Page 12 of Queen of Nothing

I’m still too hung up on the Teddy part of it all.

“He and Oliver hate each other.” The look I give her is unkind. “Was that intentional?”

Her moon eyes glimmer.

She wipes delicately at her tears again, but they just keep on coming. “Of course it was. Oliver wouldn’t look at me unless there was a fight in it. Because—” she sighs, her face twisting with a mixture of pain and disgust “—his heart was in someone else’s hands.”

I stare at her, outraged. “If my brother loved someone else, he would have her for a bride.”

The shake of her head is slight. It loosens strands of inky hair from over her shoulder, letting some slip over the warmth of her cheek.

“Not her,” she says. “He can’t have her. So he played the part with me. It took me too long to realise that it was all masks.”

I look at Serena and her vulnerability—and I ache to strike her across the face.

I see tears, and I don’t feel any sadness for her.

I see pleading in her eyes, and I’m unmoved.

Not only did she mess up her brew, she chose not to have the situation dealt with, which would just be another brew, and the worst part is that she lured me into a runaway plot, which really, is another life of confinement.

She baby trapped me.

I fold over, burying my face in my hands.

But my mind starts churning through the months at Bluestone.

My voice is muffled, “So you slept with Teddy in October…”

My brain struggles to work through the maths.

That would mean she is five months pregnant, and she would be showing a lot more than the bloated appearance of her belly that she has been illusioning through the days at Bluestone.

A belly that—unillusioned—surprised me the first time I saw it.

But it is hard to calculate.

Witch pregnancies are not as straight forward as krum ones. The lifeforce growing within us draws too much from our powers, weakens us, as the babe and its power grows.

A witch pregnancy is often seven months long. But there have been weaker babies born after just six.

“I was with Avi at the halfbreed end-of-term party,” she tells me, and my mind plants that timing as back in November, making her just four months pregnant.

But she says, “I don’t know how far along I am.”

My tongue rolls around the insides of my cheeks. Because no matter what, “You chose me to be the father, then?”

“Olivia, please,” Serena’s voice comes soft. “If I told you, you wouldn’t have come—”

“You think?” My voice hitches. “I didn’t sign up for this. On the run—with a baby? You…” I point my finger at her. “You tricked me. This is entrapment.”

Serena hardens right in front of me.

A darkness settles over her, the vulnerability slamming shut like a vault door.

For a moment, I think she’s going to scream back at the very least, or even lunge at me—but then, slowly, she rises from the edge of the bed and announces, stiffly, “I’m going to be sick.”

In a blink, she’s shuffling past my bed for the bathroom. A clammer of the door follows thudded footsteps—but the door doesn’t close all the way.