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I wished I could say that I found that inner strength because I wasn’t a quitter. That I loved my life enough to brave the horrible emptiness and eternal loneliness, but...I couldn’t.
I was still here.
I was still breathing...
Because of her.
My daughter.
“You were pregnant?” Dylan asked softly, ignoring Margot’s question about Aslan’s death. “Did you know before that night?”
Swallowing hard, I did my best to slip back into the dissociation of recounting my life. When I’d been enjoying the first flush of love and delicious ache of lust, I was more than happy to trade my decades and become a teenager once again.
But now we were no longer in a romance, we were in a tragedy, and I wanted to tell the rest of my story with that barrier in place of narrator not main character.
“No. I didn’t have any idea,” I said almost coldly. “When I fainted after Aslan was run over, they blamed my pregnancy. I remember feeling a strange kind of flutter in my lower belly that night. I remember the slicing pain as I screamed my heart out after hearing Cem shoot his only son, but it wasn’t until a few days later, when I’d been discharged from the hospital and prescribed drugs to help my catatonic depression, that I fully understood what that meant.”
“That you were carrying Aslan’s child?” Dylan asked softly.
“I’d lost him, but a small piece of him remained. I hated that as much as I was grateful. Deep within me, life existed. Life created with my soulmate. I wasn’t as alone as I thought, which meant...I couldn’t be weak. I couldn’t give in to the temptation to end it all. I had to live.”
My hands shook as I swiped at my tears. “It was that gift alone that gave me the strength not to take those mind-fogging drugs. To endure the agony of loss. To do my best to eat when my parents brought me food and to shower when they guided me into the bathroom. I stopped living for me...but I survived for her.”
“What’s her name?” Margot whispered.
I winced. “Ayla.”
“That’s so pretty.”
“It means moon’s halo or moonlight in my husband’s language. I named her for him.” My heart pinched as I rubbed my chest. “I made sure she was fluent in Turkish. That she knew her father through my memories and many stories. He was dead. My heart was dead, but I kept him alive for her.”
Dylan sighed. “That couldn’t have been easy.”
“It wasn’t easy living with the fact that I’d let my impulsiveness make such a massive mistake. I suffocated on guilt for years afterward, taking the blame for that night.”
“But it wasn’t your fault, Nerida.” Dylan scolded. “It sounds as if those guys were going to attack, no matter what you did.”
“Perhaps.” I shrugged. “Regardless, I shouldn’t have stopped Aslan—”
“If you didn’t, he would’ve probably killed that drunken idiot and added another body count to his tally. He could’ve been arrested for murder and deported as a criminal.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Your black and white approach does not ease the regret I carried.”
Dylan rolled his shoulders. “I apologise. I just want you to see that Aslan was right. It wasn’t your fault.”
I sucked in a breath, scrambling to change the subject. “Ayla...my daughter.” I sat taller. “She saved my life when I didn’t want it. She gave me something to live for.”
“Forgive me for the indelicate question,” Dylan said, allowing me to guide the conversation forward. “But...how did you fall pregnant in the first place? I thought you were on birth control?”
“I was. And I was diligent in taking it. However...” I managed the smallest of smiles. “I underestimated the venom of the glaucus atlanticus.”
“The sea slug?”
“The week after I was stung, I was pretty nauseous. I didn’t want to alarm Aslan, so I hid the fact that I still threw up every now and again. He looked after me so well. He tended to me, doted on me, and made me feel loved in every way he could.” I looked at the two reporters pointedly.
“You had sex. While you were sick.” Margot shifted a little. “The pill’s effectiveness would’ve been diminished.”
“I was stupid. Love struck, stupid, and rather obsessed with Aslan’s touch. And he...well, he didn’t know we should properly take extra precautions. He trusted me to be in charge of that part of our relationship. I messed up.” I sat taller. “But I look back now and can honestly say if I hadn’t been stung by that blue dragon and accidentally gotten pregnant through sheer ignorance, I don’t think I would be alive today. I think...I think I would’ve done something drastic, and it pains me to admit that.”
