Page 88 of Lovesick

But she sent me a message, arriving just after midnight.

A soft knock at the door, barely more than a breath against the wood. The servant girl’s eyes were wide when she slipped the folded scrap of parchment into my hand. Wide with fear, urgency, and the knowledge that giving me this message could cost her everything.

“She said… you’d come alone,” the girl whispered before scurrying back into the dark.

That was enough.

Now, Mother looks past me, toward the fogged glass, toward the moon’s reflection glimmering in the dark panes of the greenhouse. A place she only comes in the dead of night, summer or winter, the green glass shaded lamps are always lit, her bum always parked firmly on the stone bench at its centre.

“I need to tell you a story. One I should have told you years ago.”

I stay silent, waiting.

She exhales, and it sounds like she’s pushing out a lifetime of suppressed breath.

“When I was young,” she begins, “I thought your father was the brightest star I’d ever seen. Charismatic. Powerful. Beautiful in a way that frightened me. He said he saw something in me. A spark no one else had ever noticed.” Her mouth lifts into a sad, fragile smile. “He wooed me like a poet. Flowers delivered every day. Secrets whispered against my throat. Nights spent talking about destiny, and blood, and rebirth. I was naïve enough to believe he meant love.”

I frown. “I didn’t think you ever loved him.”

“Oh, I did,” she whispers with a low laugh. “And I think… in his own way, he loved me too. But his love was the kind that consumes. The kind that leaves no room to breathe.”

Her fingers fall from mine. She clasps her hands together in her lap, as if bracing herself.

“We planned to marry. Quietly. Before The Obsidian was quite what it is now. Before power hardened him. But another man, at the church I worshipped in...” Her lips tremble. “He became jealous. Possessive. Obsessed with me. He-”

A chill sweeps through me.

“He forced himself on you,” I say quietly.

Tears gather in her eyes. “Yes.”

My stomach twists violently. Rage prowls through my bones like an animal.

“And I became pregnant,” she whispers.

I stare at her.

“Pregnant,” I repeat. “But I thought you couldn’t.”

She nods, a barely-there motion that carries the weight of a ghost.

“I can’tnow.” She smiles sadly.“Anyway, when your father found out, he went mad.” Her voice cracks. “Truly mad. He hunted the man down. Hurt him in ways I could never describe. And then he came back to me… changed. Too changed.” Her hands shake. “He insisted the child could still be ours. That no one would ever know. That we could marry as planned, and when the baby came, he would claim it.”

“Mother…” My throat is tight. “Why have you never told me this?”

“Because I thought the child died.” She chokes on the words. “Your father told me so.”

Something inside me freezes.

“Told you?”

“I almost died giving birth.” She presses a trembling hand to her abdomen, as though feeling phantom pain, I know she had a hysterectomy, but I never knew why. “I remember the screaming. The blood. The way the room spun. And then… waking to him sitting beside me, his hands stained red, saying-” She swallows. “Saying the baby was gone.”

“Him.”

Not a medic.

Not a midwife.