Chapter 41
ARLET
After hours of awkward flight that somehow melts into something softer, gentler, Seraph lands near an abandoned cottage.
I am pregnant, I think.
Yes. It seems you are. This will be a new sort of experience for me, Cursed One says. In life, I hadn’t really wanted children. I hadn’t realized back then that it could get me killed.
I murmur a short response, noticing that my eyelids have begun to droop.
Rest, Nevharis says, clearly cued in to my discomfort. The meeting with Mrath drained me just as much as the trials had.
Vann helps me down from the dragon, and I must admit, there’s something exquisitely familiar about the sensation.
His hands wrap around my rib cage, encompassing me with his size and strength.
After so long without real touch, without him, I still feel flustered.
No sooner than my feet are firmly on the ground, he guides me inside and makes a bedroll from the supplies we’d been given.
Then he lays me down while he makes a quick fire.
While he works, I inspect the space. The place is covered in overgrowth, but the walls appear mostly intact. It will provide good shelter.
I have been faring worse along the journey than I would’ve hoped. A weakness has started to take root, something I know I cannot ignore.
I want to be home now.
Vann is quiet for a long time. He doesn’t speak as he heats some of the food from the pack, or when he makes a tea to take away the biting chill of the night air. It isn’t until my plate and cup are empty that he looks at me with all the intensity of a man worried over the future.
“You are not well.”
I close my eyes. “I do not think I will die.”
He makes a frustrated noise. Then the silence comes again, but this time, it unsettles me. I don’t like it at all.
“What of the child?”
My hand goes back to my midsection for the thousandth time.
“It should be fine,” I say shortly.
He doesn’t seem satisfied.
“Speak your mind,” I say.
“This is my fault.”
“Getting pregnant or—”
“The fact you are so weak.”
“No. This is Arion’s fault,” I retort. “And he’s already dead, so sadly, there is no one left for you to kill.”
He exhales through his nostrils. “I need you to have a Fuegorra again. Our child needs it as well.”
There are unspoken messages in that, other things that hide between the lines of the words, but I don’t push.
There are questions about our future that I fear asking. I wonder where this leaves us with our matehood.
“You have done well taking care of me,” I say.
“You deserve to be cared for. It is the absolute least I can do,” he grumbles back.
I watch him, and recall with a heated mind, our best moments together. When he held me. When he participated in the mating journey and all the theatrics for me. The room in the Enclave. The dancing on the islands.
And remembering the islands brings me back to the Hollow. Where I saw his heart. Suddenly, a hundred questions surge.
“What happened to you after I left?” I ask softly. No need to clarify when exactly.
“We were still attacked. I almost bled out, and then some of your…bruja friends saved me.”
“How?” I wonder.
He sighs. “They gave me back my heart.”
The room spins. “So that means that you…right now…you have your heart?” I say slowly. I remember how beautiful it had been to see. How beautiful our mating song had been—I remember it faintly in the back of my mind.
He nods.
“So you feel me…as your mate?” I continue.
He freezes, looking at me with an expression that doesn’t wish to give away too much. Despite the chill in the air, despite how poorly I’m feeling, warmth washes through my veins. I prop myself up.
Vann starts to blink. It’s an odd gesture, one I’m not sure what it means. His mouth falls open, and then he practically falls forward, catching himself on one hand from his crouched position.
“I—it feels—I…”
Then the words refuse to come anymore.
“Why did you lie to me about being my mate?” I ask abruptly, deciding to speak if he cannot. I feel bold enough, strong enough to ask the question I thought I would never be able to voice again.
He looks at me, pained. “I did not wish to disrespect Adra’s memory. And to be honest, I had no idea that you were my mate. I didn’t want any mate.”
“No idea it was me?” I scoff. “Surely someone made a comment to you. They certainly did to me.”
He hesitates. “I…Yes. They did.”
I shift under the thick blanket. “And you just didn’t think it was true?”
He shakes his head. “It wasn’t that. I just…wasn’t prepared to let someone into my life again.”
“You are stubborn,” I say. It isn’t a jab. It isn’t even flirtatious, just a fact.
“Perhaps I knew. Deep down. But I was good at severing and dicing parts of myself until they were too small to see or feel. I was a man half alive.” He reaches out toward me, then lets his hand fall.
“Arlet, I know you carry wounds as well. I would never have judged you for those. If you had made mistakes because of them, I would not have cared. I just hope…that one day you can forgive me for being a fool. Until then, I will be here. At your side. Nearby.”
That makes me go quiet. He isn’t wrong. I was always plenty wounded. At times, I had thought perhaps too wounded.
“Sometimes I dislike how clearly you see me,” I admit.
“There are many things about you I feel I have never even touched, though I wish I could,” he says softly. “The mating bond makes it…hard to restrain myself.”
His response takes me off guard. “Oh?” I respond. “How?”
His brows draw together. “If you would allow it, I would hold you every second. You would rest only in my arms.”
I half laugh.
He shakes his head. “You are not so large as to prevent me from doing what needs to be done.”
When I don’t say anything, he continues.
“I would tend to your wounds, bathe you, comb your hair, and rub the aches I know you feel across your body. I would kiss your face too often to be endearing. When I say that I ache for you, you should know in all ways. Some are less pure than others, but they can wait until you are fixed. Until you are home and you want me, too.”
My breath stills and slows down. I don’t know what to say, only that…there is a part of me that wants those things, too.
“You can comb my hair,” I say softly.
He blinks again, then moves swiftly. In no time, he is behind me, and my hair, knotted and wavy and frizzy, is in his hands. Despite the size and the callouses, it doesn’t hurt. He gently begins to work through the knots.
The sensation is exquisite.
“And…” I start, realizing I don’t trust myself to talk about intimacy with him quite yet, and then change my words to, “What parts of me do you feel you cannot touch?”
“Your life before.”
“Before?”
“In the slave pens. I know the basic story, but when I was looking for you, they went on and on about you providing an heir for Arion. It bothered me more than you would know.”
I keep my lips sealed tight. It was a constant battle in me as well.
“It made me remember all you’d shared with me.
It made me remember that you had a daughter,” he starts slowly.
“I know the story of how she came to be. I know of her passing. Have felt the rage that must’ve only been a fraction compared to what you endured.
But there are times I think on that moment and I don’t know how you were able to continue on as well as you did.
I used to carry Adra’s name with me. Would light it up to remember.
To bless her, wherever she may be now. But your daughter… ”
He pauses again, and I bite my lip. It’s mostly clear what he wants from me, but the question is whether or not I have the strength to give it.
When I don’t respond, he continues. “What was her name?”
The fire crackles in the corner, in a moment of supreme calm. The moment isn’t sad, but now that I am warm, with a full belly, the depth of the safety I feel in this moment calls upon a softer memory. One so torturous in its sadness that it makes me freeze.
Makes me dredge through time, past a myriad of wounds. Of scars. Right to grief’s doorstep. Like a wise, old mother, she welcomes me in. Wraps her cold arms around me. Whispers a few gentle words.
Vann must feel the shift, because he pauses the comb mid-stroke. Sets it down on the floor with a gentle click. His hands rest on my shoulders while I stare at the wall. I revisit the blood-soaked night, tied up too tight.
I remember the hope I had felt in the months before. I’d been so so…ready. My body hasn’t always worked as I thought it should, and it felt nice to be the one to do something so important finally.
Babies born too early weren’t always recognizable, but she was. Fingers. Toes. A beautiful head, already covered in a dusting of hair. The tight pains, the pressure, all of it had been so painful. I cried out for help, just waiting for it all to pass as the wetness made my legs cold.
What was her name?
I…didn’t give her one.
No, that wasn’t true.
It’s hard to tell how much time passes between the question and my answer, but time starts to mean little during the precious seconds sitting in a place I haven’t visited in a decade.
A time when I was so utterly alone that only those with the cruelest of hearts would look upon me and not spare a glance.
But the slave pens were full of those of us with less than a kind look to spare each other.
No one watched as I folded her in my skirts and broke the ice of the ground with a rock. As I took her into the woods and buried her deep enough to avoid anything touching her small grave.
Huddled in my own clothing, pulling my coat tighter and tighter. Soiled. Shocked. My mind rejecting a new, heartbreakingly empty space.
Lirio.
My favorite flower to weave. A rarity in the giant court, sent in from the Ogrine Swamps.
And now I am pregnant again.
Now I will need to come up with another name.
The transition from staring to crying comes quickly, effortlessly. A tear slips down one cheek, and then the other. Sometimes I wonder how Daniel bore it. I wonder if his anger was a mask for pain.
I could never forgive him, but I also couldn’t deny he probably was suffering, too. For me, I never got over losing a child. I just learned to live with the weight.
Some days I was numb. Some passed achingly slow, with an unbearable sting. And the first time I smiled? I spent the whole next week burdened with guilt.
“Arlet?”
Suppressing the pain I felt over her loss was necessary for survival. But it was wrong for healing. Somehow, I give in. I close the small distance between where Vann and I sit. I lean onto him. Though he freezes for a moment, he then wraps his massive arm around me.
I hate that it feels like home.
I love that it feels like home.
I take a deep breath, preparing to utter her name for the first time.
My hands tighten into fists, twisting the fabric of my skirt in my lap.
“I called her Lirio.”
The emotions crash into me all at once. Speaking her into existence is like allowing myself to feel something I’ve kept locked up and hidden away. It fills me up, from the tips of my toes to the top of my head. She was alive. My body cared for her. Gave her life for as long as it could.
I had done enough. As much as was humanly possible.
I feel Vann’s exhale on the side of my neck.
“Lirio,” he murmurs. “A lily.”
I nod. “My daughter.”
“Your daughter.”
He brings me closer, pulling my cheek to his chest. “Tell me more about her.”
“She had red hair. Even being that small.”
I feel his smile like warmth through my body. “Beautiful.”
“She was. I had just started to feel her movements more consistently. Each little roll or kick almost felt like bubbles popping in my torso. Sometimes, it overwhelmed me to know she was there. That I was the one thing keeping her tethered to life. When I was pregnant, there was a part of me that felt like the whole world had been keeping a secret from me. All my life, I’d been called the weaker sex.
But in those moments, I realized that creating her, growing her, housing her…
I was powerful and divine. Until I wasn’t. And she? She was so…” I trail off.
“Loved. I don’t think anyone who’s been around you could feel anything less.”
More tears.
“And you are a goddess in some way. You bring life, not death. You could keep doing it for as long as you wanted. It is something, I confess, that I dream of. Something extraordinary.”
I don’t answer. Just let his words thread through my mind.
“You—” He stops.
“Yes?”
“And you are sure you’d like to try again?” he asks.
I take a deep breath. It’s a fair question. Some might not feel the way I do. And maybe…maybe I needed to be more realistic. Maybe it wasn’t the answer to have a dozen children to make up for the moment. Maybe…
“At least one more time.”
He holds me just a bit tighter. “One day, I hope you see that I will be a good father. I would give anything to a child. But I understand it is your choice.”
I want to pull away and resist. Want to be stronger than I am. Instead, I lean into him.
I’m tired of fighting.
I look up at him, twisting around, and see those glowing marks once more. Hesitantly, I reach out and brush my fingers over them. They mean he is mine. If I want him.
He closes his eyes, sinking into my touch and then taking my hand to kiss my palm. I let him. And when he pulls up a flat stone, I watch as he takes out a knife they must’ve given him and begins to carve the name.
Lirio.
Then he carves the name Adra.
Then he taps the stone, and somehow, the names light up. My mouth falls open.
“To the girls that made us,” he says softly.
Something about the statement pinches deep, and I look around the room, realizing something crucial.
“Your cleaver,” I start. “What happened to it?”
He shakes his head. “It is gone. But I do not care.”
“It has been with you for all these years.”
He looks at me.
“It is my past. I would like you to be my future. I will find a new weapon, and perhaps a new life.”