Chapter 17 Darling
Darling
Darling Kincaid did not believe in regrets.
She’d lived a long life, longer than most, like all the Kincaid women before her, and she’d made all her choices with open
eyes. They were the best choices she could have made in those moments—of that she was sure—and so it was pointless to wish
she had made different ones. If she could go back, she would do everything exactly as she had done it the first time. Still,
no amount of confidence in her decisions could protect her from the consequences of them, and that was a truth that Darling
knew all too well.
As she looked at the granddaughter sitting before her with blazing white eyes, she felt the familiar weight of consequence
heavy on the back of her neck. Darling sighed and lifted her chin.
“You are a Kincaid,” she said, her voice surprisingly strong even to her own ears. “You are ours.”
Across from her, Gali’s face contorted with emotion. “That ain’t quite true, is it, Nana Darling?”
Collette hissed in a breath. “Don’t you call your grandmother a liar, Galilee Kincaid.”
Gali clenched her fists, just like she had when she was a child at the big house. “Do I call you a liar then, Ma? Do I call everyone a liar?” Her eyes swung back to Darling, hurt and accusing. “How you go from calling me evil to telling me I’m still one
of you?”
Darling had raised every child in the big house with those words, over and over, a mantra of belonging she’d hoped would sink
past their bones and into their marrow. She’d thought it would be enough to ward off the other things about Galilee, but clearly,
she’d been wrong, because this precious child was sitting with them in a garden owned by Hell, with the Devil himself at her
shoulder. Darling avoided looking too closely at him. His beauty was blinding, luminescent, and that’s why she’d had to remind
herself and her granddaughter out loud that he was evil, that he was the enemy. God knows it was hard enough to remember when
you saw his face or the way he stared at Galilee like she was salvation itself. Darling didn’t trust it worth a damn. He was
too old, and Galilee was too bright. Who wouldn’t want to collect her, use her to illuminate their existence? But then Galilee
would grow old and die, and the Devil would move on, and this child who Darling had carried out of the woods would have spent
her life being nothing but a lantern to the King of Hell. No, Darling could not approve of this road, no matter what Galilee
wanted with that terrible want of hers.
Celestial put her hand on Darling’s knee, startling her back to the present. Galilee was glaring at her expectantly with her
new and inhuman eyes.
“We took you in a creek deal,” Darling said, and the force of memory slammed into her like a careening truck. “I could show
you as I tell you, if you like.”
It was a peace offering—Galilee had always loved Darling’s memoryscapes. Even now, the tension on the girl’s face eased up.
She turned quickly to whisper to the Devil, and Collette took the chance to lean over.
“You sure, Nana Darling? In front of him?”
Darling shrugged. “It makes no difference at this point.” She’d been ready to call down every force she could summon when she’d thought Galilee was being coerced or manipulated, but her granddaughter had chosen this, and Darling knew how stubborn the child was.
The Devil wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, no matter what Darling thought
of him, and she wasn’t willing to go up against her granddaughter just yet.
Galilee turned back and nodded at her grandmother. “Please show me, Nana Darling.” She was always polite when she was nervous.
Darling wished she could stitch the girl in front of her to the one she’d raised. Maybe in time, maybe when there was enough
truth between them to make into thread.
Darling closed her eyes and let the memory explode out of her, a nimbus of light and time fracturing into the garden around
them. She heard everyone gasp, and when she opened her eyes, they were in both the garden now and the woods twenty-five years
ago. A younger Darling was wading by the bank of a creek while a toddler played in the water, deeper than would have appeared
safe.
“I was gathering roots,” she said, watching herself work. “Celestial was with me.”
Gali glanced at the toddler, then at her cousin in surprise. “That was you?”
Celestial nodded, her eyes wandering over the memoryscape. “Looks just like I remember,” she said. “You can almost smell the
leaves and the water.”
Darling watched as the Devil leaned forward, his gold-flecked eyes bright with curiosity. “What a gift you have, old woman,”
he said.
The fine hairs at the back of Darling’s neck prickled at his voice, the way the burning cold in it reminded her of Galilee’s
power.
He looked at the toddler in the memoryscape. “You weren’t afraid she would drown?”
“Celestial was born in the creeks,” Darling replied. “She damn near breathes in water.”
The Devil gave Galilee an amused look. “Your family makes a lot more sense the more I learn about them,” he said, his voice low and teasing, as if they were the only ones in the garden.
It unnerved Darling more than she was willing to show.
She retreated to her memoryscape, to the lines of stress bracketing her younger self’s mouth.
“Collette was trying to have a child,” she said out loud, and Galilee looked over in surprise.
“Trying.” The girl repeated the word slowly, and Collette reached for Darling’s hand before facing Galilee.
“It wouldn’t take. I kept miscarrying, and after a while . . .” Collette’s voice trailed off into a choked sob, and Darling
squeezed her hand.
“Take your time, child.”
Collette nodded and took a few deep, controlled breaths before continuing. “After a while, I just couldn’t do it anymore,
couldn’t keep trying. We sent my lover away, and I lay in bed feeling like the world was lying on top of me.”
The Devil fixed his eyes on Darling, and even though his gaze was warm, it chilled her to the bone. “Do you always send your
men away?”
The ghost of a memory twisted a dull blade in Darling’s soul, but she forced an answer out through her lips anyway. “Always.
No men can live on Kincaid land, only visit.”
“And if one of you swelled with a child who would become a man?”
Darling did not lower her eyes. “Then that child would not be born,” she stated flatly.
Silence fell in the garden as the Devil considered her words, but Darling had no intention of giving him any further information.
Kincaid bargains were Kincaid business.
To her surprise, the Devil turned to Collette instead. “I am sorry for your losses,” he said.
Collette ducked her head. “Thank you,” she replied softly.
A mild breeze blew through the memoryscape, and baby Celestial giggled as she splashed after a fish.
Darling kissed the top of Collette’s head before continuing with her story, directing her words at Galilee.
“Celestial and I were foraging for ingredients,” she explained.
“A recipe Peony thought might help. We had tried everything.”
Darling looked down the creek just as her younger self straightened up to turn in the same direction.
“And then she came.”
The air in the remembered woods changed, became hot and frantic. Humidity dragged its tongue over Darling’s skin, both then
and now, as the creek waters rose and churned. In the memory, Darling grabbed Celestial and held her to her chest as she stared
at the unknown woman who had waded into view, water frothing around her thighs. She was dressed in a bloodstained shift, and
she held a naked baby in her arms. The infant was utterly drenched in blood, with a severed gray umbilical cord tied off and
swinging over the woman’s arms. The woman’s eyes were wild. Her dark hair was wet and clung to her hollow cheeks, and the
creek battered water at her legs, as if it was trying to drown her.
Galilee gasped at the memoryscape, and beside her, the Devil’s eyes narrowed. “She wasn’t human,” he said to Darling.
“Ah, you can tell that?” Darling tilted her head at the scene: the heaving stranger, her younger self, Celestial’s wide and
unafraid eyes. “I just thought she was a witch, the way the waters sought her out.”
“Is that me?” Galilee was staring at the blood-drenched infant in shock. “I was . . . that new?”
“You were all I was afraid for,” Darling replied.
In the memory, she gently set Celestial down on a large rock and reached her arms out to the woman.
“Come here, child,” the younger Darling said. “Let’s get you out of the water before that baby catches her death of cold.”
The woman laughed jaggedly. “Wouldn’t it be funny,” she rasped, “if it was the water that killed her?” She held the baby tightly
to her chest, smearing more blood on the shift. “She’ll never be safe with me, you know.”
Collette was watching the memory with a storm of emotions crossing her face. “I’ve never seen this,” she murmured. “I never knew this was what she was like.”
“She sounded mad,” Darling replied, “but that was nothing strange in a new mother.”
“Did she give you her name?” the Devil asked, and Darling shook her head.
The woman in the woods looked down at the baby’s face. “Maybe I made a mistake,” she whispered. “Maybe there is no coming
back from this.” Her gaze wandered down to the water, and her hold on the child slackened, the baby’s body stuttering in her
arms.
“No!” younger Darling cried out, taking a step forward. “Give her to me, not to the water. She’s too small to survive it.”
The woman looked up at Darling. “I know,” she said flatly. “And yet, she is like me, unnatural.”
“That’s fine. I know unnatural children. I’ve raised them. Give her to me and she’ll be safe.”
“Ah,” the woman crooned, as the creek kept churning around her. “But will you?”
“I’ll take my chances.”
The woman seemed to be thinking, and Darling stepped closer in the memory.
“We don’t ask about fathers here,” she said. “We keep the girls safe.”