Chapter 2 - Selene's Judgment

Elowen:

Selene did not speak again right away. She simply stood there, studying me, the way someone studies a problem they have not decided how to solve.

Then she turned to Ronan. "She stays confined to the servants' quarters until I decide what happens to her," she said, her voice flat now, tired, drained of the fire it carried only moments before.

"No kitchen work. No leaving the grounds. If my brother wants to claim responsibility for this, he can come home and say so to my face. Until then, she answers to no one but me."

"Selene—" Ronan started.

"Don't." She did not even look at him. "You already made your choice when you sent for me instead of handling this quietly. Let me handle it my way now."

I stood there, waiting, trembling, bracing for the rest of it, waiting for her to tell me to pack my things and leave everything I had ever known behind. It did not come. Somehow, the waiting was worse.

"Go," she said finally, not looking at me. "Someone will bring you food. Don't make me regret being merciful."

I do not remember walking out of that study. I remember only my mother's hand finding mine in the hallway, gripping, holding, the way she used to when I was small enough to believe her hand alone could keep the whole world from touching me.

She did not say a word the whole way. Whatever shock had broken loose from her back in that hallway, tray trembling in her hands, had already burned through and left something harder behind it.

We did not speak until we reached our room, the small one we had shared since I was a child, two narrow beds pushed close enough that I used to fall asleep listening to her breathe.

The door had barely shut behind us when my mother turned to face me, and this time there was no shock left in her at all, only something colder, steadier, and somehow worse for it.

"How could you let this happen to us." Her voice was quiet, controlled in a way that frightened me more than shouting would have. "Not to you. To us. I have spent eighteen years keeping us small enough that no one had a reason to look twice. Eighteen years, undone in one night."

"M-Mum," I barely called out, crying.

"Do not." She held up a hand, and it was shaking despite the calm in her voice. "I already had my moment of falling apart, alone in that hallway, listening to everything through a door I couldn't even step through. I will not do it again standing in front of you."

I felt the question land differently than her outburst had, quieter, harder to argue with.

"I do not have an excuse," I said, my voice small. "I made a choice. I knew who he was. I knew what it could cost. I chose him anyway, and I have been lying to you about it for weeks while you worked yourself sick trying to keep us both standing."

 The words kept coming, faster now, like something had finally broken loose. "You buried Dad alone. You raised me alone. You gave up everything so no one would ever have a reason to look at us twice, and I threw it away in one night."

"Stop." Her voice cracked in half. "Shut it. Just, stop it.”

"I am sorry." I was crying now, openly, the kind of crying I had not let myself do in front of anyone all day. "I am so sorry, M-mum. I never meant for this to fall on you too."

For a moment she just stood there, chest rising and falling, the last of her hardness draining out of her face and leaving something softer, sadder underneath it.

"Oh, my girl." Her voice broke into something gentler now. "It's okay. It's okay." She crossed the room and pulled me into her, one hand cradling the back of my head, gentle in a way I hadn't felt in years. "I am not angry at you anymore. I never really was, not down where it matters. I was only frightened. Do you understand me? I was frightened for you."

I clung to her, unable to answer, and she held on just as tightly.

She sat me down and knelt in front of me, taking both my hands in hers. "Look at me," she said softly.

I did, and the moment I did, whatever was still holding together inside me came apart the rest of the way. My mother did not try to stop me. She just held on, crying quietly into my hair, letting me break completely.

"I'm sorry," I said, once I could finally speak again. "I'm so sorry, Mum. I've ruined everything you worked so hard for."

"Stop that." Her voice cracked, shaking, but it did not waver. "You have not ruined anything. Do you hear me? You made a choice with your heart, the same as anyone does. The world is just not kind to girls like us for making it."

"She could throw us both out."

"She could." My mother did not pretend otherwise. "But she hasn't. Not yet. And whatever she decides, you are not facing it alone. Not for one single day of it."

I pressed my face into her shoulder, breathing her in, flour and warm bread and something soft I could never quite name, the smell of every safe, quiet moment I had ever known in this house.

"What if Zarek never comes back?"

My mother went quiet, thinking, for a long moment.

"Then you will raise this child with the people who love you," she said finally. "With me. That is enough. It has to be enough, because it's what we have."

I wanted to believe her. Some small, stubborn part of me did.

We sat like that for a long time, holding on to each other, until the light outside turned gold, then gray, then dark.

I thought about the baby growing inside me, small, unknowing, innocent of all the trouble already gathering around it before it had even taken its first breath. 

I pressed my hand against my stomach, the way I kept doing without noticing, and for the first time that whole day, I let myself feel something other than fear.

I loved it already, aching with it, wanting it, whatever else was true. That much was not hard to understand at all.

A soft knock came at the door sometime after dark. I expected a servant bringing the food Selene had promised. Instead, it was Odessa, slipping in before either of us could speak, closing the door quietly behind her.

Odessa had worked in this house almost as long as I had, folding linens and carrying trays down the same tired halls I walked every day. She had been my friend since we were small enough to hide from our chores behind the woodshed.

 If anyone in that house understood what fear like mine felt like from the inside, it was her.

"'I only have a minute,' she said quietly, glancing back at the door. "I shouldn't even be here."

"What is it?" my mother asked, rising.

Odessa's eyes moved to me, and something in her face made my whole body go cold before she'd said a single word.

"One of the guards came back tonight," she said. "He told the others he saw Zarek two days ago, near the northern border."

My heart lifted for one small, aching second, hoping. "Is he coming home?"

Odessa shook her head slowly. "He wasn't alone, Elowen. There was a woman with him."

"A woman," I repeated, not understanding yet.

"The guard said she looked important. Someone with rank. He didn't even get close enough to see her face properly, that's how careful they were being."  Odessa held my hand gently, steadying. "I'm telling you because I think you deserve to know. Not because I think it means anything bad. It could be nothing."

My mother stepped closer, her voice steady, though I could hear what it cost her. "It could be anyone, Elowen. A cousin traveling with him. A guard sent to bring him somewhere safely."

I wanted to believe that. I tried, really tried, holding onto it the way you hold onto anything warm on a cold, aching night.

But underneath the fear already sitting heavy in my chest, a small, quiet thought took root, growing, refusing to leave no matter how hard I pushed against it, the same thought, maybe, that Zarek's own words had been trying to warn me about all along. Whatever happens, Elowen, don't let them make you believe you were a mistake.

What if he hadn't run from Selene's anger at all? What if he'd been running toward someone else completely, and I was simply the mistake he was leaving behind?

I pressed my hand against my stomach again, this time not for comfort, but just to remind myself of the one thing in all of this that was still simply, fully mine.

Whatever Zarek had run to, whatever was waiting for him somewhere far from here, I was going to have to find a way to keep standing without him.

I just didn't know yet how much that would cost me.