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This time, not because of him, but because of the child in her arms.

The man’s gaze drifted to the corner of the room, and hers followed until her eyes settled on the quiet wooden cradle. On the baby sleeping in it.

The man swallowed and turned away.

Silence.

Then, finally, the woman began to move, and he listened as she whispered tender words until her voice turned into stifled whimpering and his heart clenched.

None of this should ever have happened.

It would cost him his head if it came out what he had done. What they had both done.

Minutes passed, and he was grateful to hear only the woman’s sounds and not those that had driven him insane for the past seventeen nights.

He listened as the wood creaked, as fabric slid against fabric.

“I’m going to take him to…”

“Don’t tell me.”

He didn’t want to know where that child would end up, didn’t want to see it anymore, couldn’t bear to see it anymore.

He listened as she shed more tears. Then footsteps sounded.

Silence.

The tension in his chest grew immeasurably.

“Don’t you want to see him one more time?”

The man clenched his teeth so tightly that his jaw began to ache.

“No.”

He heard her trying to say something, but he cut her off.

“You should go now.”

All of this was tearing him apart, and yet it felt as if someone had lifted half the burden from his shoulders. At the same time, he pushed aside the fact that the other half was in his family estate and that its existence would cast a shadow over the rest of his life until his decisions would ultimately seal his fate.

The man was good at pushing things aside, lived in the past. For seventeen days.

Only now did he realize that she was still there. That she was hesitating.

“My condolences.”

A tear rolled down his cheek.

But he couldn’t bring himself to turn back to her. To great was the risk of having to see what he had long since bid farewell to.

And yet he would see it for the next nineteen years.

The door creaked. Then a click.

Crows cawed in the distance, but the man had grown used to the black harbingers of doom that plagued this town.

He had thought they would leave when he had sent her people away. But they were still here.