Another step.
Her eyes burn me.
“Don’t look at me like that. I will give you anything, everything. You once took a bloody heart from a box. It belonged to a usurper who tried to poison me. You claimed it. You became my personal brand of poison. My weakness. I am weak for you, Aster. Don’t do this.”
Another step.
I snatch her throat in one long movement, pulling a gasping little creature to my chest where I rock her against me as she struggles and hisses. “Stop fighting me.”
Sobbing, kitten-growling, punching, panting, she bashes my chest and kicks her little feet into my boots. “You took her baby!” she cries harder. “Rome,” she says my name, betrayal laced. “No. Why? Why?”
My heart squeezes. “Stop, little creature.”
She beats my chest and thrashes in my grip. “You took her baby!”
“Stop.”
“Are you going to take mine?” She gasps between words. “Are you going to… going to—"
Her—my weakness—sinks in and nearly cripples me. I replace the pain, the hurt—
With anger.
“Stop that! I will make amends,” I grit out, unleashed fury coiling around each syllable. Her sorrow grates strips from my veins, every inch of me that is human turning to bloody ribbons. “I will make amends.” It is all I have. A promise.
Desperate, she cries, “Am I yours?”
“Yes, dammit!”
“Not The Trade’s?”
“No!”
Then she looks up at me, tears streaming down her cheeks… And her eyes. I never want to see them like this ever again. Broken. Like my sister.
“Then we keep our baby, Rome,” she says. “We keep our baby.”
A growl wrenches from the base of my shadowed soul, rumbling against her tiny form, demanding and dominant.
“Yes!” That is my declaration; the only word I have, the only certainty in my life is that she is mine. The babies that grow in her womb are mine. I am keeping them all.
Whatever the dark deal, whatever I must sacrifice—whoever— I will make it happen through blood or bargain, I will not give them up!
My volatile muscles convulse, wanting her soft caress to tame them, but it doesn’t come...
Frowning, I stare down my lashes, cup her wet cheeks in my hands, and guide her chin upward.
A pooling violet gaze loses focus on me, reality sinking in. Her forgiveness drifting.
“That look in your eyes, little creature. Hurts more than I can handle. I can bear the bullets, but not your broken heart.”
Her head shakes over and over. “No.” She isn’t in her eyes as she whispers, “I cannot keep my baby and watch you take away my Collective’s… I cannot. I don’t… Can’t.”
She goes limp in my arms, the battle stripped from her, her words as defeated as her body feels against mine.
I want to roar. Feel it stirring. “I will take you to the Windmill Forest, Aster.” I will do anything. “You and Tuscany. I will make amends.”
Detached, she says, “And Ana,” but there is no hope, no pulse to her words.
It isn’t enough for her.
But she will take it.
Fuck.
Chapter Eleven
Aster
It has been two weeks since my whole body crumbled in Rome’s arms. I let go of something inside… Something I have been trying to get back with each passing day.
Hope.
Hope that I can dance in my love for Rome like rain coating me in the chill of winter and put aside the certainty of watching Daisy and Blossom lose their babes…
And even me.
I know what he says—I will keep my baby—but I don’t know what that looks like. It is as foreign a picture as the ones I’ve seen of the Missing Moon.
A huge rock in the sky?
Surrounded by twinkling lights?
Sounds like a fairytale.
A baby in my bed? In a cot? In a hammock? Surrounded by strangers and on display?
Also a fairytale.
I have not been present. Not with my heart or my body, and my Rome has seen this. Felt it. He hunts until he is bloodied each day and gives me that beautiful feeling between my legs each night in the dark without words, but I am half there and half… Not.
I did find a little hope today; I was able to convince Ana to see the Windmill Forest with me.
Outside, red dirt stirs in the air.
Inside the tank, the machinery surrounding me vibrates, low but strong, sturdy and protective, like the growling that comes from Rome’s chest when he thrusts into me each night…
I ignore the longing.
Focus on the tank.
On Ana and Tuscany.
This is not my first time in a military vehicle, but it might as well be. I was dazed and feverish the first time, distracted, too. By Rome…
Feels like forever ago.
Rome sits in the centre of the great fortress, a square portal offering him a view of us. One he takes every chance he can.
I don’t return his heavy gaze. Can’t. Even as I feel the pain beating from his flesh, the distance I enforce affects him— me, too.
You took her baby.
If I look at him, I will show him the wrong emotions, the angry ones threatening to blast and incinerate. If I open my mouth to him, I will say hurtful things; he will let me cut into him, claw at him because I need someone to blame for this… injustice. This… painful reality.
It is his fault—
And it isn’t.
He didn’t create The Trade, nor did Master Cairo. They only manage what was handed to them, both the product of thousands of years of generational conditioning. Like me.
And he is right—I do not know how to rule or what is best for a baby. It makes sense that a child is raised by a skilled, mature caregiver, but… No one will love my baby as much as I will.
Then again, love is not a virtue.
I cannot decide how to feel. Cannot decide what I want. So, I refuse to look at him.
My emotions are too raw. Like weeping flesh, I need time to self-heal.
Snuggling into Ana’s side and she into mine, I wrap my arms around my swollen belly as the tank moves up and down the terrain. We agreed to see today as a detail in the puzzle of our lives and will ourselves to appreciate it.
Appreciate the air which smells like oil and metal. The cramped but tolerable space we share with Tuscany and a member of The Queen’s Army.
Appreciate the working art of jumbled textures. Smooth metal surfaces, various viewports, firm, green seats, and woven straps that bind utilities to the walls. Tools. Gear.
It feels like a hidden realm.