Chapter 98 Maternal Rage

Chapter 98 Maternal Rage
Violet's POV

The voices came through the wall at ten in the morning.

Not the door. The wall. The room adjacent shared a wall with the small sitting room. The walls in this house were old stone but not thick enough to absorb a conversation at normal volume.

Eric and Stephanie were in the sitting room.

I pressed my hand against the wall beside the bed and I listened.

"The contact confirmed this morning," Stephanie said. "The handover point stands. They want delivery within forty-eight hours of the birth."

"Forty-eight hours is tight," Eric said.

"They were clear about the window," Stephanie said. "They need the child young enough that the early bonding period is not compromised. They were very specific about that."

"Helen says it could be today," Eric said. "Or tonight."

"Then we are within the window," Stephanie said. "Barely but within it."

"And the other matter," Eric said. "After the handover."

"Also within forty-eight hours," Stephanie said. "The contact was specific about both. Clean exit. Nothing that creates a trail."

"Nothing that creates a trail," Eric repeated. His voice was completely even.

I pulled my hand back from the wall.

I sat on the edge of the bed and pressed both hands flat against Eli. I breathed through the contraction that was building, let it peak and ease, kept my face exactly as it had been before I heard the conversation.

Jacob was watching me from the chair. His right hand was almost free. I could see it in the angle of his shoulders.

I looked at him.

"The wall," I said. Very quietly.

He understood immediately. He had been listening too.

"Both within forty-eight hours," he said at the same volume.

"Yes," I said.

"The handover is not here," he said.

"No," I said. "A separate location. The contact specified the window."

"So we have forty-eight hours from when Eli arrives," he said. "After which both things move."

I pressed my hands harder against Eli.

He pushed back. Impatient. Ready. Not forty-eight hours away. Hours away. Maybe less.

"Jacob," I said.

"Yes," I said.

"We do not have forty-eight hours," I said. "We have however long it takes for Helen to say he has arrived and is stable. That is the actual window."

"I know," he said.

"The right hand," I said.

"Almost," he said.

The sitting room next door went quiet. Footsteps. They were separating. Going in different directions.

I straightened on the bed and arranged my face and my hands.

Eric came in.

He looked at me. He looked at Jacob in the chair. He looked at the room the way he always did, taking inventory of every detail, checking whether anything had changed since his last check.

"How are you feeling," he said to me.

"Uncomfortable," I said. "The contractions are very close."

"Helen will be back at eleven," he said.

"You keep saying Helen will be back," I said. "Helen comes and she assesses and she leaves. What I need is for Helen to stay."

"She will stay when it is time," he said.

"It is time now," I said.

"Not quite," he said.

He crossed the room and sat in the chair beside the bed. He reached out and put his hand over mine on my belly the way he had done in the months before all of this. His hand was warm. His face was warm.

Both things at the same time.

"I need to talk to you about Jacob," he said.

I looked at him. "What about Jacob," I said.

"He told you a story," Eric said. "About your mother and a man named Caius. About the bloodline."

"Yes," I said.

"I want you to think about something specific," he said. "Not the story itself. The source of the story."

"I have thought about it," I said.

"Then think about it again," he said. "Jacob has spent six months trying to reach you. Every Tuesday at the border. Letters through Gorran. Breaking into this house twice. He is a man who has decided you are what he wants and he has been building a path to getting you back."

"Yes," I said.

"A man like that," Eric said, "who has identified exactly what he needs you to believe to trust him, will find the evidence to support that belief. He will find someone who can tell a convincing story. He will construct the detail that makes the story credible."

"You are suggesting Jacob manufactured Caius," I said.

"I am suggesting Jacob found someone who could give you a reason to believe that the guilt he carried was not his fault," Eric said. "That the years of distance were not choices he made but lies he was given. That frees him from accountability for three years of very specific harm he caused you."

"He has not tried to free himself from accountability," I said. "He has said very directly that what he did was his failure regardless of what information he was or was not given."

"He said that to you," Eric said. "Here. In this room. Under circumstances where saying it was the most strategically useful thing he could say."

I looked at Eric.

I looked at this man sitting beside my bed with his warm hand over mine, telling me not to believe the person in the chair whose wrists were tied, while planning to transfer my child to a buyer within forty-eight hours of his birth.

"Eric," I said.

"Yes," he said.

"You care about Eli," I said.

"Yes," he said.

"Genuinely," I said. "The caring is real."

"Yes," he said.

"And you have arranged to transfer him to a contact outside this territory within forty-eight hours of his birth," I said.

He went very still.

"The wall between this room and the sitting room is not as thick as you think," I said.

He held my gaze for three full seconds.

Then he said, "Violet."

"Do not," I said. "Do not use my name in that voice right now."

"What you heard," he said.

"Was clear," I said. "Forty-eight hours. Clean exit. No trail."

"There is context to what you heard," he said.

"Then give me the context," I said. "Right now. No management. No careful placing of words. Give me the plain context."

He was quiet.

The contraction hit. Strong. The strongest one yet. I breathed through it with both hands on Eli and held Eric's gaze through the whole of it. I did not look away.

When it passed I said, "That is what I thought."

"Violet," he said.

"I want Helen," I said. "Not in an hour. Now."

"It is not yet……"

"I want Helen now," I said. "And I want the fighters out of this corridor. And I want Jacob untied."

"None of those things is going to happen," he said.

"Then we sit here," I said. "While Eli comes on his own timeline. You can explain to Helen why his mother is in a locked room with her hands on her belly and her eyes on the door."

"Helen understands the situation," he said.

"Helen is a woman with a conscience," I said. "The same as Fen. The same as Bette. The same as Mira. The same as Cael. You have been managing people's consciences for six months and they have been letting you manage them. At a certain point consciences stop being manageable."

He stood up.

He went to the door.

"Eric," I said.

He stopped.

"Tell Stephanie the window has changed," I said. "Tell her I know about the contact and the handover point and the forty-eight hours. Tell her that whatever she thinks is going to happen in the next two days, the information is already outside this territory."

"Is it," he said.

"Caius has been outside this fence every night for six weeks," I said. "Do you think he has been doing nothing with his time?"

Eric looked at me.

I pressed my hand against Eli.

He pushed back. Hard. Three times. Decisive.

"Soon," I told him.

Eric went out. The lock turned.

I looked at Jacob.

"The right hand," I said.

He brought both hands around to the front.

"Free," he said.

"Good," I said. "Now listen. When this contraction passes I am going to tell you what I saw in the vision. All of it. We have one window and we need to use it correctly.”