“How far along are you?” she asks, returning to the parchment on her desk.
“Does this mean you’ll help us?” I ask, heart lifting and falling at the same time.
“As long as you don’t convince me out of it,” she says, not looking up from her parchment.
Nolan grabs my hand and squeezes it. I squint my eyes just for a moment, taking in what relief I can.
I might never be a part of my son’s life, and as much as that aches, I can’t help but be relieved to have escaped the alternative—either my son or my husband, a prisoner to the Middle Sister.
“I don’t know how far along I am,” I say.
Kendra summons the woman behind her with her hand. “This is Malia, my newest Seer,” she says. “She has a sense about her. She’s adept at estimating these things.”
Malia glides toward me. “May I?” she says, holding her palm out, hovering it over my belly.
I nod, and she places her palm on my stomach, closing her eyes as if to listen through her hands. The fact that she’s a Seer, I suppose, explains why she seemed to know when I walked into the room that I was carrying a child.
“She can’t be more than three months along,” says Malia. “Perhaps four, but that would be a stretch.”
I can’t say that this surprises me. Although I have already outgrown my old clothes, nothing about my belly’s shape would suggest that I’m carrying a child. I count the months ahead, and as I watch my husband, I see he’s doing the same—the two of us numbering how much time we have left together.
“In that case,” says Kendra, “the charge will be extra. Seems we’ll have to keep her for at least six months.”
Nolan’s hand clenches in mine, even as shock barrels through me.
“Keep me?” I ask.
“That is the safest option,” says Kendra. “We transfer you to a safe house, and you stay there for the remainder of yourpregnancy. Once you have the child, we can turn it over to Nolan immediately.”
I look at Nolan. “I don’t—I don’t want to stay.”
He glances back at Kendra. “No,” he says. “We’ll come back when the child is due. Not before.”
“Children can come early,” says the Seer, for the first time speaking up without being asked.
“Well, if the child comes this early, this arrangement is irrelevant, is it not?” I say, my heart throbbing at the thought of losing my little boy—not to the Sister, not to hiding, but to the icy darkness.
“We don’t get to choose when children come,” says Kendra.
“No,” says Nolan, “but there’s no reason that Darling and I can’t spend the next few months together.”
Kendra seems to consider this. “I don’t like it. But for an old friend… Come back here in three months. That will allow us enough time to transfer your wife to the safe house, to get things set up and ready for the baby to come. In the meantime, I’ll find a wet nurse we can hire.”
She says the words casually, but they pierce at my stomach. I remember the Serpent’s words. How I’d chosen to never let my child nurse at my breast. I thought at the time that it didn’t matter. But now, the idea of another woman feeding my little boy—a pang of jealousy rises up within me, though I can’t excuse it or explain it completely.
Next to me, I feel a presence come up from behind me—Charlie, interlacing her hand with the one that Nolan’s not holding.
I try not to let my imagination run away with me, but my imagination is well-practiced. I think of Nolan, living in a safe house somewhere. A beautiful island with a gorgeous wet nurse who helps him raise our child. Will he fall in love with her? Will he see the way she tends to our little boy and find his heartwarming to her? Will he think of her as the mother I could never be?
Kendra’s voice rips me away from my spiraling thoughts. “Well then, it’s time to discuss payment. Malia,” she says, turning to the silver-haired woman, “please see Mrs. Astor out of the room.”
“That won’t be necessary,” says Nolan, and Kendra looks at him as if he’s a child who needs explaining to.
“We’re not just discussing the payment, Nolan,” she says. “If your wife is compelled, as she says she is—if she’s under a bargain—that compulsion will only grow stronger the closer she comes to delivery. There are parts of this arrangement that she cannot know.”
Nolan looks as if he’s about to argue, but I place my hand on his forearm. “No. She’s right,” I say. “You need to discuss your location, where you’ll meet up, what the plan is for after the baby is born. I can’t know any of those things. I won’t be able to keep them from the Sister.”
Nolan winces, but he doesn’t argue with me.
