Maliena’s typically warm smile was tilted into a frown as she watched Aurora still cutting symbols into the tree. She reached out and placed a hand on Aurora’s shoulder. She flinched at the contact, Aurora’s shoulder icy to the touch, as if she had been out here for hours.
“If anyone catches you worshiping the dark gods, they’ll cast you into the wilderness,” Maliena tried again.
This might have been well before the time of the rebels surfacing, but worshiping the dark gods was unheard of—or at least carefully hidden. Simply being related to someone who worshiped them would make any fae an outcast.
Aurora paused, her humming halting and hand stopping. She slowly turned her head to Maliena, the side of her face now visible.
Daimon’s breath caught in his throat as he saw her hollowed-out cheeks and the deep circles beneath her eyes. He knew what would happen next, but that didn’t make it any easier. This was Nyx’s favorite memory to show, after all.
“I love him, Mali,” Aurora said in a scratchy voice. “He has to know I still believe in him.”
Maliena’s lip wobbled as she took in Aurora’s tearstained cheeks. “Please, just come back to my cottage with me. Let’s get you warmed up.”
Aurora shook her head fiercely, jerking back from Maliena’s touch. “There’s hardly anyone left who prays to Nyx,” she said harshly, her voice as sharp as the blade in her hand. She wrapped a protective hand around her stomach as she added, “I want our son to know him.”
Maliena was the only friend Aurora had told of who fathered the child. To everyone else, he was an unnamed man she had met on a journey.
“This child is killing you, Aurora,” Maliena said softly, her eyes welling with tears.
Aurora turned her attention back to the tree, resuming her etching with swift and deep cuts.
Maliena shifted, trying a new tactic. “Stop this for the sake of the child, then. He’ll be outcasted for his entire life if anyone learns that his mother worshiped Nyx instead of Eurydice.”
Aurora snorted a joyless laugh. “Eurydice hasn’t answered a prayer in decades, while Nyx is here, helping where he can.”
“And what of the child’s Essence when it’s born?” Maliena pushed. “Someone will find out if we don’t?—”
“No one will know if you’re the only one present when it happens,” Aurora said quickly. “No one will find out.”
Every child released their parents’ magic back to them; it would separate and seek out the place from which it had originated. Even if a child’s parents were dead, their Essence would flow directly up, straight to Caelum. Since Aurora was a Nox, shadows would flow to her. But since Nyx was not fae, his Essence had nowhere to go.
The severed line would reveal Daimon was not blessed by Eurydice; that he was an abomination.
The memory rippled, like a rock dropping into a pond, and shifted into another.
Aurora was screaming as Maliena coached her breathing and yelled at her to push. “I can see the babe’s head!” Maliena shouted. “Another big push!”
Sweat had collected on Aurora’s brow as she pushed again. The door to the worn cottage burst open and a young midwife ran in, carrying a bowl of warm water and cloths.
“No,” Aurora said breathlessly. “She was supposed to wait until after the babe came. She can’t?—”
There was no stopping the baby as it came out. A cry filled the cottage as Maliena wrapped it into a blanket.
“Please, you must leave. Come back later?—”
But it was too late. The babe’s Essence was already flowing from its tiny body, returning to its parents.
A line of shadows returned to Aurora, just as it should. But the midwife gasped as the other line of shadows dashed around the room in a frantic search, spreading and blooming around the walls in an inky darkness. Then it broke above the babe, splitting in two. One side dissolved back into light, while the other line grew, then suddenly dropped, severed, bleeding shadows like a snake with its head cut off.
“What is this madness?” the midwife demanded. The shadows around the babe abruptly vanished, the magic dispersing around the room. “A cursed child! Not blessed by Eurydice,” she hissed and backed out of the cottage.
Maliena stood, cradling the babe, as the midwife ran from the cottage screaming.
“Save the baby, Mali,” Aurora said breathlessly. “Get out of here, now!”
Maliena stepped forward, her eyes wide. “I won’t leave you Aurora.”
Men and women gathered outside the cottage, holding torches and farm tools they brandished as weapons.
