Deception

Chapter Fifty-One RACHEL

There’s something strange about the look in Logan’s eyes, but I don’t have time to dwell on it. The second he leaves the room, Elim hurries in with her arm wrapped around Eloise.

“Don’t worry, dear,” Elim says. “We have a bed available for you right here. Now just breathe, slow and steady, and the pain will ease again.”

Eloise doubles over and moans. Her pale skin glistens with sweat. Elim rubs her back in small, soothing motions, and then deftly transfers her patient into the bed beside mine.

The room seems infinitely smaller than it did a second ago. The air is harder to breathe. And the part of my soul reserved for the guilt I feel over Melkin’s death burns as Eloise turns her head and stares at me.

Can she see her husband’s blood on my hands? Can she look through me and find him crouched in the corner of my mind, his dark eyes accusing me of ripping his family to pieces?

Bile rises up the back of my throat, and I turn away when Elim says, “Why don’t you come sit by her and hold her hand? She could use a friend right now.”

“Quinn?” I cast a panicked look across the room, but Quinn is already pulling his blanket up over his head.

“Not a chance,” he says, his voice muffled by his bedding.

My fist grips my blanket with white knuckles. I could pretend I hadn’t heard Elim. I could lie and say I’m not strong enough to sit up yet. I could, but just like grieving Sylph, feeling guilty for Melkin is mine. I can’t run from it unless I want to lose myself.

The white carpet is soft beneath my feet as I shuffle toward Eloise, pausing to lean against the wall when the room does a slow, sickening spin. I breathe in through my nose and wait for my head to settle, and then I lower myself to Eloise’s bedside.

She groans and clutches her belly. Elim reaches out to smooth Eloise’s hair from her forehead with one hand while her other presses against Eloise’s abdomen.

“Contractions are nice and strong. I bet you’re feeling this one, aren’t you?” She smiles at Eloise.

Sudden pain shoots up my right arm, and I jerk my hand out of Eloise’s viselike grip. She pants, her face turning red, the tendons on her neck standing out like ropes as she hunches her shoulders, and then she slowly deflates back onto the mattress. Her thin hand flutters over mine.

“I’m sorry,” she says in her timid, caged-bird voice. “Forgot your injury. I wasn’t thinking.”

The burning guilt in my soul spreads through my veins until I am turning into ash from the inside out. She can’t apologize to me. Not for anything. Not when I’m to blame for the grief and loneliness in her eyes. Not when her husband will never know his child because of me.

Another contraction seizes her, and she arches her back and cries out. Her hand reaches, grasping for the man who loved her. I look at Elim and then at the exit.

“I don’t know what to do,” I say.

“Just talk her through the contractions and help her stay calm,” Elim says as she arranges herself between Eloise’s legs.

I look at the ceiling and take another deep breath. “I’m not suited . . . you really need someone else in here.”

“No time,” Elim says in the same tone of voice my father used when he pushed me to my limits as we sparred. “Do you want to hold her hand and help calm her down—”

“No.”

“—or do you want to catch the baby?”

“What? No. I . . . isn’t there another option?”

“Rachel, the baby is coming. Another few contractions will do it. Either hold her hand and coach her to push or get down here and guide the baby out.”

Guide the baby out? Absolutely not. I shudder, and Eloise comes off the bed again, her cries of agony filling the room. “Fine. I’ll hold her hand.”

“And coach her. Calm her down.”

“I’m not good at calming people down,” I mutter, but I let Eloise’s grasping hand find mine. I swallow the scream of pain that wants to tear out of me as her fingers squeeze the burned flesh at my wrist, and tell myself it’s no better than I deserve. One small piece of penance I can offer to Melkin.

When Eloise collapses against the blankets again, her eyes find my arm, and she whispers, “Your wrist. I’m sorry.”

“Please.” I choke the words out. “Don’t. Don’t ever apologize to me.”

Her weary gaze meets mine, and the hopelessness in her face hammers against my silence. Tears sting my eyes, and as the next contraction starts, I lean down and say, “Take a deep breath and hold it. There. Now push. You’re strong enough for this, Eloise. You’ve been through hell, but soon you’ll meet your child. You’ll see proof that Melkin loved you, and that you aren’t alone.”

She sobs as the contraction eases, and her fingers refuse to let go of me. “Why did he have to die? You were there. Can’t you tell me?”

A stone is lodged in my throat. Holding back my words. My tears. The truth I owe her. I make myself meet her eyes and swallow past the stone. Truth is what will make me better. I don’t know if truth will make Eloise better, too, but I can’t stomach another lie.

I’m finished with running from the things I’ve done. I help Eloise settle back against the blankets again, and say quietly, “Melkin died because I killed him.”

She lies there, stunned and silent, as Elim murmurs something about seeing the baby’s head and one more push.

“Did he try to kill you, then?” she asks, and the pain in her voice isn’t for me. It’s for Melkin. For her husband, who wasn’t a killer but who was backed into a corner by his leader. Forced to do the unthinkable or lose everything that mattered to him.

“I don’t . . . I thought he was. He needed the device, and I wouldn’t give it to him. I didn’t want the Commander to have that much power. But my reasons don’t matter, Eloise. What matters is that I regretted it the moment I did it. I’ve regretted it every day since. If I could go back and do things differently, I would.” My voice breaks, and I clench my teeth against the pain as Eloise rises off the bed and screams like a warrior while Elim yells encouragement.

Seconds later, there’s a wet splotchy sound, and Elim coos gently. Eloise and I grip each other’s hands and stare at Elim as she briskly rubs a clean cloth over the messy bundle lying in her lap.

“A girl,” Elim says, and beams at us both while the baby sucks in a tiny breath and cries. “Let me finish cleaning her up, and you can hold her.”

Eloise eases back against the bed and smiles while tears stream from her eyes. I try to disentangle our fingers, but she clings to me.

“I don’t know how to feel about you,” she says, “but I don’t hate you. Logan was right. Melkin was dead the minute he left for that mission. Anyone who knew about the device was dead. The Commander never meant to leave any survivors.”

I shake my head. No, the Commander never meant to leave any survivors, but his knife wasn’t buried in Melkin’s chest.

Her fingers squeeze mine. “I hate him. I blame him.”

“But I did it,” I say, because the truth needs to be clearly seen. By both of us.

Her eyes find mine, and they burn with a passion that feels as familiar to me as breathing. “Yes, you did. And if you hadn’t, my Melkin would’ve died at the hands of the Commander. Or he would be sitting here instead of you, his mind and spirit broken because he had the blood of an innocent girl on his hands. There are no winners here, but none of this would’ve happened without the Commander.”

Her words taste like truth, and I let them linger. Let the darkness in Melkin’s eyes match the burning fires in Eloise’s and consider that maybe—maybe—the accusation I see isn’t mine to carry alone.

“Here you go,” Elim says, and tucks a tiny, red-faced creature, tightly wrapped in a little yellow blanket, against Eloise’s chest. I move out of the way so Elim can help Eloise sit up and lean against the far wall. She doesn’t even look at us. Every part of her being is focused on looking deep into her daughter’s eyes.

As Elim bustles about cleaning the bed and hauling the dirty linens away, I settle down beside Eloise and stare at the baby. Her lips are pink, puckered things, and she turns her face toward her mother as if she recognizes Eloise’s voice.

“Want to hold her?” Eloise asks me.

Before I can respond, she lifts the baby into my arms, careful to position her on my left side so that my injury remains untouched. I clutch the tiny thing and pray I don’t break her.

“I’m going to name her Melli. He’d like that,” Eloise says, and there’s peace in her voice.

“Melli,” I say softly, and the baby looks at me with unfocused eyes. One tiny fist creeps out of the swaddling and flails. I stroke her hand with my finger, and tears slide down my face and onto the blanket. The guilt burning through me like a live coal sinks slowly beneath the cleansing tide of grief that pours out of the silence and engulfs me. It hurts, but it’s real.

“I’m sorry,” I say, gasping for air around the sobs that shake me. That tear through me until I think there will be nothing left of me when it’s over. “I’m so sorry. You deserve to know your daddy. He should be here now instead of me, but he isn’t, and I’m sorry.”

Melli watches me, her fist bumping against my finger, and I cry until the tears are gone. Until the blood on my hands means less than the baby I now hold. The grief subsides, and in its place is a small fragment of hope.

I can’t bring Melkin back. I can’t make a different choice, and somehow, I’m going to have to find a way to live with that. I’m not sure how to learn to trust myself again, but maybe I don’t have to be so afraid of the fierce instincts that live inside of me. Maybe I have those instincts because while I can’t nurture like Nola, or love everyone like Sylph, or fall easily into motherhood like Eloise, I can do something none of the other girls raised in Baalboden can do.

I can fight.