“I think I want children.”
Valentine’s eyes shot open.
“I’ve never really thought about having children,” she continued.
He didn’t move, didn’t speak. Just listened.
“I used to think that I had no desire for it,” she went on. “Not because I dislike children, I don’t. I practically helped raise my siblings. I just couldn’t imagine it, and when you said you didn’t want children, it didn’t matter to me. We had Abigail.”
She paused, and he felt her swallow. Her thumb gently pressed against the inside of his wrist. “But I suppose that’s changed. I’ve changed. You changed me.”
That caught him. He blinked at the ceiling, his breath shallow, trying to understand why those simple words had struck so deep.
“I’ve been thinking about it lately,” she continued softly. “Just…little thoughts. A child who looks like you. Abigail with a younger sibling to boss about. This house with more laughter in it. A family that’s ours. Real, and flawed, and a little bit loud.”
She turned slightly to look up at him, her voice lower now. “I wouldn’t want that with anyone else. Just you.”
Valentine’s throat tightened. Her head rested against his shoulder, her fingers woven through his now. He had never imagined more children. Never let himself imagine it. After everything that had passed in his first marriage, after the grief, the silence, the hollow routine of duty performed without joy, he had made a decision. Abigail would be his only child. The only one he would raise. The only one he could protect. He hadn’t wanted to risk giving more of himself, hadn’t wanted to open a door that loss might one day walk through again.
He’d never even considered it. Not once.
Until now.
He didn’t know when he’d stopped guarding his heart so tightly, but somewhere along the way, Cecilia had slipped inside without asking, settled into the hollow spaces, and made herself at home. She had rewritten the quiet of his house, the sluggishness of his days. Even now, with just her hand in his and her warmth at his side, he felt a kind of steadiness he hadn’t known he was missing.
He kissed the top of her head, his mouth resting there for a moment longer than necessary.
“I’ll think about it,” he said.
She didn’t reply, but her body softened in his arms, and he knew she understood. The thought of starting a family, a real, functional family, didn’t scare him that much in that moment. He welcomed the thought and decided that when he was lessdrowsy…when he could think with a clear head, he would give it some thought.
They lay in silence for a while longer, their breaths gradually syncing, the hush of the room wrapping around them like a second coverlet. She shifted slightly, nestling closer, her back snug against his chest, her head tucking beneath his chin. He tightened his arm around her waist, just to keep her there, warm and close and real.
He let his eyes close as the warmth of her body lured him toward sleep. It was the second night in a row that they had slept in the same bed, and he was starting to enjoy the thought of this being his normalcy.
With her breathing steady beside him, Valentine drifted off to sleep. At first, it was nothing more than shadows. A field, perhaps, or a corridor stretched too long. He wasn’t sure where he had drifted off to. His footsteps sounded far away.
Someone was laughing. A high, lilting sound, but he couldn’t place it. He turned, trying to follow it, but the air shifted. The corridor narrowed. The laughter changed. Became wrong.
He tried to speak, but the walls pressed in tighter, and he couldn't see. Something was wrong; he felt it rising in his chest, the way dreams did when they stopped making sense and began to pull.
“Valentine.”
That voice. His chest tightened instantly. He knew Helena’s voice all too well. It haunted his dreams for years.
“Valentine...”
The corridor narrowed with every step, the walls bent inward, and the cold air pressed against the back of his neck. Valentine moved forward, though he wasn’t sure why. The floor beneath him felt like stone, but it echoed as if it were hollow. Each footfall sounded too far away, and when he decided to stop walking, he came face to face with a door, opening into a room.
He knew it instantly. He knew then where he was.
The wallpaper was a faded floral, pale and familiar. The curtains were half-drawn. A basin stood by the hearth, the water inside stained pink. The fire flickered weakly, casting long shadows against the worn rug. On the bed, Helena laid, grunting.
His breath caught. Valentine had been here before. Five years ago. The day Abigail was born.
Helena writhed in the center of the bed, limbs tangled in soiled linen, her nightdress stained dark with blood at the hem. Her golden hair, once so polished, clung to her cheeks in damp ropes. Her eyes were wide, too white, too bright, rolling between the ceiling and him as if tethered to some invisible thread of fury. When they landed on him, her lips curled back like a snarl.
“Don’t you dare stand there,” she spat, her voice raw from screaming. “You! You did this to me.”
