by Kiki Leach
“Perhaps you shall provide an answer for me now. Away from my wife.”
As Norvack escorted a conniving, manipulative bastard from my presence, I followed after, curious.
“Where are you taking him?” I asked.
Norvack turned back to me and raised his hand to my face. He pushed strands of hair from my face and tucked them behind my ear.
“Why were you down here, Cinder?”
I looked over at John, who glared.
Then I glanced down at my feet and swallowed hard.
“I needed time alone,” I told him. “After the grave, I needed time to think in peace.”
“Our chambers was not peaceful enough I take it?”
“No! That wasn’t it at all. I only meant that I needed to listen to my own thoughts, to understand a few things.”
I looked at John again, who remained staring at me.
“Where are you taking him?” I asked again.
“You seem a bit worried for me, Cinder,” he said in a smug tone. He crinkled his brows and squint a little.
“Don’t flatter yourself. I only wish to know in case I am in need of my husband.”
Norvack leaned forward and kissed my lips. “I shall return soon.”
Within moments, he and John had disappeared into the darkness of the corridor. I immediately returned to my chambers, waiting in terror and absolute dread of what was to come next.
The Confession
The door slammed and I jumped, spinning around to Norvack as he stomped toward me, enraged. The white parts of his eyes were as red as freshly picked apples. He looked as if he had been crying for days. His hair was mussed and his hands were shaking when I looked down at them.
“What happened to you?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
He never said a word.
His irises were as black as coal and he stood staring at me as if I were Willem’s ghost, come to carry him straight down to hell.
“What happened when you spoke with John?”
Still, nothing.
“Norvack. What is --”
Before I could get out another word, he leapt forward and clutched my arms, tightening his fingers around them, burying them deep into my flesh.
I wanted to faint from the pain he caused me.
“My God, what’s wrong with you?” I asked, trying as best as I could to release myself from his grip. He remained silent as he continued staring down into my eyes. I looked down at either of his hands and expanded the skin around my eyes as he pulled me closer to his face. My mouth was open; I could taste the liquor on his breath. “You’ve been drinking. It’s quit early in the day. I’m certain you’re still exhausted from last night and in need of more rest.”
He gulped, and stared down at my breasts as my breathing became more erratic. And then he flinched as he seemed to choke out his words. “You were pregnant?” he muttered under his breath.
I gasped, tucking my bottom lip into my mouth. Tears began forming almost immediately, burning the insides of my eyelids. I wished to blink them away, but I couldn’t. I was too frozen in fear.
“Wha -- ?”
“You were pregnant?” he said again.
I swallowed and tried looking away, but he met my gaze at every turn of my face.
“I don’t know what you’re referring to.”
“DO NOT LIE TO ME!” he hollered. “Do not lie to me, Cinderella. Please.” He grinded his teeth and adjusted his feet. He became even more tense, which frightened me to the core. “I shall ask you once more.” His tone was hard and insincere, low and almost trembling as he clutched me tighter. “You were pregnant? With our child?”
“Norvack,” I started, my voice nearly inaudible. “Norvack, please, I --”
“ANSWER!” He rattled me a little as I began sobbing. “ANSWER ME!”
“You’re causing me so much pain!”
“Is it true?” He blinked away his own tears and licked his lips of the ones that managed to fall. “Is it?”
“Please release me.”
“Tell me… Were you ever pregnant with our child?”
I sunk down and slowly shook my head, defeated. I could no longer keep the truth from him or ignore it for myself.
My greatest fear in that moment had come to pass.
“I never meant for you to learn of it in this manner.”
“It’s true, then.”
“Yes,” I answered quickly.
“You carried our child.”
I swallowed back the panic building in my throat and fought back more tears. “I did.”
“But not for long.” He nodded. “Did you rid yourself of it?”
I peered and tried releasing myself once more. “How could you ever ask me such a thing?!” I cried. “My God. Never. I would never get rid of our child. I wish to give you all the children in the world, Norvack. You are aware of how much I wish to bear your children. But they died before I could --”
“They?” The prince finally released me with a slight shove and stepped back. He made a face of disgust and fury. “You were pregnant more than once?”
“Twice.”
“And you lost both children.” He turned from me and balled his fits, placing it at his mouth. And then he took in a few deep breaths to regain composure. “You were never aware of…” He paused. “At either time, was I to have a son or daughter?”
“I don’t know.” I moved closer to him. “I had no time to be sure in either circumstance as I lost them too soon.” I tried to place a hand on his back but he flinched as if the mere touch of my skin upon his had burned him. Or caused more pain than any burn ever could. I rested my palms together and placed my hands against my chest. “I wanted to inform you of each pregnancy and miscarriage so many times, but no time ever seemed right.”
“When? When was the first time you learned you were with child?”
I shut my eyes and bit my lip.
“Not long after we became intimate.”
“And the second?”
“The first time I pushed you away, after the first…” I looked away and wiped my face. “When we became intimate again is when I knew I would conceive again. And I did with such ease.”
He dropped his head and clinched his fists. I was so desperate to know his inner thoughts in that moment. I knew nothing would compare to what he had planned to inform me aloud.
“You should have told me the moment it happened. I should have been there each time. There could have been something to prevent it all. We --” He spun around and tilted his head while looking at me. “This is why you were opposed to intimacy.”
“In part, yes,” I said. “I was in pain most nights and couldn’t risk making love to you in fear that more damage could be done. I also feared that it was possible that continued intimacy may have caused something to occur. But I never, never …” I gulped. “There was never a moment spent away from you that I did not wish to have you. I craved for you more often than I didn’t, but I couldn’t be with you because of my fears.”
“Do you fear me now, Cinder girl? In this moment, do you fear me?”
“I don’t fear you. Even as I was afraid, even now, I was never in fear of you. It’s your actions in regard to things you wish to never hear, and your hidden thoughts that give me worry.”
He stared at me for a long while and then moved closer to my face. He placed his hands on either side and looked deeply into my eyes. His jade green irises began to regain color and flickered against the light of the sun.
“You wish to bear my children?”
“Yes,” I said, nearly breathless. “Until I am no longer able.”
He pulled me into a deep kiss then and allowed his hands to travel across my body. Without thinking, I draped my arms around his throat and pulled him closer to me. As our tongues entwined, my thighs began to tremble. My sweetest spot begged for his cock and our breathing increased, so hard, heavy, and warm against my skin. He walked me back toward the door, gently shoving me against it,
and moved his face down to the side of my neck, licking and biting my skin. I smiled as his fingers crawled to either side of my gown. He began lifting it to my waist and traveled his tongue down to the center of my breasts.
“I wish for you to bear my children,” he muttered against my skin. “I wish for you to bear all of my children until you are no longer able.”
I moved my hands into his hair but stopped myself from going further as I thought of his words, and what they truly meant to us both.
“Norvack,” I said. “Norvack, wait. I --”
“Shh.” He covered my lips with his own. “You shall have my children. No matter.”
“Wait.” I shoved him back.
He stumbled a little and then opened his arms wide, staring at me, puzzled. I moved around him and went over to the window.
“I don’t wish for this moment to be as it was before.”
“It wouldn’t,” he said.
I wanted to believe his words, but my conscience wouldn’t allow me to do so.
I waited a moment and took a deep breath.
“Who informed you that I had lost our children?”
“Child,” he corrected. “I was informed of a child, not children until now. What interests me is that you ask such a question as if it were more than one person who may have known.”
I whirled around and dropped my arms. “Your mother was aware. She became aware.”
“When?”
“It doesn’t matter. Was she the one who informed you?”
He blinked once and shook his head.
“Very well, then who? As this person took that chance from me to do it first, and correctly.”
“Is there a correct way to inform a man that his wife has lost two of his children?” he asked.
“Yes. When the information comes straight from his wife and not an interfering third party.”
“One which would have never interfered had you informed me of it first.”
I looked away in shame and sucked in my cheeks.
“It was John,” he finally stated after a few moments of silence.
I nodded. “Of course it was. And now I’m beginning to wonder if you were more angry of the losses, or that he was the one who informed you, and not I or your mother.”
“The very idea that John Devereux was aware of my wife’s condition and I wasn’t sent fire blazing through my soul.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I’m not. He learned of it on the night you poisoned him.”
“He wished for something to use against me. I gave him a bow and he shot with the first of many arrows.”
“Why give into the power he so desperately seeks?”
I didn’t answer.
He sighed and glanced at the floor.
“I’ve reluctantly accepted that you share something with him, Cinder, some sort of strange connection in regard to your history with him. And I’ve accepted that I may never know of it. I trust you as my wife that if it were of a matter to me, I would be made aware of it.”
I thought for a moment and knit my brows. “Why did he inform you of this? When you wished to speak with him, it most certainly wasn’t in regard to this. And he wouldn’t have informed you of a thing until he felt the time were absolutely right, a time from which he would benefit. Unless he were provoked into it.”
“Does it matter, as you so often say?” he replied in a snide tone.
“In this case it matters very much. You come to me in the manner of a raging bull demanding answers regarding our children and I am not to ask where you learned of it? You begin to kiss me, wish to make love to me in hopes of producing more children, children that we can only pray would be born to us, and I am not to question it? Why did he inform you of it, Norvack?”
“Because I notified him that I was made aware of his knowledge to your poisoning him.”
I spun away from him and took my face in my hands. “God --”
“And that despite your actions, you would not be punished for it. I informed him to keep his distance from you. That if he were to harm a single hair upon your head that he would in fact see death at my hands.”
“He doesn’t have to touch me to harm me! He’s not that kind of man. He’s a manipulating, calculating bastard whose mind never stops working. It’s why I never trusted him even as he said I should and could. Why do you think I was so desperate to rid him of the palace the moment I learned he had plans for England and Belarus? I knew it was only a matter of time before the tide turned and you would’ve been yet another result of his ever growing anger. Just sit back and imagine if you and Willem were in fact one man. The nobility and the treacherous nature. That is the essence of John Devereux! What he did, informing you of our children. That is just the smallest of examples of what he did to hurt me without being anywhere near me,” I said.
“You GAVE him that power!” he screamed. “Had you said nothing --”
“Had I said nothing, he would’ve informed you STILL. He already suspected so many truths. Confirming it or not, the moment he learned I was the reason for his nearly dying, it was over. I only confirmed it, but I never gave that man a single thing.”
We looked away from one another and I leaned back on the wall.
“This is only the beginning of his plans for me, I’m certain of it. He wishes pain upon me, the same pain he felt on that night. If you shall remain true to us and to me, it will only encourage him to try much harder next time. And he will.”
“Then tell me before he can.”
“John has been bitter for many years,” I said. “I never knew how much until seeing him again. I don’t believe he wants for me as your mother claims, and I don’t believe that ever truly did. However…”
“What?”
I gulped and prepared myself for the inevitable.
“Losing the children that I was to share with you…” I took in a breath. “It wasn’t the first time I had lost a child.”
He began blinking rapidly and tightened his jaw. “I don’t understand what you mean.”
“You understand. You only wish you didn’t.” I went over to the dressing table and stared at myself in the mirror. I could see Norvack behind me, glaring at my reflection. “I was John’s whore,” I said. “I was his whore for many months.”
“Cinder --”
“And during that time, I became pregnant with his child.”
I looked at his face and could see the color draining as the words began to sink deep into his skull. I tried to look into his eyes, to read them, but he wouldn’t look at me now.
“You ask so often of what we shared, what was between us. It was the loss of a child.”
He looked about the room and began to think. He wiped his face from his head down to his throat and moved away from me, crossing to the other side. He dropped his hands to the edge of the table.
“He knows of this?”
“Yes, he’s known since the beginning.”
“You informed him?”
“I had no choice. The moment he learned I was with child, he demanded I rid myself of it. I miscarried before there was a chance.”
He bobbed his head and tightened his jaw. “This man has had you first, and to now learn that there was a chance, minimal as it were, that you could have had his child. Perhaps even children…”
For a moment, I thought of taking him into my arms, but decided against it when he lifted the table from the floor and slammed it back down.
I jumped but tried as best as I could to remain calm.
“We never shared what you and I do -- I was his whore! He never wanted me as more than that. Once the child was lost, he discarded me in the same manner as a noble disposes of trash onto the village streets.”
He turned around and crossed one arm over the other. He leaned back on the edge of the table and lifted his head a little. “If given the chance, would you have kept his child?”
I guffawed. “What an absurd question.”
“I believe
it’s honest, and I expect an honest answer in return.”
“I never wished to become pregnant in the first place, let alone have his child.”
“That isn’t what I asked, Cinderella. If given the chance to carry the child to completion, would you have kept John Devereux’s child? Would you have raised the child?”
“I don’t know.”
“You do,” he said. “And you would’ve.”
“There was hardly a life to provide for myself, let alone a child at that time.”
“If I had come along? If I had never gone to London --”
“But you did. And how was I to truly know that despite your declarations to complete strangers, declarations of wishing to marry me, you would have indeed done so? If not for that silly game orchestrated by your father, how was I to know that you would ever come for me? Was I to wait for a man I never knew would come? That game gave you the justification you needed to choose me in favor of the Princess of England. But without it, how was I to know that we would be here? And if it were so, if it came to pass that I did in fact keep John’s child, would you have raised him as your own? Would you have treated him the same as our own children? Or resent him because of his father?”
“I would’ve raised him as mine. He would never know that man.”
“Are you certain?” I asked. “Or is your answer only a reaction to my question? That is to say, only what you believe I wish to hear?”
“Does it answer my question, then? Because if you wish to hear it, then most certainly if given the chance to raise his child, you would have.”
I turned my eyes to the ceiling and groaned. “If we were to raise him together, what difference would have been made?”
“Perhaps none,” he said.
We stood silent a moment.
“I asked you before what we had become.” He laughed to himself.
“I didn’t know then. I can say now with such clarity that we are divided. We are two people within a marriage, no longer working together. And it shall remain that way until something changes between us.”
“What is there to change, Cinder girl?”
“Everything? Nothing? I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I don’t know, but I am certain that we cannot continue going on as we have. I wish I could continue to fault John for all of our issues, but the fact of the matter is that they began long before his arrival.”
