“It broke my heart to walk away from you both. Knowing I would never get to meet our child…never hold you again.”
My throat constricted as I tried to swallow.
The moment Fyn held me, I hadn’t gotten over it still—that Lioran even asked him to.
“Did Fyn know?”
“No.” He flinched. “I had no other choice.”
“You could have told me,” I said quietly.
“I was desperate.” He shook his head. “We tried to take on the bargain together. I thought it would be enough to save you, but then you shattered.” He inhaled sharply. “I had to watch Fyn rock my pregnant wife in his arms while we all wondered if you would come out of it. While I wondered if I would ever be able to hold you again. It broke me.”
“You took the choice from me. You both did.” I had been silent about it since we returned, but I couldn’t hold it in any longer.
“Fyn fought me over it. If you need to be mad, be mad at me. No one could have talked me out of it. Everything I cared about was being taken from me.”
For a moment, he just held me. Neither of us said anything at all. Not because there wasn’t more to say, but because we had both been through enough. We were desperately trying to fuse the fragments back together.
I slid his hand over my stomach when the fluttersbegan again. “Can you feel it now?” I asked, finally breaking the silence.
“A pulse…of magic?” His eyes welled. “For someone so small, it’s so strong...”
I nodded, blinking back the tears, but they fell again anyway.
It was a glimmer of hope. A glimpse of light.
We sat with the baby’s movement until it faded.
“Does Rowena know how far along you are?” He held my stomach still.
“She guessed over a month.”
“This entire time…” Lioran swallowed hard. His jaw tensed. “Is she concerned you were taking the vials?”
“They’re made from flowers. My magic…may have caused it not to work.” I leaned into him. “The toxic flower that helps it take effect…I made one at the High Court and I may have handed one to your mother.”
“You what?” His shoulders stiffened.
“I didn’t know what it was. I had never seen it before.”
“But you drank it,” he said. “And it didn’t affect you at all—didn’t stop our miracle.”
A glimmer lingered in his gaze. “Hopefully Rowena can make a different vial…not made from flowers.” He smirked. “Otherwise, we’ll have a lot of little ones in our future.”
I laughed as my fingers trailed my stomach.
Standing beside him, my heart lightened.
Chapter 38
The news came days after we found out about the baby, days where we lived with love and hope for the future. The divide was crumbling—all that separated our two worlds fading. Unrest lay on the other side. A rebellion, Bailoc, my brother, the Vale—all those would not accept my choice.
“Can it be reconstructed?” The teacup rattled in my hands.
“I don’t know.” Lioran ran his hands over a map on his desk. “It should have only fallen when my parents removed it.”
“The king and queen are coming to see it for themselves.” Fyn’s voice cracked into the silence. He assessed me cautiously as he spoke—tension lingered between us ever since the Grove.
