Several women in the village came to the house and helped Lila manage cooking and cleaning. With nothing else to do, Helena began writing, filling a journal with everything she could think of. She wanted it all written down: her version of events. Who she was, and what she’d chosen, and why. Answers to all the questions she’d ever wished she’d asked her own mother.
The winter solstice passed, and so did Helena’s due date, and she thought she would always be pregnant and never leave her bed when her labour finally started. It moved at a relentless creep for more than a day with little progress as Kaine grew more and more worried. Lila was somehow the most levelheaded among them.
“We’re all vivimancers. No reason to think we can’t get one baby out,” Lila said, kneeling by Helena’s legs while Helena leaned against Kaine, his hand pressed over her heart, making sure the rhythm stayed even when the contractions crested and ebbed.
“I hate this,” Helena finally said, beginning to feel like it was never going to end, her forehead slick, curls clinging to her face.
“I know.” Kaine smoothed her hair.
“It hurts.”
“Yes.”
“I’m tired. I’ve been pushing for hours.”
“I know.”
“Stop agreeing with me.”
Kaine stopped talking after that and didn’t utter a word of protest when she nearly broke his hand squeezing it through a contraction, her whole body curling forcefully.
“Almost there,” Lila said. “Head’s out. Just one more and you’ll get the shoulders through.” She looked at Kaine. “Do you want to catch her?”
He shook his head.
Helena could feel her heart rate trying to rocket. So close, so close. Just one more and it would be over.
“That’s it! Yes! Shoulders are out, just breathe, she’ll come …”
There was a garbled wail as Lila lifted a wet, squirming bundle and thrust her into Helena’s arms. Helena gave a startled gasp as her daughter’s tiny, scrunched-up face nuzzled against her. The baby’s head was matted with dark wet curls.
All her exhaustion was forgotten. Helena’s hands shook as she cradled the baby close. The tiny head lifted, looking towards Helena, and a little mouth opened to utter an angry, protesting cry.
Lila was saying something, but Helena could only stare as the baby furrowed her featherlight eyebrows, eyes widening briefly.
They were as bright silver as a lightning storm.
Helena gave a sob and held her tighter. “Kaine—she has your eyes.”
CHAPTER 77
Janua 1790
HELENA SAT IN BED, COUNTING HER DAUGHTER’S fingers and toes, studying the tiny fingernails and the squashed profile. Lila had rubbed the vernix in thoroughly and swaddled the baby with expert speed before giving her back to Helena.
The matted brown hair was beginning to dry and stand in little tufts around her soft head.
“Looks like she got my hair,” Helena said as she looked up, smiling.
Kaine was standing almost as far from her as he could without going for the door.
She stared at him in confusion. He had barely left her side for weeks, but now he looked cornered.
“Kaine … come and see her.”
He swallowed. “Helena—”
“She’s your daughter.”
The muscle in his jaw jumped. “Yes. I know. I remember how it happened.”
The smile on Helena’s face vanished.
She looked down, the silence in the room so heavy that she felt as though she were being crushed by it. Some wounds would never heal, and sometimes she felt that she and Kaine had a nearly lethal number of that variety.
“I think I should go.”
“Come here,” Helena said, not giving him a moment to interpret her silence as agreement. Her voice was hard and flat.
He exhaled, his eyes despairing, as though his heart were being carved out of his chest, but he didn’t move.
“Kaine … come here,” she said forcefully.
He swallowed and stepped closer.
“We didn’t have any choice. You didn’t. But that’s over now. We said we’d start over when we ran away. That’s what we’re doing now. She’s never going to know that world.”
Kaine was looking anywhere but at the baby.
“She’s not going to hurt you, and you’re not going to hurt her.”
“Helena.” His voice was strained. “I’m not supposed to have this life. Paladia is drowning in the blood I’ve spilled. You think that doesn’t include children? Killing is the only thing I’ve ever done well. Do you really want someone like that near your daughter?”
Helena froze, staring at him, and finally looked down. “You didn’t have any choice,” she said. “And it’s not all you’ve done. You saved me. You saved Lila and Pol. We—we did what we had to, to survive. But we get to be better than that now. We’ll do it for her.”
He finally dragged his eyes from the far wall.
Their daughter’s silver eyes peered up at them. Her hair had dried into a halo of brown curls. Her face was squashed from birth, and both her hands had escaped swaddling and were up near her face. She was aggressively sucking on the knuckles of her right hand.
She was the loveliest thing Helena had ever seen.
“Look at her. She’s ours. She’s all ours. You’re not going to hurt her.”
Kaine was frozen as he stared at her. He’d stopped breathing, and his fingers spasmed, trembling as he finally reached out. He barely brushed the baby’s palm, as if he thought his touch might poison or break her. The tiny hand instantly closed around his finger, gripping it.
Helena watched him and recognised the expression that slowly filled his eyes as he stared at the tiny person tenaciously clinging to him: possessive adoration.
ENID ROSE FERRON WAS, ACCORDING to Lila, the easiest baby ever born. The older she grew, the more she looked like Helena, except for her eyes, which were, in colour and angle, just like Kaine’s and the grandmother that she was named for.
She slept beautifully and rarely cried. She would sleep for hours in her overly indulgent father’s arms, snoozing on his chest as he watched Helena work in the kitchen or in the little laboratory set up in one of the outbuildings.
Enid possessed the solemn curiosity of an owl, head swivelling as she observed everyone around her. Helena would carry her in a sling, tucked against her chest, where she could wrap her arms tightly and protectively around Enid’s tiny body when the shadows grew too long.
Once Enid could safely sit up, she would spend half the day sitting on Kaine’s shoulders, riding about with him while he walked the perimeter of the property over and over, checking all the buildings and visiting Amaris, who would vibrate with excitement but hold utterly still when Enid tugged her ears and patted her.
Kaine talked to Enid more than he talked to anyone, even Helena. He would monologue to her about everything: the trees, the sea, the tide and moons, alchemy techniques and array theories, what the weather might be, and Enid listened to him intently, fretting if he got distracted or fell silent for too long.
When the next summer Abeyance arrived, it brought news from the North, detailing the siege currently in progress, how the city was being starved into compliance as demands of surrender were ignored.
They were all relieved when the Abeyance ended and there was no more unspoken question hanging in the air of whether they could or should do something more.
Enid might have been a perfect child, if not for the terrible influence of Apollo Holdfast.