter thirty-nine
The Little One
Kira
I was barely conscious when cool hands touched my forehead. My nausea was back with a vengeance, twisting me up. I felt dizzy. Though maybe that was everything that had happened.
“Are you sick, child?”
I thought I was dreaming, as I moaned against the tender hand.
“Kira?” the whisper-soft voice called to me. “You must eat something.”
I blinked, and the room was back. The room that was my new prison. The guilt of my choices slammed into me. I was a prisoner, cut off from my colleagues, my work, my purpose.
I was cut off from the world, in trouble, and alone.
All because I was stupid enough to fall in love. To fall for his words… to fall for an artist.
What the fuck was I? Some doe-eyed groupie?
I knew that I had to pull myself together and formulate a plan. But my stomach was in knots, and my heart ached like it had when I lost my only family.
“Kira?” the voice called again. “We have to get you up, child.”
An Irish voice. Another fucking Irish voice. I blinked and a ghostly apparition appeared.
“Child, you cannot stay in bed tonight. I’m sorry. We must get you dressed.”
Light fingers pulled at my hair, tugging it behind my ear. I knew who she was. Eoghan’s stepmother. But what was she doing here? He must have sent her.
“He’s trapped me,” I said, in a whisper. A whisper not that dissimilar from hers.
She looked at me with pitying eyes.
“I know.” She brought her forehead down to mine, and mumbled something that sounded like an apology.
“What do I do?” I said, because I had no one else. I had no one else to talk to.
My friend, Cosima, wouldn’t even speak to me now. I knew that. I couldn’t get a message to Blink.
“He’s taken my phone,” I whispered.
It was painful to think that I was now cut off and alone. I hated technology, and lamented its existence. But now, being without it made me feel like I was floating in a terrible ocean that was dark and full of monsters in the deep, circling beneath my feet.
“There are other ways to get a message out.” Her words were so quiet, like it was a secret.
I sat up in bed, letting the blanket fall to my waist. I was in nothing but a t-shirt, but I didn’t feel exposed in front of this strange woman. She looked like a person who could keep secrets. She sat on the edge, dressed in black from head to toe, which made her white skin even paler. The light from the outside washed over her features, and she reflected it like the moon.
Her brows knotted, as she scanned my body. She cupped my face, her eyes curious, as if I had a strange growth coming out of my face.
I was so self-conscious that I wiped my face, wondering if I had drooled on myself or something.
With Eoghan out of my life, the full force of my loneliness had slammed into me anew. The seduction, the courtship, the wedding… I had forgotten about the undercurrent of loneliness that ruled my day, ever present, but ignored. It was like a chronic pain I had learned to live with. Then he had given me a cure, then yanked it away.
Now, there was a strange woman standing in front of me, her eyes worried and kind, and I clung to her like she was some kind of life raft.
Aoibheann placed her hand on my belly, and I blushed.
I had been holding water weight, and I knew it. I assumed it was stress, and everything else going on, but a strange thought wiggled into the back of my mind. It was like a firefly, landing in the darkness, threatening to grow into day.
As if to confirm that small invasive thought, Aoibheann, in her haunting, strange Irish accent said, “You’re with child.”
She didn’t say it with awe, or joy. Not in the way someone should declare a baby. But…
I reflected her fear back to her, as I shook my head. She nodded, cupping my face in both her cold hands.
“You must get up, and get dressed,” she said, her eyes becoming glassy. “I’ll come back with a test, but you must get up. They won’t let you hide in here, no matter how cruel they have been, or how justified you are. You must get up.”
She placed a quick peck on my forehead and floated away, silently opening and closing my door and leaving me alone like she had been some kind of strange apparition.
She was getting a … a test?
I shuddered, but got up. I had been so lost without Eoghan’s guiding hand that now I was willing to do whatever this strange witch was telling me. She must have known how to survive in this family, and in this house, with all of the vipers that coiled and slithered around us.
I just hope I’m not fooled, like I was with Eoghan.
I put on a black dress, feeling the slight cinch of the waist around my abdomen. I stared down at my stomach. It had always protruded, at least a little bit, so it was impossible to tell if this was more than just water weight or, in fact, a new life just like Aoibheann had said.
I was dressed when she returned, she deliberately closed the door, ensuring it was locked before she handed me the familiar foil-wrapped test. She put it in my hand, and shooed me into the bathroom.
“Why do you have this?” I asked, staring at it. “Were you trying…”
“I was trying not to.”
Her candor surprised me, after Alastair’s words about children, and whelps and wee’uns, or whatever…
“This is no place for a babe,” she said, her eyes darting around, as if the walls had ears. “I cannot even defend myself, much less a child here.”
Dread seeped into my core, making my womb tighten. I placed my hand on my belly, already knowing the result of this test before I even took it.
“Are you saying that…”
“Eoghan is a good boy,” she said, though I doubted that she and Eoghan had that much of an age difference, really. He was younger, but not by much. “But with each passing day he is more and more like his father.”
She swallowed, loudly. I shuddered.
“With each passing day he becomes more like his father.” She was staring off into the distance, shaking her head slowly, as if she was mourning something tragic. “One day, he will be just like him and… and…”
A single tear went down her porcelain cheek.
Without looking at me, she took the sleeve of her shoulder, pulling it down to her bicep. She didn’t have to reveal much. But what I saw was enough. With the new skin she revealed, she also showed me deep, angular scars. It crossed over her shoulders, over her breast, disappearing into the lines of her bra. When she brought the sleeve back up, I realized that her conservative dress wasn’t because she liked it… it was to hide the marks on her skin.
I didn’t need to ask who did that to her. I already knew.
“He’ll do the same to you, I fear.” Her frown deepened at the corner, creating a sad crease on her chin.
Her husband whipped her. Or cut her. Either one was more than just simple abuse. It was torture.
My gut clenched. She was showing me my future.
“I could not defend myself, and I could never defend a child.” Her green eyes changed, darkening to something that looked like determination. She looked at me, her lips no longer frowning, but in a hard determined line. “But I can defend you, child.”