16. If It Were a Better World #6
Allora's voice was flat, steady. "It's not a baby I can keep. Not where I'm going, also how am I going to travel with a toddler in my arms while I’m hiding from…he who will be unnamed?"
"So you want the child to grow up without a mother?"
"I have no choice." Allora's jaw set. "I cannot take care of a baby while I am fighting for my life!"
Kalemon's mouth tightened, her jaw clenching hard. "You're planning to abandon it."
"I'm planning to give it a fighting chance," Allora corrected, her tone clipped and defensive.
"One it can't have in our world, you know how it is back home, it has only gotten worse over the years.
Also you know how human beings are so unkind to anything different.
There, it would be a freak, an anomaly. Here...
" She exhaled, her hand sliding down the curve of her belly.
"Here it could belong and the Awyans are so thirsty for children they would welcome it with open arms. Not to mention it would have everything it could ask for because it’s a Talandros. "
Kalemon's eyes softened, though her voice didn't. "Are you sure you can do that to your own child?"
The question lingered between them, heavy as storm air before the first strike of lightning.
Allora's hand stilled. Her throat bobbed. "Yes," she whispered. "Because it's not about what I want. It's about what the child needs."
She turned to meet Kalemon's gaze, and her eyes were dry but haunted.
"I can't raise a half-Awyan child on Earth.
I won't be able to explain where it came from or protect it from being studied, dissected, turned into a lab specimen. And I sure as hell can't stay here and let Malec use it as another chain around my neck. Cuz, you know that’s exactly what he will do.”
"So you leave it with his mother?" Kalemon's voice carried disbelief. "The Awyan who tortures people for fun and calls her servants Thing?"
"Leira won't hurt it," Allora said with more certainty than she felt.
"It's her grand child and Awyans are obsessed with bloodline.
She'll protect it, probably better than I ever could.
" Her hand moved in slow circles over her stomach.
"And maybe, if I'm lucky, the kid will grow up thinking I'm dead, at least that's easier than knowing your mother chose to leave. "
Kalemon didn’t reply. Silence settled between them, deep and raw, carrying the same grief in both their chests. A grief too complicated to name.
Finally, Kalemon spoke, her voice barely above a whisper. "What if you change your mind? After you see it?"
Allora's tension carved lines around her mouth. "I won’t, besides it won’t matter I’ll be in another world and never get to see them grow up."
"You don't know that."
"I have to know that." Allora's voice cracked slightly. "Because if I let myself love it, or think for even a second that I could keep it, I'll never leave. And then Malec wins, he gets exactly what he wanted: me trapped, tied to him forever through a child I can't abandon."
She closed her eyes, her hand still moving in those slow circles. "This is the only way I get my freedom back. The only way."
Kalemon reached out and covered Allora's hand with her own. "I won't judge you for this choice. But I need you to know what you're giving up."
"I know," Allora whispered.
"Do you?" Kalemon's grip tightened. "Because once you walk away from that baby, you can't come back, not ever. You'll spend the rest of your life wondering who they became, what they look like, if they're happy. If they hate you."
Allora's eyes opened, glistening but tearless. "I know. And I'll live with that but at least I'll be living."
Outside the room, pressed against the other side of the door, Leira's eyes narrowed.
She leaned silently against the wall, pipe poised between her fingers, the ash at its tip growing long and neglected. The conversation inside was too muffled, the words too low, but she caught snippets. Enough to piece together fragments.
Leave it here... with Leira... can't keep... where I'm going...
"Hmm."
Her mind churned, restless. That tone. That weight. The way Allora's voice had cracked on certain words.
None of it was adding up.
The child wasn't just any child.
Her gaze flicked toward the window at the end of the hall, where pale spring blooms curled along the sill, bright and oblivious in the dim light. She drew on her pipe, exhaled slowly, the smoke veiling her expression as her thoughts knotted tighter and darker.
What are you hiding, little canariae?
Her lips curved, but not in amusement.
And more importantly... why does it feel like I already know?
Leira strolled into the courtyard, her dark cloak sweeping across the flagstones, pipe still burning between her fingers.
Smoke curled lazily in her wake, but her thoughts churned with unusual weight.
She had kept Allora here for observation, yes.
To study this strange pregnant Canariae who had somehow captured her son's obsession so completely.
But that wasn't the only reason, and Leira was nothing if not honest with herself about her motivations.
She had kept Allora to torture Malec. And by proximity, to torture Surin.
The only Awyan she hated above all else.
Her children. She loved them, of course.
But it was a conditional love, a complicated emotion with roots tangled deep in the soil of her hatred for their father.
She had given birth to them, raised them (well sort of), shaped them (indirectly of course) but every time she looked at Malec, she saw Surin's face.
And every time Surian laughed, she heard echoes of the Awyan who had broken her in ways that could never be repaired.
She wanted to see Surin suffer. And she knew he adored his children with a devotion he had never shown her. So watching Malec unravel, seeing her brilliant, controlled son deteriorate into this obsessive madness, would tear Surin apart.
Which is what she wanted.
It had been delicious at first. She had laid false leads across half the realm, scattered rumors, donned that atrocious curly wig and painted her face into a grotesque parody to draw Malec off her trail.
She had watched from the shadows as he chased ghosts, as he grew thinner and wilder and more desperate.
And she had laughed.
But it wasn't funny anymore.
She had kept tabs on Malec through her network of informants. She always knew when to withdraw, when not to push him to the brink of complete disaster. It was a game, and games had rules, and one of those rules was knowing when to stop before the pieces broke permanently.
And Malec was breaking.
The reports that came back painted a picture she could no longer ignore: sleepless nights, erratic behavior, violent outbursts, troops afraid to approach him. He wasn't just obsessed anymore, he was fracturing.
Her son was going over the edge.
And damn her, but she couldn't let that happen.
Leira tapped ash into the grass, her expression hardening.
She would never admit it, but over the months of watching Allora a quiet change had taken root in her.
A protective instinct she had no desire to examine too closely.
Maybe she saw herself in the girl, all that fire and defiance wrapped around a core of fear.
Or maybe she understood what it meant to be a mother, to carry the impossible inside you and wonder what it would cost.
It didn't matter why.
What mattered was that the game was over.
She had to make a choice now. Protect the girl and let Malec destroy himself? Or protect her son and sacrifice the small, stubborn Canariae who had somehow earned a sliver of her respect?
Leira's eyes lifted to the bruised spring sky, calculating.
She could still make Surin suffer. There were other ways.
Much more subtler cruelties that didn't require her son's sanity as collateral damage.
But Malec... he was hers. Her blood, her creation, for better or worse.
And she would not watch him shatter completely, no matter how satisfying it would be to hurt his father through him.
"Sorry, little canariae," she murmured, smoke curling from her lips. "But my son's sanity comes first."
She turned back toward the estate, her mind already working through the next moves. She would need to be careful. Strategic. She couldn't simply hand Allora over—that would raise too many questions, destroy the carefully constructed game board she had built.
But she could guide Malec toward finding her. Soon. Before the birth, ideally, before whatever secret Allora was hiding became impossible to conceal. And most importantly before Allora decided to disappear and Leira knew that’s what little bird was aiming for as soon as she could.
She would give him his prize. Let him have his obsession. And maybe, if she played it right, she could still twist the knife in Surin's ribs along the way.
After all, she was Leira. She didn't choose between protecting the girl and protecting her son.
She would find a way to do both, and make everyone suffer beautifully in the process.
Her lips curved into a genuine smile this time, the kind that made you forget to watch your throat.
The game wasn't over. It was simply entering its final act.
Days later, Leira stood in the parlor of Kirelle's estate, and it was as gaudy as ever.
High ceilings drowned in imported silk tapestries. Gold-trimmed walls gleaming like a mirror designed only to admire itself. And the smell, cloying perfume meant to impress, but thick enough to choke.
Leira was already irritated.
She entered without announcing herself. The guards wisely stepped aside.
Kirelle reclined on a mound of velvet cushions, copper-auburn curls piled high, her green lace gown spilling over the divan like draped vines. She sipped languidly from a crystal goblet and did not rise.
"Ah," she purred. "I wondered what storm the breeze was whispering about. To what do I owe the intrusion?"