This is going to change everything, he wanted to say.
David’s chin dipped just slightly, and something likeI knowechoed through their connection.
Isobel sniffled but then wiped her eyes and sat straight. “I am feeling better, Blaire. Thank you. But I believe I’d like to lie down.”
She stood, and Sean followed.
Kywyn cleared his throat. “Of course. I shall see you tomorrow. We’ll plan our excursions?—”
A bolt of anxiety turned electric at the memory of Isobel stabbed in the stomach in Viterra. “Isobel—the baby. You won’t be able to go with us.”
Bel slapped Sean with a hard stare, lashes matted together with tears. “What? You will not go to Viterra without me.”
“Bel—”
“Go unprotected?You?” she asked, incredulous. “That’s ridiculous. How could you even think it? Absolutely not.”
“I’m not helpless. I could take a guardian?—”
She straightened to her full height, emerald eyes shimmering with outrage. “Youare not the one who will die should something happen to you. I will go, or you will stay here. There is no other option.”
An awkward silence descended over the room while he and Bel glared at each other.
“You won’t die if I’m hurt,” Sean finally said into the stillness.
“Stop saying that!” she nearly yelled. “Your disbelief means nothing to me. Do you understand that? Your death belongs to me, so forgive me if I find it unreasonable for you to take unnecessary risks.”
But she had a baby to think about now. He tried to reason with her. “This isn’t an unnecessary risk?—”
“You will gonowhereunprotected.”
“Fine,” he said through his teeth. “We won’t be hunting anyway.”
Kywyn brushed right past the tension, his smile settling softly on his face. “It’s settled, then. I shall see you in the morning.”
Isobel nodded once, then held out her hand to hook around Sean’s elbow as if they were a courting couple from long ago.
Blaire made them wait while she gathered a bag of phials filled with that green liquid. “In case you need more.” She gripped Bel’s wrist. “I am here if you need anything.”
Isobel swallowed and took the bag. “Thank you.”
Back in her room, Sean kissed the top of her head and helped her out of her wet clothes. After changing, he slipped into the bed beside her. Her bedsheets smelled of roses, and the massive windows on the far side painted the air with galactic purple. Every shadow glinted with Luster, haunting them.
He lay facing her, and they stared at each other in silence. He didn’t know what to say or how to feel, and he had to shove down the feeling of entrapment. He would be tied to this woman forever now, this woman who’d lied to him and betrayed him. His DNA would forever be mixed with hers in their child.
Sean had known, of course, on an existential level, that he was fated to be hers, that he and Isobel had been destined for each other. He couldn’t stop or even slow the magically induced love that bound them together.
But a baby was sopermanent.
He hadn’t realized before today that he’d hoped something better existed for him, that perhaps one day he’d find someone he genuinely loved. When that realization hit, so did the second.
It wasn’t this baby that scared him. Helikedchildren, and many men younger than him had found themselves in this same situation and flourished. No, it wasn’t the baby. It was what the baby represented…
Incarceration with a woman he didn’t trust. Restrained by a love he’d never wanted. Captive to a life already laid out for him.
He wiped the tears from her face when she began to cry once more. “You’re going to be fine. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Her burning hand cupped his cheek. “They’re pretty words, Sean, but you say that as if you have a choice. The truth is”—she touched her lips to his in a brief kiss—“you don’t.”
