Chapter 3
Hannalinde
She counted the weeks again on her fingers, starting from the last time her courses had arrived, forward and back.
Eight weeks. Possibly ten. She should have been paying more attention.
She lowered her hands to her lap and stared at the wall above her worktable, where a water stain spread across the plaster.
She was not going to think about it. She refused.
There were dozens of reasons a woman’s courses might stop.
Poor diet. Exhaustion. Worry, and the fallen gods knew she had enough of that.
She’d lost weight since last year, and the body conserved what it could when it was struggling. That was all this was.
She picked up the mercer’s daughter’s veil and began to unpick the crooked bleeding heart she’d stitched the evening before. The thread pulled free in tiny, satisfying increments, each one a mistake undone. If only everything could be taken apart and restarted so neatly.
The nausea crested again when she bent forward to pick up a dropped spool of thread.
The smell of the tallow candle, which had never bothered her before, sat thick and greasy in the back of her throat.
She pushed the candle to the far edge of the table and worked by the thin daylight leaking through the shutters.
It’s the fish.
Except she’d barely eaten at all. The thought of food made her mouth water in the wrong way, the precursor to heaving rather than hunger.
She’d managed half a bread roll that morning and a cup of water, and both had stayed down only because she laid flat on her back afterward and breathed through her nose until the sickness passed.
She set down the hoop.
Her hands found her belly through the worn wool of her dress, pressing gently. It felt the same, soft and unremarkable. No telltale swelling that she could detect, nothing that looked different when she bathed in the basin. But she wasn’t a fool, either.
The gargoyle had done more than make her his mate, hadn’t he? He’d made her the mother of his child, too. He was never going to leave her alone. She was irrevocably bound to him, her tormenter.
She pressed her hands harder against her stomach, as though she could push the thought away.
No. She would not accept it. Whatever the gargoyle had branded into her blood with his teeth, whatever seed he’d planted in her, it did not make her his.
Carlijn lived with her parents in a townhouse in the outer ring of the palace quarter.
They weren’t of noble blood, but her father was a spice merchant and could afford a house in a better quarter and the servants to tend it.
Though Carlijn chafed under her parents’ rule, it was certainly preferable to living alone in Hannalinde’s situation, even with the constant threats that her allowance would be severed if she refused to marry a certain wool merchant’s son from Meravenna.
Carlijn had opinions about the engagement and expressed them at every opportunity, so the house was always clouded with their disapproval.
The housekeeper showed Hannalinde into the modest parlor, and Carlijn came down in a dressing gown, her brown ringlets pinned haphazardly on top of her head and a smear of jam on her chin. “Hanna! You look dreadful. What’s going on?”
“I need your help.” The words took all the air in her lungs.
Carlijn’s expression sharpened. She pulled Hannalinde upstairs to her bedroom, shut the door, and steered her toward the settee, which was draped with so many shawls and stockings that sitting on it required excavation.
She swept them aside and pushed Hannalinde down onto the cushion. “Tell me everything.”
Hannalinde opened her mouth, and the thing she’d been refusing to think tumbled out. “I’m with child.”
Her friend’s eyes went very wide. Then she sat down hard on the opposite chair, knocking a pile of petticoats to the floor, and reached across the space between them to take Hannalinde’s hands. Her fingers were warm and slightly sticky with jam. “The gargoyle?”
Hannalinde nodded. She’d told Carlijn about him months ago, on a night when the wine was cheap and plentiful.
“How far along are you?” she asked, nibbling at her lower lip.
“Two months. Perhaps three. I don’t know exactly when it happened.” It had not been a single event but a series of them that blurred together because she didn’t care to recall the details.
“Right.” Carlijn squeezed her hands, then released them and stood, scanning the mess of her room, a clutter of clothing and breakfast dishes.
“We’ll sort this out. There are women who deal with this kind of thing every day.
I’ll take you to the apothecary right now.
” She pulled a fresh-but-rumpled chemise from one pile and a dress from another and began dressing unselfconsciously.
Her ringlets sprang free of their pins and bounced around her face as she wrestled the bodice laces into something presentable.
“Right now,” Hannalinde repeated, her voice thin. The reality of her situation had not quite penetrated yet. It felt like she was a ghost in her own life, drifting and powerless.
During the walk to the apothecary, Hannalinde trailed in Carlijn’s energetic wake, grateful for her brisk, purposeful stride that cut through the crowded streets like the prow of a boat. People moved aside for Carlijn’s beauty and confidence. They made space for her.
Hannalinde used to have that effect, too. Before.
A bell chimed as they entered the familiar door of Hearthgate Remedies.
She’d visited the small shop many times for soap and lavender water and headache powder over the years.
The interior was small and warm, fragrant with the competing scents of dried herbs and beeswax.
Shelves lined every wall, crammed with labeled bottles and jars.
A young woman in an apron was arranging paper-wrapped packets behind the counter while Betje, the apothecary, worked at her desk in the back corner.
She glanced up as the shop girl rushed to assist them.
Her gold-rimmed spectacles caught the light, and her perceptive gaze flicked from Carlijn to Hannalinde and back again with a quick assessment.
Whatever she saw in their faces, it made her set aside her scroll and stand.
“Mind the counter, Sofie. I’ll take care of the ladies. ”
Then she motioned them to follow her through a low doorway into the back room, where the shelves were deeper and the light came from a single high window.
She closed the door behind them and gestured at a pair of stools next to the workbench.
They both perched gingerly on them. Hannalinde felt like a schoolgirl about to be reprimanded by a governess.
“What ails you?” Betje folded her arms and waited. Carlijn nudged Hannalinde gently with her elbow.
“I need...” Hannalinde’s courage failed her at the threshold. She swallowed and tried again. “I find myself with child.”
Betje’s expression did not change. “I take it that you do not wish to be?”
Hanna bobbed her head in agreement, her eyes on her hands in her lap to keep herself from crying. Carlijn made a sympathetic noise and leaned toward her ever-so-slightly so their shoulders touched.
“When did you last have your courses?”
“Eight weeks ago, I think. It could be more.”
After a series of questions about the nausea and dizziness she’d been experiencing, Betje said, “I’d like to examine you to be sure. Is that agreeable?”
Hannalinde nodded. The examination was quick and professional, conducted behind a screen while Carlijn waited on the other side, humming tunelessly to fill the silence. Betje’s hands were warm and firm, and she explained each step before she did it, which was a kindness that made it more bearable.
When it was done, Betje folded the screen away and washed her hands in a basin. Her face had acquired a gravity that hadn’t been there before.
“You’re further along than you think. Closer to four months than two, by my estimation.”
The floor tilted. Hannalinde gripped the edge of the workbench to remain upright. Hannalinde could hear her own breathing, shallow and fast, and beneath it the thump of her pulse in her ears. Four months. The thing inside her had been growing that long.
“What can you do for her?” Carlijn asked.
Betje dried her hands on a clean cloth, taking her time with each finger.
The silence stretched, and in it, Hannalinde heard the answer before it was spoken.
“The herbs I would prescribe for this are effective in the first eight to ten weeks. Beyond that window, the risk to the mother climbs steeply. Bleeding that can’t be stopped, et cetera.
I won’t prescribe something that’s more likely to kill you than help you. I’m sorry.”
The room narrowed to a pinprick.
“There must be a way.” Carlijn’s voice was stripped of its breezy confidence. “Another method.”
Betje sighed. “No surgeon in Solvantis will touch it. The guild forbids the procedure, and any who break that rule risk their license and their liberty. If you were willing to travel, the Fae have ways, but it’s a long and expensive journey.”
“What about someone in the Tower?” Carlijn pressed.
“The father is a gargoyle?” Betje’s brows raised, the first sign of anything other than professionalism. She quickly recovered. “The masons might help if his family is well-connected.”
Hannalinde’s lips pinched tight, and she shook her head, hot tears pattering to the floor.
Betje clucked sympathetically. “You poor thing. Well. I wouldn’t normally send a lady such as yourself in this direction, but there are women working in a certain profession who may have advice for you.”
Carlijn sucked in a scandalized breath. “Do you mean harlots?”
“You speak of them like goblins, but I assure you, they are as human as you are. Some were even ladies, once.” Betje grinned wryly.
She plucked a quill from a stand on the workbench and wrote out a few words on a scrap of parchment, a name and address, before blowing on it to dry the ink and tucking it into Hannalinde’s fist.
“I’ll give you something for the sickness,” she added. “And a tonic for strength. You’re too thin, and you’ll need your reserves, whatever lies ahead.” She crossed to the shelves and began assembling a small collection of ingredients.
Carlijn draped an arm around Hannalinde, squeezing tight. “We’ll figure this out,” she whispered fiercely. “This isn’t the end.”
Hannalinde said nothing. Her hands were in her lap, the paper inside her fist the hope she had.
Betje returned with a wrapped parcel of remedies and pressed it into her hands. “Come back in two weeks. I want to check on you.” Her tone was warm but brooked no argument. “Eat even when you don’t want to. The sickness will ease very soon.”
Carlijn paid for the remedies, waving away Hannalinde’s weak protest.
“Thank you,” she said to them both.
Outside, the afternoon was fading. The children who sold candle stubs on the corners were doing brisk business as the fruit vendors packed their carts and the lamplighters began their rounds.
Dusk was coming soon. Hannalinde pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders and linked her arm with Carlijn’s.
“What do you want to do?” her friend asked.
Hannalinde nearly laughed. What did she want to do? She wanted to go back in time. She wanted the gardens at Lamont House to be green again and her hands to be soft and her name to mean something good. She wanted to sleep through the night without fearing what might come through her window.
“I want this to be over.”
Carlijn squeezed her arm. “Then tomorrow, we visit the harlots.”
Hannalinde nodded, though her throat was too tight to speak. At the corner where their paths diverged, Carlijn kissed her cheek and strode off toward the palace quarter with her chin high and her ringlets bouncing.
Hannalinde turned toward home. The sun slipped a fraction more below the horizon and the Tower’s silhouette darkened against a violet sky. Somewhere up there, stone would soon crack. Wings would stretch. And the creature who had put this thing inside her would wake to hunt.
She clutched her scrap of paper and walked faster.