I tied my hair into a knot above my head. “Will they attack?” Had we bonded with them enough when all of us had worked together to survive?
At the edge of the tub, Aric helped me undress. “If they get hungry enough, they will. But should they somehow make it past Lark and Circe, they’d be thwarted by our home’s defenses. Not even the Flash could overcome our blast-proof doors and bulletproof windows. We’ll keep the castle on lockdown.” He took my hand and assisted me into the water. “In you go. Is the temperature acceptable?”
No. I wanted to scour my skin. I reached for the hot water lever, but he stayed my hand.
“Too warm isn’t good right now.” He rose to switch on the bathroom heater, then returned to sit beside the tub.
“What are you talking about?”
“While you were unconscious, I did some reading. I have few books on the subject of pregnancy, but I scanned them all. Excessively hot baths aren’t recommended.”
Oh, yeah. That. “I’m not knocked up.”
“Then why do you think you lost consciousness?” He dipped a cloth into the water. As he ran it over my back, my lids went heavy. “Why do you think your nose bled? I read that both can be symptoms of pregnancy.”
Should I confess to him that Matthew had communicated with me? That Jack might have? Or would Aric take that as proof that I was mental?
I had more than one reason for confronting Paul. I needed to know if my mind was right. Chain of logic, Evie. If Paul convinced me that he was telling the truth about the shot, then I’d know I was whackadoodle enough to imagine other things—like Jack’s voice. If I decided that Paul was lying, then why should I not trust my own mind? Why should I not believe Jack lived?
Reason told me that I’d gotten everything confused. History told me I’d had problems before, and I’d heaped tons of stress on myself. But I needed to believe.
I told Aric, “That truck window exploding in my face might’ve had something to do with my symptoms. Or anxiety. Even Paul said I probably had PTSD.” That asshole. I dunked my hands under the bubbles, hiding my purple thorn claws. “Have you spoken with Lark or Circe about this?”
“They’ve both heard you’re with child, of course. There’s little they do not hear.” Lark spied through her creatures, Circe through water.
We didn’t have a lot of secrets here at Castle Lethe, a.k.a. the castle of lost time. “Then they might’ve picked up on my conversation with Paul.”
He shook his head. “Regrettably, no.”
“You asked them? Why couldn’t you simply accept what I’d told you?”
“Can you say without any doubt whatsoever that he lied?”
After a hesitation, I said, “No. But I don’t trust him.” Unfortunately, I didn’t trust myself completely either.
Aric washed one of my arms, then the other. “Until you have decided with absolute certainty, I will lock Paul in his rooms. Will that make you feel better?”
“Why are you being so understanding with him?”
“Not everything is black and white in this situation.” He paused with the cloth. “This pregnancy does not strike me as lamentable. Nor worthy of a murderous rage. Yet your hair was turning red earlier.”
“So, Paul will be acquitted because you don’t think this is lamentable? He’s screwing with our lives.” With my mind.
“He has been a loyal servant to me since not long after the Flash.” Aric had once told me that the medic had grown up in this area. After the apocalypse, he’d found Paul in the nearest town, treating others’ injuries, sharing his supplies with them.
Aric had hired him, inviting him back here to do anything and everything—castle maintenance, vehicle repairs, cooking, cleaning.
“Well, he hasn’t been loyal to me.” I pulled my knees up to my chest. “And where’s your loyalty? I told you that I wasn’t ready to have kids, that I didn’t want to bring a child into a world like this.” For a split second, I wondered if Aric had conspired with Paul. My resentment simmered hotter and hotter. I understood why the Fury Card spat acid. I wished I could right now. “You can’t truly want a kid.”
Seeming to tread carefully again, Aric said, “I don’t not want it. Maybe your pregnancy was inevitable. After all, a fertility goddess imbued you with powers. For ages, the Empress Card has been associated with motherhood.”
And with wrath; I’d been imbued by the goddess Demeter as well. When she’d gotten enraged enough, she’d laid a curse on the entire earth.
I remembered the red witch saying, “Demeter withholds viciously—and gives lavishly. GIVE,” right before I’d euthanized a colony of plague victims. Matthew had told me, “Power is your burden.”
Not lately.
Aric continued, “When you wanted to use contraception, I agreed. But for whatever reason, this is our situation now. And I, for one, welcome it. After all the death I’ve caused—”
“I’m seventeen!”
“Your current incarnation has lived that long, but over your lifetimes, you’re much older.” Equal frustration showed in his expression, but he stifled it. “Can you not see why this could be a good thing, sievā? We will change history. Overturn the game. Perhaps even end it.”
That prospect called to me. Before I’d lost Jack, I’d wanted to end the game more than anything. But the fact remained: I wasn’t pregnant.
Aric cupped my cheek. “Talk to me. I need to know all the thoughts in your beautiful mind.”
Jack’s possible survival. Paul’s lies. Aric’s coming disappointment. Claws. Poison. Punishment. “I’m done.” With my bath. With waiting to vent this rage.
I stood in the tub, glaring when Aric used his speed to lift me and wrap a robe around me. “I can walk.”
“As you wish.” He slowly set me on my feet. Back in our room, I passed the full-length mirror, pausing to take in my appearance. My eyes were glassy, my cheeks pale. I didn’t look pregnant.
In the reflection, I spied the white bloom in a vase beside my bed, the rose plant Aric had grown from a seed after we’d had sex for the first time.
Over the millennia, he’d always carried a white rose on his standard. I’d painted one on the wall that overlooked our bed.
Was that budding rose one of those memory waypoints my grandmother had told me about? If so, what else did it signify?
Aric stood behind me and put his hands on my shoulders. For everyone else who’d ever lived, contact with his skin was lethal. For me, his touch was warm and pleasurable. Together we were different.
If Paul had given me a dummy shot, why wouldn’t I have gotten pregnant? After all the times Aric and I had had sex?
Potentially unprotected sex.
I swallowed thickly, then closed my eyes to take a mental inventory of myself, using the same power I’d used to find seeds deep in the earth.
Sensing, sensing . . .
I opened my eyes, staring into my own hollow-eyed gaze. Oh, dear God. Something felt fundamentally off with me.
Another glance at the white bloom. Aric had planted more than a rose seed two months ago.
I was . . . pregnant.