AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Why did you bring me here?” I ask in a whisper, a tone so soft that it betrays how I feel about this bolt of light, that I belong here and never want to leave.
I can feel the ray of sun warming my skin in a way that the Warmth never does, as though it’s healing me somehow and flooding me with the energy I need for this child inside of me…
But then he says—
“You were slow to learn the truth, April. I realised some time ago.” His eyes, darkened by the contrast of light and night, cut down to my swollen belly hugged too tightly by the slip dress. “You carry my child—and I mean for you to be at your best health to survive it.”
I jolt upright in a flash.
A whirlwind attacks me. My thoughts scramble to catch up.
He snatches a dagger from his belt and pistons it at me. It lands in my tummy, killing the only thing that matters to me in a blink of an eye.
5
No—no, he doesn’t do that. There is no dagger in my belly. That’s my mind whirling around with savage outcomes here, of things that he will do to me when I leave this column of light.
But then it sinks in…
‘I mean for you to be at your best health to survive it.’
I blink at him. That’s when I realise I’m crying. Weeping, really. Streams of panicked tears rushing down my cheeks, wetting my thinned mouth, dripping down to my breasts where my heart punches savagely.
“You …” My voice is almost lost in the soothing sound of the sea washing over the shore I cannot see. “You want me to have it?”
His answer is simple and curt. “It is our child.”
“But …” I shake my head, tears drifting into the air. “But I thought you would kill me for it—or at least kill him.”
“Him?” His eyebrow arches over his dark blue eye.
My hand comes to my belly. “In my dreams…”
I let the meaning drift away.
It’s all too much to think of. I feel like my brain has turned to strings of wool and they’ve all tangled together, pinned with needles that are jabbing me, and I don’t know what or how to make sense of any of it.
Elden … the iilra … they swore that Daein would cut this child out of me. Kill me, or even—as my wild imagination took me to—force me to drink the termination tea. But whatever the method, he wouldn’t let this child be born.
I have to be sure…
“And when it is born?” I ask cautiously, my fingers wringing together on my lap. “Then what? Will …”
He blinks at me, his stare unreadable.
“Will you let it live?”
“It will be our child,” he confirms, no emotion in his tone. “It is yours and mine. You,” he adds, his tone softening as his eyes spark brighter in the contrasting darkness, “are my evate, April. I would not take this from you. I do not want to steal this from you.”
My heart leaps up into my throat with a violent flutter. I’m speechless.
“And what does that make us?” I ask. “Mother and father to a Halfling child. What will we be? What will I be?”
“My lover.”
“Your whore.” I correct. “It’s the same thing, Daein.”
Watching me for a moment, he considers me.
