There’s no need for them to consider the true reason Clarissa refuses to let me leave my room in the attic. They won’t notice the swell of my belly.
I lay in the bed that has become my prison, ever since Clarissa thought she perceived a bulge in my abdomen.
I personally believe she was weeks early in locking me away, but it isn’t as if I had any say in the matter.
The days are long, but the nights are longer. With hardly anything to busy myself with in my little attic, I grow restless at night, and as there are no windows in my room, my body has forgotten what is day and what is night.
It has been months since I’ve tasted sunlight.
There’s a knot in the wood paneling of the wall that I often stare at. Sometimes it looks like a thirsty puppy with its tongue lolling out. Other times, it’s a fire-breathing dragon.
When the servants are kind enough to replenish candles, I sometimes warp my fingers to make puppets in the shadows of the flames.
The shadows are my only friends up here.
Clarissa bought me a clock fueled by faerie magic. Rather, she bought Elegance a clock and gave me Elegance’s old one in the hopes I would go to sleep at a proper hour, but my body can’t seem to tell time.
So now I lie awake, and it’s almost midnight, and I wonder if the moon is directly overhead.
My belly has swollen to the point that I don’t believe I’d be getting much sleep anyway, even if my body knew day from night. I would toss and turn, except I’ve long since realized it does me no good, so I lie on my side and run my fingers over my belly with one hand as I clutch a stack of letters to my chest with the other.
The letters are from both Jerad and Evander, but mostly Evander. Jerad is awfully busy with his duties as the heir to the throne and writes when he can, but Evander isn’t busy with much at all, so he finds time to write to me every day.
I’ve known the princes for as long as I can remember, back from when my father served as a human ambassador in the king’s court. They’re a constant in my life, and it hurts having been separated from them for so long.
Evander says in his most recent letter that Jerad is working on something to take care of me now that my father is dead. Clarissa puts on like we won’t run out of money, but even trapped up in the attic, I can tell she’s spending more than she did even after my father fell ill. Every time she storms into my room, a new costly scent assaults me and a pair of earrings I’ve never seen before dangles from her ears.
Evander must know we’re going to run out of coin, that I’ll need something to do, that I’ll need a job.
I’m not fond of the idea of having a job. Clarissa spoiled me for work, I’m afraid.
Evander doesn’t know about the baby, but he knows about Father, and he knows I am miserable and wretched, and I think that is probably why he writes.
After my father died, Evander came to the house, but Clarissa lied to him and told him I was asking for no company. His letters began the day afterward. In each one, he asks if I am well, and he tells me I am welcome to return to the palace when I’m ready.
There are a thousand reasons I’m impatient for the baby to hurry up and come, but seeing Evander again is one of them.
He’s the most wonderful male in the world. I should have remembered that from the start, should have never even looked in Derek’s direction. I enjoyed Derek’s attention. Thought I loved him even, and perhaps I did, but I know now that he showed no signs of loving me.
I don’t know what Evander would do if he discovered he was going to be a father, but I imagine his reaction would be nothing like Derek’s.
It’s dark in my little attic, and my mind has little to distract me from the ache deep inside my gut when I remember my father is dead, which is often, so I don’t rebuke my imagination when it wanders off to silly places.
I don’t slap it on the wrist when it pretends that this baby is Evander’s and not Derek’s. I don’t tell it “stop that” when I imagine confessing to Evander about the baby, how his sea-green eyes light up with delight. How he grins and slips a ring on my finger and asks me to marry him.
Sometimes this is the way the imaginings go. Other times, the baby isn’t Evander’s at all, but Derek’s, and Evander bursts into my tiny attic, finally onto the fact that Clarissa has been hiding something. And then he sees my belly, and he knows all about the baby, and he holds me while I cry and cry and cry.
And then he tells me he’ll raise the baby as his own.
This is the nicer dream, because it is more likely to come true than the first.
There is no time to erase the past, but there are still a few weeks left for Evander to burst through my door.
I’m imagining my and Evander’s wedding, wondering whether he’ll want to marry me immediately or wait until after the baby comes, when the baby kicks me hard. I gasp, a little in pain, a little in delight, and my hand finds where the baby’s foot presses against my stomach. My heart gives a little flutter, and a smile appears on my lips.
I am terribly wretched, and most all the time I feel quite alone. But my baby is with me, and after months of contemplation, I’ve decided I love my baby.
I’m unsure whether my baby is a little boy or a little girl, but I see my baby both ways. If my baby is a little boy, he will be a Theodore, after my father. I wish I liked my mother’s name, but alas, it was Blossom, and I cannot bear to name my daughter Blossom, so she will be Rose if she really is a she.
Theo has black hair like me, and his eyes are blue, which he gets from Derek, though the shape of his eyes is different, so they don’t remind me of Derek in the slightest.
Rose’s hair is brunette, and it curls at the edges, and she has a smile that forces me into spoiling her.
I don’t know which child my baby is, but I know I love either equally and that we will be the thickest of thieves.
When I finally drift off to sleep, I dream of Theo and Rose and me and Evander.
When I wake, it’s to a pool of water in my bed and a constricting pain and the sound of my own screams.
CHAPTER 18
The parasite had spent many mooncycles smothered underneath the weight of her many hosts’ consciousnesses. One would have thought she’d be used to it by now, and in some ways, she was.
But that didn’t stop her from relishing the cool chill that snaked over her current host’s plain body when Blaise’s grip on her mind went slack and the parasite coaxed the reins from her grasp.
The parasite didn’t bother shifting this time, though it pained her to keep her beautiful creation, her stunning Cinderella, locked away.
