Chapter 46 come back
Chapter 46 come back
Phio came back into the room and sat the big potted plant from the living room next to Gille. “So you can ground yourself to Herth, and he can help.” I hadn’t even thought about that. The forest god would be good back up to have. She stuck her fingers in the soil obediently and quietly prayed to
him.
Phio handed me a scalpel. “You’ve got this. Like riding a bike.”
A horrible bike with a loose wheel and a seat so narrow it threatens to impale my ass with no warm up every time I hit a bump, but sure. I’d done this a thousand times.
The memory of Saria slipping through my fingers shook my resolve the way it always did. The loss of my daughter and grandson still haunted my dreams, especially when someone was pregnant. I was so young. That was thousands of years ago, but it was seared into my mind deeper than my first delivery.
I closed my eyes and let my soul settle against my goddess. “Don’t play with me, bitch. I’m not in the mood for your shit today.”
“W
e need to go back,” I told Kaylen. “Something is wrong.”
It prickled in the back of my mind like white noise. Fear that wasn’t mine. The bond was still damaged, but I’d started getting
wisps of emotions here and there. As the bond healed, it grew stronger.
“What?” But he jumped out of the river, dropping the catch in his hands, before I could answer him.
“I’m not sure. But it’s not like Mal to be nervous.”
“Is she hurt?” he asked as we ran down the mountain.
“No.” I didn’t need him to panic, but I only felt this from her when something went wrong when she was midwifing. After she lost our Saria and her son, Maleene mourned for a hundred years and was never the same after that. I always knew when a birthing was going wrong, because it was one of the few things that could shake that strong bitch.
It only took thirty minutes to get there, and the smell of blood filled the air when we entered the house. We barrelled into the room and Phio was holding the bloody baby, rubbing the child, trying to stir it.
Maleene was hard at work sewing Gillie back up, murmuring gentle words to her, but Gillie wasn’t responding. Maleene sang a soft, gentle song as she continued putting in stitches. I wasn’t sure who the tune was for, but both roused. The baby started crying, and the mama blinked like she’d just returned from some other world.
“There we go.” Phio chuckled and handed the babe over to Kaylen, patting him on the back. “It’s a girl.”
Phio barely spared me a glance as he went over to Mal handing her supplies she asked for between gentle words of encouragement to Gillie.
“What do I do with her?” Kaylen asked me, staring at the babe as if he were a pixie lost in the woods.
A snort went through my nose, and I smirked at him. “Try to not fuck her up.”
He side eyed me, not amused by my antics.
“Get her cleaned up.” I guided him over to the sink to wash the baby witch off. Blank white hair told nothing of what kind of witch she would be. No matter what, she would be his biggest trial. I know my eldest daughter was.
I eyed the gentle way Phio dealt with Mal as she finished taking care of Gillie. It wasn’t normal. He shouldn’t have been looking at her like that. Like she was his world.
My mark was loud on her skin, showing how far it had repaired from having no shape to slowly turning back into a representation of me. Why is he even here?
My position was precarious at best. I couldn’t start making a big stink about things that would inevitably not matter. So I swallowed down the urge to claim my property and followed Mal when she walked away from the room to take a breath.
“I thought it was going to be Saria all over again,” she confessed so quietly, I suspected she was talking to Ocio. “Thanks for having my back in there, bitch.”
A smirk curled on the side of her lips as she listened to some response from our goddess that I couldn’t hear, but I was certain Ocio had some snappy retort to that.
I massaged her shoulders, focusing on the left side where she always carried most of her tension. When she leaned back into me, I wrapped my arms around her. She hadn’t let me hold her again since that time I tied her up.
“You won this round, mama. Your babies are safe.”
She continued to relax until I was the only thing keeping her standing. Leaning on me to keep her upright when everything else failed her. It was
the softest signal that her trust was slowly returning, but it was enough to give me hope things could go back to normal one day.
Her head turned to watch Kaylen with his paramour and new daughter. The smile on her face was everything. The pride on her face when her children took on the mantle as parents was always when her light was the brightest.