Well, finally is probably a generous word.
Truth be told, I don’t exactly want morning to come, not when Cecilia was up screaming all night.
Peck keeps telling me Cecilia’s nocturnal sleep schedule is because I did too much riding while I was pregnant.
“Lulled the baby to sleep during the day. Taught her bad habits from the beginning,” he’s commented, unsolicited, multiple times.
When I complained to Evander about it, he told me that was what I got for teaming up with Peck against my husband so often.
I wasn’t quite in the mood to admit that he was right, so I’d just stuck my tongue out at him wearily.
Either way, Cecilia is not a good sleeper. At all.
Which is fine, because I adore her so much my heart might explode at any moment.
Other parts of me might explode too. For instance, my bladder, which, despite Peck’s potions, has yet to recover from my unfortunately traumatic labor. Then there’s my patience, which I find is always ready to detonate.
It’s been a rough few weeks, that’s for sure.
But then there are moments like these, moments when Cecilia is sleeping, her pretty little face as peaceful as the surface of an abandoned pond, her little pointed ears poking out from underneath her dark ringlets. And I think perhaps I understand why people look back on these days so fondly.
Even if I am convinced part of the reason is that all species would cease to exist if anyone remembered these days accurately. Well, maybe not cease to exist. But there certainly would be a shortage of second siblings.
Still, as I rock Cecilia in the chair Evander made for me (complete with the comfiest pillows he could bribe out of the local seamstress), I have no choice but to feel immense gratitude. It swells in my heart just looking at her. Usually, I glance back and forth between my daughter and husband. When he isn’t training with Orion, Evander is typically fast asleep across the room, exhausted from the several times he’s gotten up to change her in the middle of the night between feedings.
There’s something about these moments I want to keep close. We haven’t officially announced Cecilia’s birth yet. Enough people know about her that she’s not exactly a secret, but with all the chaos surrounding her birth and Az supposedly rallying an army in Naenden, I’m not eager to share her with the world yet.
Cecilia’s screaming isn’t the only reason sleep evades me. Even when she’s quiet, and sleep comes, it’s hardly ever restful.
Nightmares, filled with images of my child’s death, the lack of her screams and the continuation of mine, punctuate any slumber I might have stolen otherwise.
It tortures me when the part of me that keeps control of my mind goes off duty. During my sleeping hours, I’m at the mercy of what could have happened. What life might have been like if Cecilia had not survived.
It’s in those moments that I think of Blaise, and my heart aches for my friend. My friend who’s somehow made herself my enemy, though out of no malice for me.
Before, I couldn’t imagine the pain she’s suffered. Now, I think perhaps I can taste it, in the memories of the moments when I lost hope that Cecilia would survive. When I convinced myself the labor pains had come too early, that there was no reasonable way she could endure outside the womb.
Evander and I are fortunate. I’ve since found a few documents describing various gestations between fae and humans. They all varied, some lasting as long as twelve months, others much shorter. As far as I know, mine with Cecilia is the shortest recorded.
The thought makes me ill, but in more than one way. Ill, because it terrifies me thinking of what could have happened to my child. Ill, because Blaise would have been to blame if Cecilia had died.
Can I ever forgive Blaise, knowing that her actions almost caused my daughter’s death? Does it make me a horrible mother if I forgive my child’s potential murderer?
Not that Blaise intended for me to be caught in the cross fire. I suppose that’s part of the reason she broke off from the camp. Suppose she hoped the ritual for opening the Rip would cease before the rest of the party could catch up to her and Az.
But still.
It was a betrayal, nonetheless. And after Evander gave so much of himself to prove he trusted her.
Perhaps it’s my duty to hate her, to brand her as an adversary. An enemy to the family I would protect with my life.
But then, when my mind starts down that path, I always end up circling back. Back to the moments when I thought I lost my baby. Back to the shadows that surrounded me, threatening to drown me.
I’m not sure what I would have become had Cecilia died.
I don’t think I would have ended up like Blaise, foolishly trusting those who seek to use her, rather than depending on her loved ones and friends.
But I likely would have hated her. Hated her in the permanent sort of way, the sort of way I wouldn’t bother debating about.
I think it might have burned a hole inside me, a callus over my heart, and then I’m unsure what I would have done.
And even if I wouldn’t have turned out like Blaise, losing my baby, as horrific as the thought is, wouldn’t have made our sorrows equal.
No, Blaise has faced horrors in her short years, atrocities I’ll likely never have to endure.
I’m not sure if that means I’m allowed to forgive her, but I think that, at least for now, I can pity her.
And that makes not hating her easier.
“What do you think?” I whisper to Cecilia, who wriggles contentedly in my arms, her tiny little body a furnace warming my soul. “Will you be mad at me if I forgive her?”
Cecilia doesn’t answer. So far, my daughter is very little help when it comes to offering advice.
I’m about to tell her as much when the warped glass of the window shatters, stealing my breath and puncturing my back as I cover Cecilia with my body.
CHAPTER 69
EVANDER
