“I’m so sorry you lost your dream for me, El.”
I shake my head. “I wasn’t saying this so you would feel guilty about it. I love you, Evander. I’d do it over again if it meant saving you. I just…I just need to do something.”
He nods, understanding. And for a moment, I think maybe he’s about to tell me I can come along. A fae promise that will bind him to it, one he can’t take back.
And I deserve that, don’t I? He made a binding promise to Blaise without including me in the decision. It wouldn’t be any different if I led him to make this promise to me without providing him all the relevant information.
But then, as he opens his mouth to tell me I can come, something wrings my gut. Because this baby is ours, not only mine, and who am I to withhold it from him just to get my way?
“You can—”
“Evander, stop,” I say, twisting my fingers through his. “Before you decide, there’s something you should know.”
Evander cocks his head to the side, his sea-green eyes examining me.
It’s not at all how I planned it, with forethought and a perfectly designed riddle for him to figure out.
Instead, I just blurt, “I’m pregnant.”
Evander stares at me, and for a moment, I wonder if he isn’t going to react at all. He just stands there, his fingers still intertwined in mine, though they’ve gone a bit limp.
“Pregnant,” he says, blinking heavily.
I nod. “Pregnant.”
“With a baby?”
“As far as I know, it’s not a dragon or…”
And then my husband is grinning, and the stupid thing takes up his entire face, creasing the edges of his eyes, which are now glazed over with tears.
“How?” And before I can remind him just how it happened, he shakes his head. “No, I mean, when? How far along?”
“I’m not entirely sure, but I think a few months. Honestly, I’m surprised you didn’t notice…earlier.”
“What? When I took your clothes off?” He grins, and I laugh.
“You can definitely tell,” I say, pointing to the bulge in my belly I’ve been trying to hide with mountains of tulle.
Evander grins, a cocky smile that has me swooning. “I just thought you missed me so much that you’d turned to those pecan tarts of yours for comfort.”
I gasp, but he only smiles. “I thought it was adorable.”
Evander picks me up, spinning me in the air, until he seems to realize he’s making me queasy, at which point he sets me down on a nearby chaise and looks at me like he doesn’t quite know what to do with me.
It occurs to me that if I were Evander and our situations were reversed, this would be the time to make a dirty joke.
“Okay, so I know what you’re going to say, and I understand completely why you’ll want me to stay behind,” I say. “But before you go and make up your mind that I’m safer here, Evander, I don’t want to do this without you. I can’t. Well, you know, I could technically do this without you. I mean, it would be difficult, but I’d figure it out.”
Evander looks down at me, craning one eyebrow.
I take a breath in. “But the point is…I don’t want to. I want you here for every moment. I want you to feel our baby kick, and I want you to be here to tell me I look sexy when I cry because my ankles have swollen to elephant-level size, and I want you to use those bat ears of yours to tell me you can hear our baby’s heart beating, and most of all, I want you here, right next to me, when this baby comes. Because if you leave me alone to do this by myself while you’re off adventuring with Blaise, and if you’re not here to squeeze my hand and tell me I’m spectacular while I’m quite literally ripping my body to shreds to bring our child into this world, then Evander Thornwall, I’m going to be peeved.”
Evander searches my face, a sly grin tugging at his lips.
“What? Aren’t you going to say something?” I ask, only now realizing that my heart is pounding.
“Oh, nothing,” says Evander, though the smile he’s trying and failing to hide says quite the opposite.
“What?”
“Oh, nothing. It’s just that you said you needed me.”
“Okay, well, I qualified it quite a bit after that.”
Evander wags his finger. “No, no, no. You, Elynore Payne, said that you needed me.” He points at his chest as if there were another Evander Thornwall in the room. “I would have thought you didn’t need me for anything, well, other than—”
He squeezes my butt, and I can’t help the laugh that follows.
“You can’t distract me from this.”
“I can’t?” he asks, slipping his hands down to my hips and bringing his mouth to mine.
Okay, so that’s a tad distracting.
“Evander,” I say, pushing him away. “I need an answer. Or at least for you to tell me you’re considering what I’m saying. That you’re thinking up an answer. Because I could have not told you, you know. Okay, so that would have been slightly manipulative, and maybe I shouldn’t hold that over your head. But…”
“Ellie,” he says, taking my hands in his. His gaze dips to my belly, and his hands follow. “Something’s brewing on the horizon, something big. I can’t explain it, but…” He shivers, and for a moment, my carefree husband lets a spark of fear shine in his gaze. “I can’t believe you didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know what?”
“That I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
CHAPTER 19
EVANDER
I’m not sure which idea is more terrifying, that I’m going to be a father, or that I’m about to transport my family to the Rip.
In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have told Ellie she could come along.
But it’s not as if I can very well take it back now, not when I’ve given her my word.
And besides, the selfish part of me, the part of me that seems to refuse to grow up no matter how many decades pass, is glad she’ll be by my side.
I’ve spent months away from her, all the while feeling like a piece of my chest cavity was missing. And now that I know she’s carrying a child—our child—I’m even less keen to leave her.
Which leads me to the other glaring “in hindsight,” which is that I likely shouldn’t have promised Blaise that I’d go with her to help free Nox from his curse.
