❝ Tell me losing everything is what saved you,
Tell me you finally tasted freedom.
Can you even imagine yourself in paradise?
Even the daughter of gods must know loneliness, must sometimes want nothing more than to be trapped in a hell of forevers...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Nan is her mother in miniature: thick blonde hair, warm pale skin, deep blue eyes. Lily pushes away her dislike of Elizabeth Grey and makes sure to tell her half-sister just how beautiful she is. She tells Nan how much she looks like Lizzie. She tells her that when they see each other again after her confinement — once Lizzie left the convent she had been forced into — she will surely be shocked at how much Nan has grown up.
She is telling Nan of the their father and how, when the babe is born, they will go visit his grave when Maggie brings her a letter. As Nan asks if she will get to play with Nora again, Lily breaks the seal and is immediately confused; she recognizes the writing, but never has she seen it with such a short tone.
As she reads, Lily feels as if she has forgotten her letters entirely because none of this makes sense.
I am in Burgundy with your sisters and niece is the first sentence which gives Lily pause. If her mother left, there must be a reason why. Yet, she feels a stab in her chest all the same because while her mother cared enough to take her sisters and Kathryn, she did not even tell her she would leave.
I did not feel safe in England. They would have taken Bella from me — sent her to Scotland — before arranging an outrageous match for Nora. Kathryn would have been ripped from my arms and thrust into your mother-in-law's care makes her breath catch and panic swells in her chest. She can't discount her mother's fears. Bella would have likely been sent to Scotland after she was churched and Henry would never allow Nora to marry the Dauphin - now King Charles VIII.
I have to fight for our family's throne. I can't allow an usurper to stay on it.
She does not remember screaming, but later Maggie will tell her she shrieked as if Death himself touched her. Lily drops to her knees, wailing as she tears at her gown, her hair, her face; she feels hands trying to contain her, dimly hears Mistress Granger shouting for assistance. The rush of fluid between her legs means nothing; even as the men carry her to her rooms, to her bed, even as she is stripped of her clothing, Lily cares nothing for birthing the child trying to fight its way from her womb. Mistress Granger forces some sort of dram past her lips; it makes her head heavy, makes her feel as if she is moving fog. Women hold her arms to the mattress as two women hold her knees wide so the midwife can rip her child from her body. Lily barely feels it, barely registers the indignant wails of the babe; as her head lolls back on the pillows.
"She left me," she slurs to the woman carding hair off of her damp forehead, the one who is going to be the babe's wet nurse, the one Lily thinks is called Alice.
"It is a boy, my lady," Alice tells her. "He shall need a name."
"She left me," she continues as her eyes begin to droop, nearly choking as another tonic is all but poured down her throat.
"Do you have a name for your son?" Aimee presses as the babe is given to Alice to suckle.
Mistress Granger keeps her well-and-truly drugged for nearly a week, as if her concoctions will make her forget her mother left, that her mother is going to wage war on them. It is only when she declares she can give her no more tonics that Lily learns the name she has given her son is Arthur.
