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Our love was, and is, greater than any curse, any demon-angel.
Benedict and Fiona raise their heads momentarily but close their eyes and go back to sleep once they see it’s me. The two of them have been inseparable since Benedict was hurt, although I’m pretty sure the power dynamic leans heavily in Fiona’s favor. I swear that cat has some witchy power in her. The two of them are as protective of Amélie as Willow and I are.
Amélie, expecting me, coos in her crib. My chest swells at the sight of her little hands reaching up into the air, and when I see her sweet face, a smile brightening it the instant I come into view, I think how the love I feel for her has somehow grown overnight. Every day since her birth, I’ve thought I cannot love any more than I do now. It’s not possible because my heart will burst if I do. Yet, every morning, I am in awe.
“Good morning,” I whisper, leaning down to collect the warm little bundle of her.
Amélie and I have a date. Each morning just as the sun rises, I come into her room, where she wakes to greet me as if she cannot believe her luck at seeing me. It’s overwhelming to see the love in her eyes, as if I am her entire world. She has the same with Willow and Bec and Emmanuel and all of the Wildbloods.
She can make anyone feel like they are the center of the universe.
I hug her to me, inhaling her sleepy scent deeply as she nuzzles my neck. I sit down on the hideous but most comfortable rocking chair ever and watch her excitement when she sees her bottle. One of the staff warms the milk and leaves it right here for me to feed my baby each morning. She reaches tiny little arms out for it and greedily takes the nipple into her mouth, immediately soothed as she draws deeply of the warm milk.
This is our moment. Only ours. Willow’s body is working hard to produce the milk, and after watching her give birth, I have no doubt the woman is superhuman. I don’t need as much sleep as she does and don’t mind getting up to do the nighttime feedings but this, the sun rising outside the windows as Amélie’s tiny fingers curl around two of mine, her eyes, so like mine, locked on me, there’s nothing like it.
She drinks the bottle more quickly than humanly possible. She’s always ravenous in the mornings and in the beginning, when I didn’t think to have the bottle of milk warmed and ready, she’d wake the house to let everyone know it. Willow found my cluelessness amusing as hell, and I’m still not sure my wife and our tiny little witch aren’t in cahoots.
But I learn fast.
Once she’s finished with her bottle, I burp and change her. I bundle her up, as is our routine, and we quietly slip out of her bedroom, down the stairs, through the house and out into the garden. The morning is warm, and it will be a clear day. Amélie watches all the birds with curiosity as I step onto the path. We usually walk for a little while until she starts dozing, then I head back and lay her in her crib to sleep the morning away.
As usual, I walk her toward the chapel as the rising sun brightens our path. During the renovations, we also cleared some of the forest to allow more sunlight to penetrate the darkness. It’s been incredible to watch the transformation both inside and outside the house.
Amélie blinks up at me when I come to a stop at the place Shemhazai once stood, darkening it like he did our lives. He is long gone, his evil with him. Now, when I come to stand before the statues that have taken his place, I only feel possibility. A future. Light.
“I think you will grow up to be as beautiful as your mother,” I tell Amélie as she gazes up at the statue of Willow as if she recognizes her mother’s face. I’m not sure that’s possible for someone so young, but my daughter is no normal infant.
Her gaze shifts from the statue of Willow to the one of me and she reaches out to touch my cheek and again, I think she understands what she’s looking at.
“May you inherit all the gifts of your ancestors and none of the darkness,” I tell her, taking in the wings so protectively shielding Willow. I say this to my daughter every morning, making it so.
Amélie was born with both the crescent moon on her chest and the marks of the angel’s wings on her back. I wonder if the next generation will have either or both but when she begins to wriggle in my arms and reach out over my shoulder, I don’t have time to ponder the thought because I see who she’s reaching for.
