“I’ll loveyouforever, too. And I’ll never let anyone hurt you.”
Her family had arrived at Healers in a noisy, tearful burst, her mother and grandmother taking turns holding the baby, holding her, and she had again wondered if she was making a mistake by not simply staying. Her father had taken the opportunity to let every person who came into her room know that it was a blessing that she’d been home for the birth, as opposed to the human hospital in her new town, where they likely had trouble changing a bandage.
“I’m just so relieved you were home when it happened, princess. Who knows what those idiots would have managed in that backwater?”
It was all so dreamlike and natural that reality was a cold splash of water upon her return to the life she had regrettably chosen.
Tannar had been incensed. Silva had the nurses contact her family there in town once she’d been set up in her room at last, after the lightning-quick emergency delivery. Her parents had been instructed to contact Tannar. Her father had decided, completely on his own, that it could wait until she and the baby came home with them first.
“Why wouldn’t you call me yourself?!”
They were in the sitting room at her grandmother’s house, Silva on the sofa, Aelin in her arms, as Tannar paced before them in agitation, having just arrived that afternoon.
“I don’t understand why, not only did Inotfind out you’d gone into labor, but why did I get a phone call three daysafter the fact, Silva?”
She was unmoved. Tannar’s guilt over her wintertime disappearance had evidently run its course. If he’d still been trying, she might have met him halfway, but Silva of the Daytime was on leave, and he would have to make do with whatever version was available in the interim.
“I don’t know, maybe because my water broke while I was in a literal parking lot? I just gave birth, and you’re raising your voice at me. Is that what’s happening right now?” Her eyes lifted from her daughter’s for only a scant moment, finding her husband’s. Silva didn’t blink, pinning him there, waiting for an answer.
He’d sputtered, carefully dropping to the sofa beside her, his hand covering hers behind the baby’s head. She did her best not to flinch away.
It hadn’t taken long for the first bad performance, but every theater had an off night now and then.
“She’s beautiful, darling,” her mother-in-law had simpered in her high, phony voice. “It just seems sosoon. We only just found out you were expecting a few months ago!”
“I must’ve been further along than anyone realized. When I was dehydrated and malnourished, and Tannar didn’t notice. Remember?” Silva had responded sweetly. “Human doctors don’t know anything anyway,” she finished, uncaring if it was an unfair characterization.
Her mother-in-law’s reaction had been instant, a small gasp of offense, pulling back, eyes going wide, darting around to check if anyone had heard. Silva of the Daytime was nowhere to be found. She wondered ifthiswas her new normal.
It didn’t take long after the first post-baby brunch with his family for the whispers to reach Tannar’s ears, whispers that, it seemed to her, had made it around the entire brunch table and were now doing laps. Silva could tell immediately from the slide of their eyes, the swift dip of their heads, the bright, phony smiles. They were amateurs still.Shehad been better taught to hide gossip in the club’s dining room by Lucine’s age, and these mothers and grandmothers couldn’t seem to manage it around one small table.I’m not raising my baby with amateurs.
It didn’t help that her previously sweetly disposed baby cried so much.
Cried constantly and unendingly once they were back under Tannar’s roof. She screamed when Tannar’s mother held her, went blue in the face when she was passed from arm to arm at that very first brunch, two weeks after their arrival home, and wept inconsolably whenever she was in Tannar’s arms.
She would settle as soon as she was back against Silva’s skin, a tiny hand stretched to press to Silva’s cheek, honey eyeslocked on hers, her little chest heaving at the audacity of the interruption.
Silva understood. She didn’t like any of them, either.
They were home from that first brunch just a few hours when the other shoe fell. Something must have finally been said between Tannar and his parents when they were alone, away from her hearing. Something that evidently lodged in his mind and was chewing its way through like a bug.
“When was the last time you saw your ex?”
He had never asked about Tate. Not a single time, after that very first conversation they’d had after her return from work. Why would he? She had moved away from all she knew and everyone she loved. There was little threat from an ex-boyfriend here, so far removed from everything.
She paused, shifting the baby up to her shoulder. Aelin was silent and still, and it was ridiculous, but Silva couldn’t help but feel the baby was listening intently.
It was a monstrous lie, one she’d never been comfortable with. But, then again,shewasn’t the one who’d come up with this plan for their marriage in the first place. Perhaps it wasn’t a lie she even needed to tell.
“Why does that matter?” she asked finally, an edge of bluntness in her voice that she couldn’t sweetly smile through.
“It matters to me.” His voice was sharp.
She shrugged in response. “Does it? A traditional marriage was the point of this, what we both agreed to. Remember?Youagreed to easy mode. Sought it out, in fact. It wasyouridea in the first place, you bartered for it.” She shrugged again. “I’m not sure what’s changed.”
He stared at her across the room for a long, echoing moment. Silva said nothing further. She didn’t need to. It was a monstrous lie to let him believe he was the father when she knew he wasn’t, and not a lie she particularly wanted to carry. He had marriedher, already knowing she was pregnant with another man’s child. Better to let him form whatever conclusions he wanted about her fidelity now.
He’ll already be fucking his secretary, or the nanny, maybe both. By then you won’t care because you’ll have your own pretty little doll of a daughter to fixate on. Silva snorted softly to herself. Tate’s prediction had been right about nearly everything else. Who was to saythatwasn’t already a reality, too?
