So I tell him. I tell him of Theo and Rose, of Derek and the kitchen pantry. He winces when I get to the part about Derek cutting my hair, and I know he’s remembering how I reacted when he took a lock of my hair for the failed potion, but he says nothing. He just listens and watches and witnesses the unraveling, and I suppose that’s all I ever needed.
I tell him of the dozens of faces I’ve seen on my child, the hundreds of dimpled smiles. I tell him that Rose paints and Theo loves to hunt, but finds himself drawn to poetry in the quiet moments. I tell him all the lies I tell myself, and he takes them as truths. I tell him what a master I am at pretending, and he doesn’t look at me like I’m a child, and I silently thank him for it.
And then I tell him the grandest secret of all, though I won’t be fooled into thinking that he hasn’t figured it out already.
“The pain never goes away. It’s always there,” I say.
“I know,” he says, and I know that, too.
He reaches across the cold stone and winds his fingers through mine. The gentle breeze flutters at the hem of my coat—his coat, which he slipped over my shoulders as I lay my secrets bare before him.
“What would you do if you were to meet Theo or Rose?” he asks. I can’t explain why, but the sound of their names on his lips has me wanting to crumple in his arms. Perhaps it’s the dignity, the affirmation he gives my sick little soul by taking the names seriously.
“That depends,” I say, allowing the warmth to wash over me as Nox plays with my hands. “It depends on what the parents are like.”
Nox furrows his brow, and there’s something like glacial rage in his expression. “Those people took your child from you.”
I recognize it then, where the rage comes from. That Nox knows what it is to be taken from one’s parents. To be stolen away.
I try to swallow, but it gets stuck in the lump in my throat. “My stepmother can be very persuasive. It’s just as likely that she convinced them I was the one who wanted to give my baby up. It would have been an easy lie for them to swallow. A baby to an unwed twelve-year-old… They would have assumed keeping the child would have ruined my life. If that’s the case, if she lied to them, they’re her victims too.”
Nox strokes my cheek in answer.
“I’m going to find my child one of these days,” I say, like I’m not going to die in this castle, whether at the queen’s hand or Cinderella’s hands or from old age after the queen keeps me trapped here my entire life. “Sometimes I imagine what it will be like. Whether I’ll peek through the window and find Rose playing with dolls by the warm fireplace. Sometimes I imagine watching from a distance as she skates on a frozen pond in the winter. Sometimes I don’t find her until she’s betrothed, and I get a job doing her paint for the wedding, and we laugh and joke, and I comfort her nerves as she blushes about her groom. Sometimes I see Theo, receiving his physician’s medal from the father who raised him, beaming up at him with such pride. Or reciting his poetry in the town square.
“When I find my child, so long as they’re happy and fed and loved, I’ll keep an eye on them from a distance. I’ll be there to help should they fall into any trouble. But I won’t ruin their happiness.”
Nox frowns, but he doesn’t argue with me. He just says, “You’re a good mother, Blaise.”
Tears prick at my eyes once more, and I fight back the urge to sob. Not, you would have made a good mother.
You are a good mother.
“And if you find your child in the care of someone like your stepmother?”
My blood runs cold, and I know it has to be showing in the way the skin around my jaw goes taut, but Nox doesn’t shift his gaze. He doesn’t blink.
“Then I’ll kill them.”
Nox doesn’t as much as flinch when he says, “I’ll help.”
There it is again, the shadow that lurks behind his bright eyes, and though it sends a shudder of fear through me, it’s not dread this time.
Just recognition.
“You don’t see me any differently?” I can’t help but ask.
It’s not a question I feel I should ask. The question itself doesn’t seem fair to Nox. But there’s something ingrained within me, and I don’t know if it’s my stepmother’s doing or if it stretches back farther than that. It’s the feeling that there’s something irreparably soiled about me. Something that goes deeper than the way losing my child broke me, though it shouldn’t, though it’s ridiculous to think there could be anything worse. Still, the belief lingers.
“Of course I see you differently,” Nox says, and I can’t help the way my heart takes a dip in my chest. I expect him to pull away, but instead he draws my hands into his lap and continues playing with my fingers. “How could I not, after what you’ve been through? Would you have wanted me to see you just the same?”
My throat burns, and I shake my head, understanding now.
“No.” No. I wanted him to see me. And now he does.
Nox opens his mouth once, closes it, then tries again. “You bore a child, but you were just a child, too. That piece of filth…” His face sours on the word. “What he took from you didn’t belong to him. Do you understand that, Blaise?”
My chest tightens. “I know he took advantage of me, but I should have known better—”
“No.” Nox takes his hand and toys with my braid—the part that’s fraying and coming undone from the lock of hair he cut. “I can’t imagine how confusing it must be for you to look back on what happened. And I’m not saying I understand it better than you do. Fates, no.” He shudders, like even the idea is disgusting to him. “But what happened to you, Blaise… What he did to you… He took something that’s only meant to be experienced by adults, and he exposed you to it. So yes, it makes sense that you feel it was your fault, because he tossed you into adulthood. But you were a child, Blaise. A child. And no matter how what he did to you twisted your perception about that period of your life, it doesn’t change that. You were a child, and he was not. Saying you should have known better… You couldn’t have known, Blaise. Your mind”—he brushes the hair from my forehead and grazes his finger across my temple—“It wasn’t ready to know what it meant to say yes.”
My heart cracks a bit at the earnestness in his gaze. At the truth in his words.
Clarissa’s words flood my mind, but for the first time in my life, I’m looking down on them from above, and it’s like I can see the twelve-year-old me—gangly and skinny and so very very much a child.
And when the words come out of Clarissa’s mouth—whore, stupid, slut—for the first time in my life, I don’t want to shove the little girl away, lock her up, forget she ever existed.
I just want to wrap her up.
“Why are you still here, Nox?” I ask, and it’s this question—not the admission that I bore a child out of wedlock—that has him flinching. His eyes shutter, and though I feel freer up on this roof as the queen’s prisoner than I’ve felt in six long years, my heart threatens to plummet off the side of this castle.
He swallows, and for a moment, I think he’s really not going to tell me.
“Oh, come on,” I say, punching him in the arm and doing my best to keep my tone light-hearted, though it’s straining at the edges. “I tell you I was locked up for nine months until I gave birth to a child who was stolen out of my arms, and you’re not going to give me anything? Not a smidge of darkness?”
Nox sighs, running his hand through his hair. He looks like the rim of the moon, the way his tousled hair falls in his face, the way his pale skin reflects the glory of the heavens above us.
He opens his mouth, but it’s like he can’t seem to get the words out.
