Elena

Damien stood up slowly, as if giving me a chance to deny what he’d said. “Why are you so determined to keep my child from me?”

I stared at him, every sound in the room fading. My hand moved to my stomach on its own. I hadn’t thought about it since the trials, the council, the accusations. I had been too busy surviving.

But deep down, I knew. The exhaustion that never left, the faint nausea, the small shifts in my body I’d forced myself to ignore—they weren’t nothing.

I ...