Rejected by my cursed mate のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 91 - チャプター 100

The OintmentThe silence in the house was the thing that unsettled me. It pressed against my ears the way silence does before something breaks it.I called out for Maive. Nothing. I called for Lucius. Still nothing. Only the low groan of the wind slipping through the shutters answered me. Beneath it, a stillness that felt deliberate, as though the house itself were holding its breath alongside me.Harriet's room was empty. Her small shoes were gone from beside the door, the blanket she never slept without folded on the chair. My stomach folded with it.I told myself there was an explanation. Maive had probably taken her to see the herb garden, or Lucius had carried her off on one of his restless walks along the ridge, the ones he took when the weight of the coven's politics grew too heavy to sit with. Explanations are thin things when your child is missing, and mine tore apart within seconds of forming.I ran outside barefoot, the stone biting into the soles of my feet without registe

The LessonI stared at her and for one second I thought grief had finally broken something in her. A laugh. Not the kind that comes from shock. Loud and wild.. A real laugh. Low. Deep. The kind that starts inside and won’t let go even if you try to hold it down."Maive." My voice cracked on her name. "My daughter is missing. What’s so funny?"She pressed her hand to her mouth. It didn’t stop the sound.. Then. To my utter disbelief. Lucius made a noise behind me. A short breath that turned into something clearly amused. Within seconds the two of them were leaning into each other like kids sharing a joke I wasn’t invited to.I stood in the doorway of my daughter’s room, heart still pounding, bare feet cold on the floorboards. Something in my chest twisted into a shame and it almost took my breath. Whatever this was. Whatever they found funny. I was clearly the punchline. I had no clue what the joke even was.I said nothing. Over the years I’ve learned that sometimes saying nothing is th

The Debt Called InI carried Harriet back through the passage.The nurse tried to follow us. Maive held her back, speaking low and quick, words I didn't even bother to listen to. My arms had one job and my legs had another and the rest of me had simply gone somewhere else entirely, somewhere I could still function while the part of me that was a mother screamed from behind the glass.The house went quiet. Nine years of living inside these walls and I had never heard them make this sound, the sound of a place pretending everything was fine. Someone had left a cup of tea on the table, still warm, still steaming faintly in the dark.Harriet's room was down the end of the hall. I laid her on her bed. Her chest rose and fell, rose and fell, that shallow rhythm of someone not sleeping or waking either. I pulled the blanket to her chin out of habit. My hands knew exactly what to do and how to do it even when the rest of me didn't.Then I just stood there.The needful.My grandfather had sai

The Ordinary MorningHarriet woke at sunrise the way she always did, all at once, like a candle catching.I was still on the floor. Maive had gone to the kitchen to make tea and to tell the nurse that everything was well. I had not moved. My legs had gone numb and my back ached but I simply did not care. I had spent the night watching my daughter breathe and I would have spent another night doing it if I had to.Harriet sat up, rubbed her eyes with both fists, and looked at me with the uncomplicated confusion of a child who has fallen asleep somewhere unexpected and woken up somewhere else."Mama," she said. "Why are you on the floor?"Her voice. Her real voice, high and bright and slightly hoarse from sleep. Not that other voice, not that slow deliberate cadence that had looked out at me through her eyes. Her voice. I had never been so glad to hear anything in my life."I was keeping you company," I said. "You had a long sleep."Harriet considered this. She looked at her hands, then

The Woman in the LettersI learnt that her name was Cora.I found it in the fourth letter, buried in the middle of a paragraph about the harvest and the price of wool, my grandfather had a habit of writing around the thing he meant, circling it like a man afraid to land. Cora says the signs are clearer this year. Cora says we have perhaps a decade. Cora says the child must be told before she is grown, or it will be too late.The child. Me. I had been six years old when he wrote that letter. Six years old and already the subject of a countdown I had never known was running.I read all of them that night. Every letter in the drawer, every circling paragraph, every warning my grandfather had never spoken aloud. By the time the sun came up I knew three things:My grandfather had not been the only one who knew about the covenant.Cora had known more than he did.And Cora was very much still alive.She lived in a village three days' ride east, past the river, past the hills, in a place so s