Blaise backs away, her entire body trembling, and I search the image for the slightly older version of herself. It takes me a moment, but I find her hiding and watching from beyond the trees.
I wait for her to reveal herself, to comfort the trembling girl, who it’s so easy to see now is crushed, broken, but the older Blaise’s face is set on Ellie.
My stomach turns over as I watch the scene play out, except it’s not real, not a memory or a reflection of the past, but a conjuring of Blaise’s mind, of what she assumes happened that night.
The labor happens faster than it should, and something instinctual warns me to avert my eyes as Amity pulls Cecilia from the womb.
Amity’s voice warbles, her throat caught because she’s just a child, a child who doesn’t know how to tell parents their child is dead.
My heart breaks in half as the realization washes over me.
“No,” I tell Blaise, though I’m not certain she can hear me. “No, Blaise, that’s not what happened. Our baby lived. Her name is Cecilia, and she’s beautiful and healthy and…”
My voice catches in my throat, because although I can’t bring myself to watch the scene playing out between me and Ellie, my attention swerves to the older Blaise, observing her younger self from the trees.
“Go to her,” I whisper. “Like you did all the other times.”
But she doesn’t. She just watches her younger self shake, barely holding herself up by a nearby tree.
The older Blaise glances at my family, then takes a step back into the shadows.
“No. No, Blaise. It’s not real. It’s not true. Cecilia lived,” I tell her, my voice cracking with desperation as I call out to her. I go to grab her shoulders, to shake her until she listens to me, but my hands meet what might as well be iron when they slam at the orb surrounding her.
Sorrow pierces me as I watch Blaise walk away from herself, and my heart falls as I press my forehead to the glass.
“Blaise, I forgive you,” I whisper to her. “I forgive you, and Ellie forgives you. We all forgive you.”
I open my eyes, hesitantly, sure Blaise can’t hear me, but I watch as the older Blaise appears, half of her face emerging from the shadows. She frowns as she watches her younger self with distaste.
The image shifts again.
And this time, it’s another image I recognize. It’s the day Blaise first returned to the palace, this time as a hired servant. I remember it well and watch as I look down on the child with a grin.
I remember how she beamed at me that day. I remember asking if she was happy to see me.
I’d been so worried about her during the time I hadn’t heard from her, so eager to be convinced everything was fine when she’d arrived at the palace with that contagious grin on her face.
Knowing what I do now, that smile breaks my heart.
Blaise has been acting longer than I ever realized.
Something strange happens, and the older Blaise steps into the corridor. She pushes past Clarissa as if the babbling woman isn’t even there.
Blaise kneels down next to her younger self and takes her by the hand. “You can tell him what happened to you. About Derek and the baby.”
The smile remains plastered on the younger Blaise’s face, and now she’s whispering through her teeth. “I should have known better than to get myself in trouble. If I tell him, he’ll know it was all my fault.”
“It’s not your fault what happened to you.”
“But then he’ll think I’m just a little girl.”
The older Blaise brushes a hair from her younger self’s forehead. “You are just a little girl. That’s how he’s supposed to see you. I know you’re confused right now because of how Derek treated you, but Evander cares about you. He loves you like a little sister, and he wants to protect you. He can help you.”
Something cracks in the younger Blaise’s façade. “What if he thinks I’m gross?”
The older Blaise’s throat bobs. When she speaks, her voice is hoarse but steady. “What’s the cure for shame?”
The child shakes her head. “I don’t know. Not caring what anyone thinks about you? Being proud of yourself?”
“That’s what I used to think too. But pride’s a funny thing. It makes us want to bury our problems, hide them where no one will find them. Otherwise, those we love might finally see us for who we truly are.”
The child Blaise shudders.
“I know you’re worried that he’ll think less of you,” says the older Blaise. “But that’s your shame lying to you. It doesn’t want you to trust him because if you do, and he still loves you, your shame worries that you might not need it anymore.”
Tears stream down the little girl’s cheeks. I’m vaguely aware that they’re mirrored on my own.
“Trust?” she asks.
The older Blaise smiles.
A shift, and now it’s Blaise, older, walking into the room with me and Ellie. She cries, telling me of what she’s done, of a trip to Madame LeFleur’s and a curse she can’t seem to break. And now she’s in the bed, the night after we discovered her with Clarissa’s dead body, and she bites her lip, then tells me of Nox, the male she fell in love with during captivity.
Another shift, and we’re back to the forest, and though the scene hasn’t changed, and though in this reality of Blaise’s my child has passed from under the sun, the older Blaise steps from the shadows, and takes her weeping self in her arms.
“I forgive you,” she whispers to herself.
And when it’s all over, and the orb dissipates, all that is left, is simply Blaise.
CHAPTER 108
KIRAN
“Tell me, Kiran. Would you like to see her one last time?”
Az’s voice rings in my mind, still muddled with the residual anguish of believing I’d found him in bed with Asha. Of the realization we’d been trapped. Of Blaise’s betrayal I should have seen coming.
I’m going to rip that girl’s throat out if I ever get ahold of her.
Azrael’s words ring in my head once again.
Would you like to see her one last time?
More than anything, though I don’t know if I can bear it. Bear to see if he’s broken her.
But my heart belongs to her, so I agree.
The throne room has been renovated since I was last here. Asha and I never had much use for it, preferring to handle foreign relations at the dinner table, with piles of aromatic foods paving the way for collaboration.
