Milonia hugged the boy and kissed the top of his head.
Cruel memory crashed overtop her gentle moment, and he was at Sophia’s bedside, in a room lit by flickering candlelight. The event was chaotic and exciting and he had never been more proud of his wife. Even now, through the pain and exhaustion, flushed and sweaty, she was beautiful and brave.
“We’re going to have a son soon,” she panted, the smile bright on her face. Her eyes alight with the love she already felt for their family.
Dimitrios laughed and squeezed her hand. Her beautiful hand. “A daughter would be welcome, too. She could have your eyes.”
In some distant version of the life he never imagined, Milonia’s dark waves of hair fell forward, several shades darker than Caius’s. They had the same eyes, though. The same slight upturn at the tip of their noses.
But in the past he still clung to with every breath he took, Sophia shook her head.“A son.” Her expression tensed. Another contraction was coming. How much longer could she handle this? “With your hair.” She pushed fingers into his wavy locks. “I love your hair.”
“I love you,” he said and pressed his mouth to her brow, slick with fevered sweat. She smelled like a soldier in the midst of a bloody battle, but she was still her. Beneath all this was the crisp sweetness of crushed grapes on her hands, the earthiness of trampled vines on her skin, and the faintest trace of bay laurel and clove in her hair.
The old midwife peered between Sophia’s trembling legs. “It’s almost time.”She motioned for Dimitrios to move. “Get her up. Sit behind her. She needs your support.”
Sophia cried with fresh waves of agony, but she did as instructed. She pushed through the pain wracking her body that now seemed never-ending.
“Again!” the midwife said.
Sophia begged to wait. Dimitrios held her hands and her weight and he implored with her. This was too much. He could see it—he knew when his wife had had too much. She was so tired.
But the old woman refused and promised them it would be over soon. They would have a child. A son or a daughter. They’d be a family.
For this, Sophia bore down through the next wave of pain. She squeezed his hands so hard that his knuckles rubbed together. Then, like a thread pulled to snapping?—
Silence.
Stillness.
Sophia went limp against him and she was so so quiet. It was unnatural and strange—he knew that—but her eyes remained open and staring. She was okay. Just tired.
“My love?”
Sophia’s head lolled to the side, off his shoulder to rest against his biceps.
The midwife’s call for help came as if from another world—too distant, too slow, as if the air itself was thickening around him. He knew she was screaming. He knew she was saying something. But all he could hear was silence.
Dimitrios focused on Sophia, on laying her down so she could rest. She just needed rest.Blink, my love, he was thinking, squeezing her shoulders, while at the same time, he was staring down at her and recalling a time when he was a boy. He’d had a dog who had an accident—a broken neck—and he’d laid the animal on the ground. Its body had been loose like this. Heavy. Absent resistance and breath. He had not understood, then, that death could be so quiet. That it didn’t come with a scream, or a last word, or a chance to say goodbye.
Dimitrios screamed.
And screamed and begged and shook her with cruel, desperate hands.
Others were there now, and there was blood and hurried, whispered instructions.
But Sophia only stared and stared.
Then, as if he’d finally blinked, themidwife…she?—
The baby was so small. Limp. Soundless. Bloody and gray. Wisps of hair just like his.
Only feet away, Milonia smoothed Caius’s unruly hair.
“You have a son.” The words grated from Dimitrios’s throat like a blade through armor, and he’d meant it as a question. It didn’t sound like one.
Because this wasn’t a woman he might have someday. This was a woman who already belonged to someone else, with a past he could never touch, and a child he could never claim.
Nikolas cleared his throat and flicked a questioning gaze at Dimitrios, but to Milonia, he said, “I didn’t realize you had a husband.”
