by Am Hudson
“You don’t have to eat in the dining room tonight,” David offered, taking me by the elbow. “You need rest. You can—”
“No,” I said softly, smiling. “I think I’d like to.”
He smiled back, then angled his head to look at everyone else. “We’ll see you all downstairs then.”
Being the amazing friends they were, they all took that as their obvious cue to leave, Em placing the baby down in her blanket-lined laundry basket before politely bowing out behind the others. And as the door closed, David and I looked at each other.
“Finally. Alone,” he said.
“I thought they’d never leave.”
“I’ve been thinking the same thing about Falcon all afternoon.” He laughed. “And I was also thinking… you had better call Vicki and tell her the good news.”
“I’m still a little emotional about it all, David,” I explained, fussing over the baby that didn’t need any fussing. “She’ll ask questions, you know—ones I don’t want to answer.”
“About the birth?”
I nodded, not looking at him.
He sighed and grabbed my shoulder, forcing me to turn as he looped his arms around me. He didn’t say anything, as time expired between us, and he didn’t need to. We just stood there by the bed, looking out the balcony door at a sunset on the snow, losing our minds to private thoughts for a while.
It was nice in here in the winter, with a white backdrop outside and a roaring fire across the room, but even nicer now with everyone gone, and a perfect little green-eyed baby staring at the world with wonder from the cane basket in the middle of the bed. I could almost still feel her presence within me, like a void now, where there once was a little bump. Something about healing this fast and losing that pot so quickly just felt unnatural. I wanted it back, and it saddened me to think I would never have another child—my curse predetermining them all to be soulless.
In truth, though, none of it mattered. In time, the memory of my belly would fade away and I’d forget. In time, she would grow and begin to smile, and subsequent children would seem unnecessary with the light she would bring to our darkness. In time, my heart and my mind would heal, but for now, I just had to act okay to eventually be okay.
“We did it, you know.”
“Did what?” David asked, leaning back a little to look down at me.
“We got married—had a family. We’re together, and we always will be. It’s everything I ever wanted.”
A breathy laugh moved through his nose, his evergreen eyes small with a smile. “Funny, I was just thinking the same thing.”
I rose up on my toes to kiss him, feeling the tickly brush of his breath and the bristly dark stubble before our mouths even touched, but as our warm lips finally met, a burst of high notes rang out and his back pocket started vibrating.
“Sorry.” He grinned sheepishly, pecking me quickly on the lips, then stepped back to look at his screen, laughing to himself as he brought the phone up to his ear. “You have a sixth sense, don’t you?”
I heard a very high-pitched and excited voice on the other end.
“Okay, okay, I’ll put her on.” David handed me the phone, and as I rolled it toward me, I caught a glimpse of the caller ID.
“Vicki.”
“Tell me all about it!” she demanded excitedly. “How big was she? What time was she born…?” The questions went on and on in one long sentence. I had been worried that they’d bring me pain—to relive the entire mess—but I just felt excited about sharing it with Vicki. I didn’t cry as I told her that I’d gone into labour spontaneously and that no one had been around. I even told her that the baby was so small and her breaths so tiny that at first I thought she was dead. Vicki deliberately skimmed over that part of the conversation, demanding instead that either we come to stay with her—permanently—or that she come stay with us for a while because, clearly, I needed my mother right now.
David wrapped his arm around me again as tears sprung to my eyes, and I promised Vicki I’d talk to David about it and then let her know.
She asked for David again after she finished with me, and I went off to change my clothes for dinner, then returned and quickly checked the baby’s nappy, and when he hung up the phone, he just stood there for a moment, exhaling.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.” He offered me a reassuring smile, putting his phone away in his pocket.
“You don’t look okay,” I noted, lifting the cane basket of baby and resting it on my hip like a load of laundry. “What did Vicki say?”
“A lot.” He tried to change his smile, but she’d clearly given him something to think about. “Anyway, let’s go down to eat.”
“Not until you tell me what she said.”
“She’s just worried about you, that’s all—she could hear it in your voice that you’ve been through something pretty rough.”
“I’m okay.” I cast my eyes downward, away from his.
I expected him to deny me the safety of deflection, but he stayed put, and didn’t say a thing.
“By the way,” I added, regaining my composure, “we can’t tell her that Lord Eden betrayed us…”
“Actually, I think we can, Ara, and I think we should.”
“Why?”
“She needs to know—in case he ever comes back. And Sam needs to know what lengths his father will go to to protect the human race—above all else.”
I nodded and shrugged in consideration then agreement.
“And I think you should turn her,” he added, saying it quickly.
“Turn her?”
“Yes—make her Lilithian.” He moved over to the bedroom door and opened it, turning back to take the basket from me. “I think you’re going to need her, Ara. Always.”
For some reason, that simple truth filled my heart out with a kind of warm relief. I smiled. “I’d like that.”
“Then it’s settled.” He led the way, and I closed the door behind us. “We’ll take a few days to relax and spend time with our baby, then we’ll start making plans to bring Vicki and Sam out here.”
***
After a surprisingly pleasant and rather quiet dinner, I laid down diagonally in my dark room on my comfy bed, with no intentions of sleeping yet, and opened my eyes again to a room full of morning sun.
I shuffled over onto my back, warm and tucked in on my side of the bed, confused, my hair screaming out on my head, and put my hand out to feel for David. His bony hip was right there where I expected it to be, but as a wave of relief eased my twisting gut, panic burst open in my chest.
A baby. I had a baby!
I jumped out of bed and ran across to the sitting room, trying to make sense of where I was and how I got here. Where was the baby? How did I get in bed? How did I—
“Ara.” David’s hands cupped both my arms and he spun me to face him. “Are you awake?”
“I don’t know,” I said, rubbing both hands over my head. “What happened? I—”
“You fell asleep last night.” He pressed his palm into the small of my back and walked me toward the bed. “I moved you and tucked you in.”
“But the baby—”
“She’s fine. Look.” He pointed to the basket on the floor next to his side of the bed.
I exhaled, reaching up to brush my tangled hair off my face. “Sorry. I just freaked out. I thought maybe it was a dream—all of it, and then I couldn’t feel my belly, and—”
“It’s okay.” He laughed, holding both my shoulders at arm’s length. “You were exhausted, Ara—after giving birth and then crossing to the Other Realm, then going straight down to dinner. You needed to defragment.”
“Why didn’t I wake though?” I looked at the basket. “Did she cry? Wake for a feed? I feel so lost, like I’m missing a piece of my day.”
“You are.” He laughed, leading me to the bed. He sat me down and lifted the basket up beside me so I could see my sleeping baby. Her little mouth was turned down, her bottom lip sitting slight
ly out, her thin eyelids shifting and moving with sleep. “She had a feed at two and five, and you didn’t wake because I made sure you didn’t.”
I looked up at him, my mouth popping open. “You kept me under!”
“I had to, my love—Falcon advised me to.”
“Why?”
“After what you went through, if you were up and down with a baby all night, or lying awake worrying about her waking up, your mind wouldn’t have coped, and you’d be a mess today.” He touched my shoulder. “It’s okay. You’re okay, the baby’s okay. Just take a moment to wake up and shake off the panic, you’ll see.”
“Okay,” I breathed, nodding. “I’m okay.”
“Good.” He sat down on the other side of the basket. “Because I was thinking…”
“Uh-oh.”
“No, I think you’ll like this thought.”
“Go on then.”
“She can’t live in a laundry basket. Let’s go into town today—buy a cradle and some pink blankets.”
“Um, yes, that would be good,” I said, my tone layered with a thick glob of sarcasm, “if it weren’t for the evil witch lingering somewhere out there—waiting for us to do just that.”
“I’m not worried.” He shrugged. “Her power is no match for ours, Ara—not the two of us combined.”
“Hm, well, let me just ask Drake about that before we assume.”
“Ask him. And he’ll tell you we’re perfectly safe.”
“We’re safe here.” I motioned around our bed, meaning the island. “Because Safia’s soul is black. She can’t enter Lilith’s Realm. But—”
“I already talked with Drake about it,” he said, wearing that slightly arrogant, know-it-all smile. “He’s coming with us—just to be sure.”
My mouth was still wide and round, ready to make my point, so I snapped it shut with a little pop, and folded my lips forward in thought. “Well, okay then. I’m happy with that.”
“I knew you would be.”
“And what about Morgana?” I asked, placing the cane basket safely back down on the floor, where it couldn’t fall. “Has anyone tried to resurrect her yet?”
“Bad news on that front right now, I’m afraid.” He squatted beside me where I knelt on the floor, his forearm resting over his thigh. “We’ve put the… head,” he said delicately, “back on, and covered her in vampire blood, but…”
“It might take time,” I said absently, tucking the blue blanket around the baby’s chest. “It might—”
“It might not work.” He flipped my chin so I was forced to look at him. “Prepare yourself for that, Ara. Morg was of witch blood as well as vampire—her makeup is an entirely different matter. Witches are not typically born as immortals. She was a freak of nature to begin with.”
I jerked my face away from his touch.
“I’m sorry.” He stood up. “But you may just need to accept that she’d dead.”
My nose stung with grief and my eyes filled up with hot liquid. I stayed kneeling on the ground by the basket until David went into the bathroom, then let the tears drip steadily from within my lashes and down my cheeks. And it felt good to cry—so good that I scooped the baby up and sat on the floor, my back to the bed, and sobbed into her blankets for a while. I wasn’t really sure why I was crying. Maybe because of Morg, maybe not. Maybe because of everything that happened, maybe not. But then, if I really thought about it, I didn’t feel all that taken apart by it. I felt confident in my abilities as a mother, and as a queen. I felt good about the fact that I’d had the strength to give birth on my own, and that same fact also made me feel powerful. So what, then, was wrong with me?
I hit my eye socket with the heel of my palm, telling myself to stop, holding my breath then as a thin strip of light moved across the sitting room toward the fireplace, the bathroom door opening again, a flushing sound concealing my sobs a little. But as much as I tried to stop them, to regain some dignity, I just couldn’t. A huge one beat down my lungs and came back out again all jagged and pathetic.
David stopped dead, dropping a sweater to the floor by his bare feet, and I turned my face away from him as a look of horror crossed his.
“Oh God, Ara.” He landed beside me, knocking me sideways a bit as his arm came down around me. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for that to sound so harsh.” He kissed my head firmly. “She’ll be okay—Morg. We’ll—”
“That’s not why I’m crying,” I said, spit and tears spraying from my lips.
He seemed to sink back a little, coming forth again into the embrace with a little more courage. “Then what’s wrong? Did I do something to—”
“No,” I sobbed, burying my face in the now-awake baby.
“My love, please,” he begged, brushing my hair back. “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong,” I wailed, thinking better of it then crying, “And everything is!”
His body jolted then in a breathy laugh, and he wrapped me up a bit tighter, sinking down into a more comfortable position. “Just cry then, my love. It’ll help.”
I leaned back and buried my face in his shoulder, saturating his black t-shirt as all the agony and fear and loneliness and heartache poured out of me. I could feel the previous day and all its events slipping away somehow, falling behind me into the blackness of moving on. And in that moment, even the fact that my immortality meant that my milk would never come in and I would never feed my baby didn’t seem like such a cruel ending to a long and soul-bending journey. The baby would be okay. She would drink from a bottle and there were positives to that—like more sleep for me and a chance for David to bond with her. And I would be okay, too. I could believe that a little more now, as everything I tried to hold onto—to leave inside and grow strong from—freed itself from my shattered little heart.
“Ara,” David whispered, his deep voice coming across softly in the dimness of early morning.
“Mm?”
“I love you, do you know that?”
I nodded. “Mm-hm.”
“And we’re gonna be okay, I promise.”
I wiped my cheek along his shirt sleeve and lifted my elbow onto his thigh, bringing the baby up to lay more between us. I wanted to thank David for being here to hold me while I sobbed, but I knew, even though I always would, I didn’t have to feel eternally grateful. We were married, and there was no other place in the world he would rather be than catching my tears when the world fell apart for me. It would always be something I could count on, which made the tears to come—all those nights ahead of me when the world would get too much, when the memory of everything would surface and overwhelm me—not so long and heavy. He’d be there, his arms around me, keeping the world out while I let my guard down for a while. And I loved him for that—maybe even more than I did for being the father of my child.
***
We may not have been all that clued-in when we were shopping for paint, but when it came to baby products, I’d had months in front of a computer with too much time to plan and dream.
In truth, I had the nursery planned out in my head the second I found out I was pregnant. So as I breezed around the baby store, tossing things in the cart without even checking the price, David just followed with the baby in his arms.
“I want one of those baby seats that strap into the stroller—straight from the car,” I mused.
“For all the trips out to the grocery store?” he asked with a little laugh, winking at me.
I stopped walking. “Oh my God, you’re right.” Motherhood had always been a given thing in the back of my mind. Even as a little girl I’d thought about and imagined juggling groceries with a hungry baby, or trying to cook during the ‘unsettled’ period of the day. But never, in my wildest fantasies, had I imagined I would live in a giant manor, with maids and a chef, and no real need to go shopping, or to cook. Or to clean. To do anything, really.
I looked back at my shopping cart, my shoulders dropping.
�
��Aw, sweetheart, I was joking.” David put his hand on my shoulder and leaned in to kiss my head. “You can have anything you want. I said that when we got here and I meant it.”
“But you’re right, David.” I picked up a toy mirror that would strap onto the baby’s rear-facing seat so the driver could still see her. “I don’t really need any of this stuff. Not even a stroller.”
“Ara, the manor is huge. You need a stroller. And if you want that stroller with the carseat thingy, then get it.” He settled back on his heels a bit and looked down at me, his mouth resting in a playful pout. “But it’s not about the stroller, is it?”
I shook my head.
“Aw, sweetheart, come here.” He wrapped his arm around my neck and pulled me in for a hug. “I know this isn’t the life you planned—this isn’t even the life you want. But it’s our life. And we’re happy, or at least we’re going to be. You’ll see. Raising a family will be different for us, but I promise you, I am going to make sure that you love every minute of it.”
I nodded, my brow brushing against his stubbly chin. “I’m okay. I just needed a moment to let go of all the plans I made when I was young, you know—to realise that life isn’t ever how you think it will be.”
“And for us, even the simplest of things will be different.”
“Yes,” I said, tucking my finger into the baby’s curled fist. “No swing sets and play dates for this little one.”
“She’ll still have all of that, Ara. I promise.”
“How? Who can we invite over? And where will she even go to school? And—”
“Okay,” he cut in, moving a step back so he could face me. He readjusted the baby in his arms and took a deep breath. “Ignorant as I’d prefer to be, it’s just become clear to me that this isn’t going to work.”
