Chapter 39 "The Curse is Burn"
The months that followed were a blur of darkness and despair.
Rosanna lost track of time in the cellar. Days blended into nights. The only markers were the twice daily deliveries of food watery soup, stale bread, occasionally a piece of hard cheese that was more mold than food.
Her belly grew. The baby moved inside her, innocent and unaware of what awaited it.
Rosanna talked to the baby sometimes, in the darkness, promising it things she knew she couldn't deliver. I'll protect you. I'll find a way out. I'll make sure you're safe.
But the promises rang hollow even to her own ears.
She tried to escape once, when the serving girl brought food. Rosanna had rushed the door, trying to push past, but the girl had screamed and men had come running. They'd beaten Rosanna carefully, making sure not to harm the baby and after that, they'd chained her ankle to the wall.
Winter came. The cold in the cellar became unbearable. Rosanna wrapped herself in the thin blanket and tried to keep her baby warm, knowing that her own suffering meant nothing as long as the child survived.
But survive for what? To be sacrificed?
Sometimes Rosanna thought about Sebastian. Wondered if he'd tried to find her. Wondered if he even knew what had happened. Wondered if he thought she'd abandoned him, run away, forgotten about him.
She hoped he'd moved on. Found someone else. Someone free. Someone who could actually give him the life he deserved.
And sometimes more and more as the months wore on Rosanna thought about dying. About finding a way to end it before the baby was born, before they could hurt it.
But she couldn't. Despite everything, despite the horror of what was coming, some stubborn part of her refused to give up.
So she endured. And waited. And tried not to think about what would happen when the baby finally came.
The labor started on a freezing night in late March.
Rosanna had been sleeping or trying to, the cold making real sleep impossible when the first contraction hit. Pain ripped through her belly, so intense she couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't do anything but curl into a ball and wait for it to pass.
"Help," she called out weakly, but her voice barely carried beyond the cell. "Please, someone help"
The contractions came faster. Harder. Rosanna lost all sense of time, lost everything except the pain and the knowledge that her baby was coming, and there was no one to help, and she was going to give birth alone in this cold, dark cell
The cellar door finally opened.
Margaret appeared, accompanied by two women Rosanna didn't recognize midwives, probably, brought in for this specific purpose.
"Hold her down," Margaret commanded as another contraction hit.
The midwives were efficient but rough, their hands impersonal as they examined Rosanna, prepared her, guided the baby out with clinical detachment.
Hours passed. Rosanna screamed until her throat was raw, pushed until she thought she would die, prayed for it to be over
And then it was.
A baby's cry filled the cellar. Sharp. Angry. Alive.
"It's a boy," one of the midwives announced.
Rosanna tried to reach for her son her baby, her child but the midwives pulled him away before she could touch him.
"Please," Rosanna begged, tears streaming down her face. "Please, let me hold him. Just once. Please"
"Take the child upstairs," Margaret said. "Prepare the altar."
"NO!"
Rosanna lunged forward, but the chains held her back. She could only watch as the midwives carried her newborn son up the stairs, his cries fading as they disappeared.
"Bring her," Margaret said to someone Rosanna couldn't see.
Rough hands grabbed Rosanna and unlocked her chains. They dragged her up the stairs she had no strength left to fight and into a room she'd never been in before.
It was set up like some kind of ritual space. Candles everywhere. Strange symbols drawn on the floor. And in the center, a stone altar where her baby lay, wrapped in white cloth, still crying.
Around the altar stood five women dressed in black Margaret and four others, all wearing the same expression of grim determination.
"What are you doing?" Rosanna gasped. "Please, don't hurt him"
"The blood of the innocent must be shed," Margaret intoned, pulling out a ceremonial knife. "To cleanse the sin of adultery. To purify the tainted line. This is the old way. The Ashcroft way."
"He's innocent!" Rosanna screamed. "He's just a baby! Please"
But Margaret was already raising the knife.
And then
Everything happened at once.
Rosanna felt something break inside her. Not physically. Something deeper. Something that had been holding her together through months of imprisonment and suffering.
Rage poured through her. Pure, burning rage unlike anything she'd ever felt. Rage at Margaret. At Thomas. At the world that had allowed this to happen. At God for abandoning her.
The candles flickered. The air grew cold.
And Rosanna spoke words she didn't recognize, in a language she didn't know, her voice echoing with something ancient and furious.
The knife came down.
Her baby's scream cut off.
Blood spread across the white cloth.
And Rosanna felt something enter her. Something dark and old and hungry.
The curse had been born.
The ritual was complete.
Margaret and her coven cleaned up the blood, wrapped the tiny body, and disposed of it somewhere Rosanna would never know.
Then they dragged Rosanna who had gone silent and still, her mind shattered by what she'd witnessed out of the house and threw her onto the road.
"You are cast out," Margaret pronounced. "You are forbidden from entering Hollow Creek. You are marked as an adulteress and a whore. May God have mercy on your soul, for we will not."
They left her there, in the dirt, in the dark, with nothing but the clothes on her back and the curse growing inside her.
For a long time, Rosanna didn't move. Couldn't move. Her body was broken from the birth. Her heart was destroyed by the loss. Her mind was fractured by the horror.
But eventually, some survival instinct kicked in. She stood. And she started walking.
She didn't know where she was going. Didn't care. She just walked, one foot in front of the other, until she found herself at a familiar place.