Chapter 39
BILLY
The room dissolves into noise.
Metal clatters.
Fabric tears.
Someone swears under their breath.
Someone else starts counting aloud like numbers can hold the world together.
But all I can hear is the pounding in my skull. A brutal, animal rhythm that feels like death trying to break its way in.
The curtain trembles with every movement on the other side, I can’t see what they're doing down there, but Penelope’s still out, her pale face gaunt under the harsh white lights.
The smell of sterilised tools and blood hangs thick in the air.
My brothers all keep their hands on me, steadying me with a grip that borders on painful.
But I think they know, if they let go, I might do something unforgivable.
Like push through the curtain, drag her into my arms, and damn the consequences.
A medic’s voice slices through the chaos rattling around inside my skull, “Baby’s heart rate dropping again.”
My vision tunnels. I brace a hand on the wall, my chest heaving, my stomach flipping, I can’t get enough air, can’t get enough anything.
I’m chanting inside my head, “Please, please, please,” even though I’ve never begged for anything in my life.
If my father really is a god, then for the first time in my life I will fall to my knees at his mercy if it means he could save her.
The midwife nearest the curtain looks over her shoulder at me.
“He’s small,” she murmurs, voice tight. “He’s been under a lot of stress.”
He.
The word hits me like a hammer to the ribs.
A son.
Penelope knew.
She just had a ‘feeling’.
But we have a son.
We might lose a son.
My heart plummets.
The medic barks, “Scalpel,” and someone slaps it into her hand.
The blue curtain shivers violently, and I finally close my eyes because if I watch, I’ll go insane.
“Billy,” Tolliver says lowly, “you’re bleeding again.”
I look down.
My shirt is soaked through, the wounds on my back reopening from the strain and the heat and the tension. The blood runs warm. Down my sides. Into my waistband. Onto the floor.
“I don’t care,” I whisper.
“You need-”
“She needs me more.”
He swallows hard, nods, and doesn’t argue again.
I think that’s the moment he understands.
That they all understand.
Irrevocably.
There is nothing I wouldn’t give for her.
Nothing I wouldn’t suffer.
Nothing I wouldn’t burn.
A high, thin alarm suddenly shrieks from one of the machines.
“Heart rate crashing!”
My own heart stops.
The room erupts into more shouts.
And for a moment, the world becomes a blurred smear of bodies and movement and frantic desperation.
The medic curses. A tray drops, tools scattering.
I grab the nearest forearm, one of my brothers’s and squeeze so hard I could snap bone, but whoever it is I’ve got a hold of doesn’t complain, or pull away, they just let me hold onto them, supporting me the way our mother, her mother, has always wanted.
“Save them,” I choke. “Please, save them.”
The medic snaps, “We’re working as fast as we can!”
Then, a sound.
Small.
Wet.
Weak.
A cry.
A whimper.
A startled, fragile, newborn gasp that cracks the world open.
“He’s out,” Doctor Jay says, cold, unfeeling, emotionless. “Baby is out. Get him under a lamp.”
My knees nearly give out.
“Cry, little one,” Tolly whispers at my back. “Come on, cry-”
Another sound answers.
Still tiny.
Still thin.
But real.
Alive.
My son’s scream pierces through my chest like a dagger, flooding my vision with something hot and violent, relief, joy, terror, love, all of it so tangled I can’t separate it.
“My Pair?” I demand, voice raw.
No one answers for long, long seconds, my watery eyes on her chest, vision too blurred to see if there's movement.
“Is she breathing? Is she-”
“She’s stable,” the medic finally says. “For now. Pressure is still low. We need to close her and get more blood into her.”
A cold weight slams into my chest.
‘For now’ isn’t good enough. Not nearly good enough.
My feet move to go to her, but Gore squeezes my arm, his dark green eyes boring into mine, “Let them finish,” he murmurs. “You’ll only get in the way.”
He’s right. I hate that he’s right. The curtain blocks my view, but I can see her foot, still, pale, flecked with blood. I force myself to stay rooted where I am, counting every second like a punishment.
They work on her for what feels like hours though it’s barely minutes. The world spins around me. The room sways. My ears ring. I don’t know if it’s the blood loss or the fear or both.
Then a soft voice, “Sir.”
I look down, the young woman from before, pale ashy hair, big apple-green eyes, Amaranthine, stands before me, tiny bundle in her arms.
My son.
“Do you want to hold him?”
The question nearly destroys me.
My throat closes. My chest aches, and I nod because words won’t come.
She places the baby into my shaking hands, and the world… stills, tilts, begins moving again.
He’s so small. So impossibly small. Wrapped in a thin cloth. Face scrunched, eyelids fluttering. Dark tufts of curly hair. A mouth that looks like hers.
My son.
Ours.
Something inside me detonates, an explosion of fierce, savage love that leaves me breathless.
“I’ve got you,” I whisper, voice breaking. “I’ve got you, little one.”
He makes a sound like a sigh, leans into my chest, warms my blood with his tiny heat.
Tolly exhales a shaky breath beside me, “Looks like you,” he says softly.
“He looks like her,” I murmur without looking away from my sons button nose.
Amaranthine smiles with tired eyes, “He’s strong. A fighter.”
Of course he is.
Because he’s hers.
I press my forehead to his, trembling with everything I can’t say. Every vow I can’t voice. Every terror I can’t bury.
I glance at the curtain again.
“Penelope…”
Her name is a wound and a prayer all at once.
The medic calls out, “We’ve stabilised her. She’s going into recovery.”
My knees almost buckle with relief.
I tuck our son closer, the living proof that she is still here, still fighting, still mine.
And for the first time since the lashings began, I breathe.