I wrapped her in a towel and tucked her against my chest as if I could keep her from falling apart by sheer proximity. She didn’t speak. Her fingers pressed lightly against my sternum, not to hold on, but like she needed to confirm I was real. Like she was afraid if she let go, she’d vanish again into the memory of blood and loss and everything she never got to grieve out loud.
The bedroom was quiet. Dim. The shadows were longer than usual, like even the walls wanted to shrink back and make room for the weight she carried. I laid her down carefully, smoothing the sheets around her body like armor she didn’t have to earn. I didn’t ask if she wanted me to stay. I didn’t need to. She reached for me before her eyes closed, her palm sliding across the mattress until her fingers touched mine.
I stayed beside her, not touching her at first, just watching. Listening to the way her breath shivered, the way her eyelids fluttered like she was fighting sleep even though her body was already giving in.
And when the tremors started again, soft, but unbearable, I didn’t wait. I pulled her toward me, fitting her against my chest like she’d always belonged there. She curled into me without a word, cheek pressed to my collarbone, one hand fisting weakly in the fabric of my shirt.
She didn’t cry again. She didn’t need to.
Her pain had already hollowed her out.
And I held her like she was all that was left of something holy in this godless world. A godless world where only the Devil rules. I sometimes fear for her when she is around me, something so pure against something so evil.
Eventually, her breathing evened out. Her hand relaxed. Her brow softened. And when I was sure she had finally slipped under, when I’d counted every breath twice over, I eased myself out of the bed with the kind of quiet you only learn in war.
The hallway was cold. Still. The kind of silence that makes your ears ring.
I lit a cigarette with a hand that didn’t shake, but only because I’d trained myself too well to show that kind of weakness. The first drag burned in my lungs. I welcomed it. Pain made sense. Pain was familiar. I could live in pain.
But what I felt now wasn’t pain. It was something far worse.
I stepped out onto the porch, shirtless, barefoot, the wind cutting across my chest like a reminder: You’re still breathing.
And I stood there like that, facing the dark, facing the sky, facing the truth I hadn’t been ready for.
She had been pregnant.
With mine.
And I hadn’t known. I hadn’t held her. I hadn’t protected her. I couldn’t be there for her. And she was afraid to tell me the truth.
I let myself come apart.
I cried.
Not loud. Not violent. Just steady, aching, like something inside me had cracked wide open and was leaking out in silence.
I cried because I had sworn I would never create an heir. I had buried that future before I ever met her. But now, standing in the dark while her body slept and her soul bled, I knew with a clarity that tore through me—
If I had known, I would’ve given it all up.
The revenge. The war. The title. I would’ve put it all down.
For her.
For something that could have been ours.
I would try my absolute hardest to be a father figure that we both never had.
I smoked the cigarette until it burned down to my fingers. Then I crushed it beneath my heel, wiped my face with the back of my hand like a soldier hiding a wound, and walked back inside.
Because the world doesn’t stop for grief.
But I would burn it all down to keep her from ever carrying that weight alone again.
Isabella
I wake slowly, the way you do when your body has finally given up fighting sleep but your mind hasn’t stopped running.
