Chapter 173 A Demon's Child
Chapter 173 A Demon's Child
Zevran POV
A demon's child.
The healer says it and I don't move. I can't. Ryn is still in my arms with the turn draining out of her, the fangs sliding back, her eyes going from black to grey, and she's looking up at me without seeing me yet, too far down to have heard what was just said over her own head.
So I'm the only one who heard it. For a few seconds nothing makes sense, and I sit on the edge of that bed holding the woman I almost lost and feel it work its way into me.
I don't want to do the maths behind all this but I can't help myself. The months she spent in hell. The clinic she went back to. The bond she carried home and couldn't stand, the one that turned her toward a door before she knew why.
There's one demon. There was only ever one, and his name is in my mouth like something that has gone bad, while I'm holding the proof of him in my arms.
I set her down before my hands do something I'll be ashamed of. Laying her back against the pillows like she might break, and then I get up, because if I keep touching her I'm going to hold on too hard. I don't trust myself with what I'm feeling now.
I go to the nearest window for air. What sort of cruel joke is this? Of all things to happen, after everything? Why me? Why now? I just defended her, I dismantled my council for her and this is how life repays me?
He did this. That bastard intentionally did this while I was here burning off a thousand years of who I used to be, he reached across the worlds and put himself inside her in the one way I never had time to.
The turning I'd have given her, the thing that would have made her mine down to the blood, that's the thing that couldn't pass.
I press my hands flat on the stone and lean my weight into it until something has to give, and I make sure it's the stone and not me.
I want to go down there. That's the first thing, before the grief, before any of the rest of it. I want to find him in whatever pit he's in and take him apart slowly, even though I know it wouldn't move the child out of her by a single day, yet I want it anyway.
No one ever made it clear that after all the efforts I put into making myself a better man, in the end, I would be standing at a window wanting to murder a man over a thing that's already been done.
Under all this is the little voice that's now mocking me. I made myself new for her. Every part. I took the king apart down to whatever was underneath and I built something gentler in its place, something that could deserve her, and I was proud of it, in the quiet way you're proud of the hardest thing you've ever done.
And he didn't change a thing. He stayed exactly what he was, and he's the one who got to her where it lasts, where it makes a life, and all my unmaking and remaking bought me the privilege of standing in this room while she carries someone else's child.
That's the one that takes my legs. Not the jealousy. The fact that I gave everything I had and it wasn't enough to matter where it counts most.
"Zevran." Her voice behind me, wrecked from everything. She can't see my face yet she already knows something's wrong. "What did she say? What's wrong with me?"
When I don't reply, she spoke up again. "You're frightening me."
"Then we're matched!" I snapped, unable to help myself.
I keep my back to her because I can't let her see the want still draining out of my face. After many years of never being afraid to lose a thing, because I made certain nothing could reach far enough in to be a loss.
And then she reached. I let her. I chose it. And this is the cost of choosing it. The cost is that she's tied now, not to me, to him, to a bond and a child and a bloodline I'll spend the rest of her life standing next to
"Say something." She's crying now. "Don't turn your back and decide things at me. You promised me you'd stop doing that."
I turn around slowly.
"You're pregnant," I say. "It's his. The Embrace couldn't complete because the child was already there."
I watch her not understand, then begin to, her hands going to her stomach without her telling them to, and the sight of her hands going there is worse than anything the healer said.
"No!" Barely a sound. "I hate him. I left him. I'd never..."
"I'm not asking how."
"Then why are you looking at me like that."
"Because I can't have you the way he had you." It tears loose before I can stop it. "Because I unmade myself for you and he didn't change a thing and yet he's still the one who..." I stop. "Because you'll love it. You'll hold his child and love it, while I'll stand in this room and watch you love it. That he reached without trying. And I don't know how to be big enough for that. I've been alive ten centuries and I don't know how."
She's staring at me. I've never handed anyone this much of what's actually in me, and it's the worst possible moment, and I can't stop.
"And I'm afraid," I say, lower. "You're tied to hell now. The child is hell. He'll be in your blood and the child's blood for the rest of your life. As ironic as it sounds, I'll always be the one who came second. The king who bought you. While he's the one who..." The word won't come. "I want to leave the room, Ryn. Part of me is screaming to walk out so I don't have to watch it be real. The man I used to be would already be gone, and he'd have called it dignity."
"Then why are you still here?" She asks it holding her breath, like she already knows the answer is that I'm not.
"Because I'm not him anymore." My voice goes. "I burned him off. He's the only one of me who could leave you right now, and he's gone, so I can't."
I go to her. I take her face and let her feel my hands shake.
"It'll hurt me a long time," I tell her. "I won't lie about that. But I'm here. Crying about it here. It isn't noble. It's just all of me there is."
"Zevran I'm so sorry," she cries. "I didn't mean for this to happen... I..."
Fuck. Even though I'm so pissed right now, I can't bear seeing her in tears. "Shhhh," I say. "Stop crying, we'll figure something out."
"But what? What do I do now? What's going to happen to me since the curse didn't break?"