All Chapters of My Sister's Mate Is Obsessed With Me: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

Seraphina's POV I started listening for heartbeats through the walls.It started by accident. One night after Pria was taken and brought back I pressed my ear against the wood to check if she was breathing and if I held my breath and stayed very still I could just barely pick up the faint thump of her pulse on the other side. It was slow and weak and it skipped every few beats but it was there and hearing it was the best thing that had happened to me in days.After that I did it every night. I'd press my ear flat to the boards and hold my breath and close my eyes and listen until I found the heartbeat on the other side. Then I'd move to the next wall and do the same. It was the only way I had to check who was still alive and who had gone quiet in the forever way that the rocking girl had gone quiet.Pria's heartbeat was getting weaker. I could still find it if I pressed hard enough and held my breath long enough but some nights it took me a long time and my own heart would speed up w

Seraphina's POVI woke up and didn't know where I was and the ceiling above me was white, not grey wood with cracks in it but white, with a thin brown line running across one corner where the rain had leaked through at some point and dried. There were curtains on a window to my left, yellow ones, and sunlight was coming through them and landing in a warm square on the floor next to the bed.A bed. I was in a bed. Not a mat on dirt. A bed with sheets that smelled like soap and a pillow under my head that was soft enough that my face sank into it.I tried to sit up and every part of me screamed at once. My ribs, my back, my shoulders, my arms. I made it halfway up before the pain dragged me back down and I lay there breathing hard and staring at the white ceiling and trying to remember how I'd gotten here.Maren's cottage. The doorstep. The grey-haired woman who said "let's get you inside."The door to the room opened and she came in carrying a bowl of broth that steamed. She looked th

Seraphina's POV By the second week I could stand. My legs shook when I got up and I had to hold the wall to get to the door but I could stand and that was enough to make me cry which I hated because crying was useless but my body did it anyway, standing there in the doorway of the little bedroom with my hand on the wall and tears running down my face because I was vertical and it felt like winning.Maren came around the corner and saw me standing and stopped and looked at me and her mouth twitched at one corner, not a smile exactly, but close."Look at you," she said. "On your feet.""Barely.""Barely counts." She came over and put her arm out and I took it and she walked me to the kitchen table step by slow step, her arm solid under my hand, and every time my legs wobbled she tightened her grip and kept moving without making a fuss about it.The first time I made it to the kitchen table she had a bowl of soup waiting and a piece of bread and a cup of water. I sat down and my legs we

Seraphina's POV"Since the first week." Her voice was quiet and steady. "The throwing up. The smell. The way you held your middle every time you slept, even when you were passed out cold those first two days. I've seen it before.""Why didn't you tell me?"She looked at me with those steady eyes and the lines around them deepened. "Because you needed to heal before you could carry one more thing, and this was one more thing, and I figured your body would tell you when you were ready to hear it.""The ginger tea.""Helps with the sickness in the early months. My mother taught me that.""The soft fabric you brought home from the market.""For wrapping. When the time comes.""The herbs you moved out of the kitchen. The eggs you started cooking outside.""Strong smells make it worse in the first few months. I remembered that from my own."I sat there on the edge of the bed and looked at this woman who had known for weeks and hadn't said a word and had just quietly moved through her house

Seraphina's POVShe looked at me sideways and said "I've been answering questions I didn't want to answer for thirty years, I'm good at it by now" and I almost laughed and the sound surprised me because I hadn't laughed in months and it came out small and rusty but it came out.I helped Maren in the garden every morning. She showed me how to check the tomatoes for worms by turning the leaves over and looking at the undersides, and how to tell when the squash was ready by pressing your thumbnail into the skin and seeing if it left a mark."If it dents, it's not ready," she said. "If the skin holds, you can pick it."I liked the garden. It was the one place my mind went quiet. My hands in the dirt and the sun on my back and the smell of the soil and the green tops of the carrots poking through and everything growing slow and steady and not needing anything from me except water and time.Maren taught me to bake bread one afternoon when the rain finally came and we couldn't work outside.