But then I hear it, the shrill, ear-piercing sound I’ve been praying for.
But it’s not my baby’s voice I hear.
It’s mine.
I’m the one screaming.
And then I’m back in the attic—in this version of the attic, in this space and time, except not all of it is real, because Nox is here with me, and he’s wrapped his arms around me from behind, and I can feel his body trembling against my back. Or maybe it’s my back trembling against his chest.
“I’m so sorry, Blaise. I’m so so sorry,” the ghost of his memory whispers into my ear.
Where is my baby?
I don’t realize I’ve said it aloud until Clarissa answers.
“The baby was stillborn.”
Stillborn. The word slices, like the thin edge of a dagger through the sinews between my ribs.
“It didn’t survive the womb, much like your several elder brothers and sisters,” Clarissa says. “You were already hysterical, making up names for the child and drawing pictures and pretending you would be the one to nurse it.”
“You lied.” It’s more of a whisper than anything.
Clarissa stares up at me from the floor, and there’s no mistaking the pity in her eyes, but it’s not the kind sort. It’s the sort that sparks resentment. Despising.
“You were not equipped for the truth.”
Dead. My baby was born dead.
Suddenly, the air ceases allowing my lungs to take from its supply.
Maybe it thinks that because my baby is dead, I should be too.
But my baby has been dead for six years, and I have gone on living.
A thousand hopes, a million whispered memories cascade from my mind, taking form before spilling from the spaces between my fingertips.
Rose learning to ride a horse. But Rose is dead.
Theo scraping his knee on the gravel. But Theo is dead, too.
A blue-eyed boy who never existed.
A brown-haired girl who never opened her eyes.
All those windows I peered through, all those nights I spent whispering to the stars, hoping the wind would carry my voice into my child’s ears and ward off the nightmares.
All unnecessary.
My child never had to worry over nightmares.
My child is dead.
Has always been dead.
Suddenly I can breathe again, and the only scent on the wind is that of Clarissa’s pulsing blood.
“You.”
The whisper of Nox’s hands tightens around me at the word.
Clarissa doesn’t cower, though. She’s too proud for that. “I granted you a gift, child. Peace you couldn’t have ever imagined.”
A knock on the door. A letter in my hand, clasped to my chest. Someone telling me the king has offered me a position in his service.
“You. You lied to me. You told me my baby was with a family. That if I worked for the palace, if I sent you my paychecks, you’d tell me where my baby was.”
Clarissa stiffens her back. “Yes, and that got you out of bed, didn’t it? You gave up. You decided you were done with living without the child. You’d forgotten there was any life left to be had. It was going to ruin you.”
“Give up?” It’s my hallucination of Nox speaking now, his voice cracking with exasperation. “She was a child. A child who had just lost her baby. And your solution was to blackmail her?”
I realize I must have spoken his words, but Clarissa practically spits her response.
I can’t really hear her.
Not when my baby is dead my baby is dead my baby is dead rings against the inside of my skull.
Clarissa’s blood pounds in her neck, practically begging to be spilled. It smells bitter, but there’s something deep within me that knows if I sipped it, it would seep into the gaping hole within my chest, fill it for a moment before it drained into the cavity of what’s left of my soul and left me empty again.
