The Stains of the Crown

Chapter Thirty

Trigger warnings: flashback-adjacent nightmare, suicidal ideation.

Smut Warning.

The air feels like ice. It's cold. Dark. Damp. The air smells sour, but familiar. And this lantern... I've seen it before. Somewhere. My brain is foggy. Was I drugged?

"Echodis," his voice croaks. I know that voice. I know I know that voice. But from where? Everything is so familiar. Why can't I remember?

"Who are you?" The man cackles from somewhere behind me. His eyes... I know those eyes.

"You don't recognize me? The man you paralyzed? The man whose baby lives in your womb?" Mazus. No, he couldn't be here. Or was I there? And how did I get there? Or how did he get here? Where the hell was I? What was going on?

"What do you want?" He grins up at me. That horrible, awful grin that sends chills down my spine. He stands, walking towards me.

"An heir," he says before dropping his grin. His face sets in this awful glare that makes my heart stop. "My heir." He cuts my stomach open with a knife. I gasp, the pain forcing the air from my lungs. His hands plunge into the gaping wound, forcing screams from my lips.

I wake up screaming. I frantically pull my shirt up, looking for the wound. I take a shaky, heaving breath when I don't find it.

"Echo, baby, are you okay?" I practically jump out of my skin, turning to see Jovi rubbing at her eyes. I want to speak, but my stomach twists, forcing me to bolt to the bathroom. She follows me in. When I finish, she goes to grab my hand. I can't help but flinch back. "Echo, what happened?" she asks, unable to hide the heartbroken look in her eyes.

"I can't have this baby. He's going to take it."

"Who?" I know she's tired; I can hear it in her voice. But how could she not know?

"Mazus! He's going to take this baby and turn it into him! I should've gotten rid of it!" She takes a deep breath, playing with the hair at the base of her head. She doesn't know what to say. She's thinking, but clearly there's nothing that she could say, nothing that would help either of us. That dream, it was a bomb, and I'd just dropped it.

"Sweetheart," Finley says, crouching down next to me, "can you come sit in the bed with me and tell us what happened?" I take a shaky breath. I didn't want to explain myself. I didn't want them to look at me the way I know they would, or try to comfort me, and I definitely couldn't handle them acting like it's all in my head.

But still, I nod. Finley helps me to my feet. She leads me back to the room. I climb into the bed, shivers wracking my body. I pull the blanket over my legs, even though I wasn't sure if I was shivering from the cold, or the fear creeping up my spine.

"What happened?" she asks softly. Stupid, pitying looks, from all of them. I take a shaky breath, trying to stop the tears that force their way from my eyes.

"I was back in the cell, and Mazus was there." I draw a pattern on my wrist, trying to ignore the way my hands shake. "My brain was foggy, but now that I'm awake, I know it was the cell. I didn't know it was a dream." I wrap my arms around my stomach, as if to protect it, as if I could stop feeling what happened in my dream. "It didn't feel like a dream. It felt real." A deep breath. "He said he wanted his heir, and his hands were in my stomach trying to pull the baby out." My hands tremble as I wipe at my tears.

"So you think he's going to get the baby?" I nod, wrapping my arms even tighter around my belly. It was getting big. Ammae had told me that the baby was growing faster than normal, faster than it should be, but Dane had told me that I had, too. I'd been trying not to worry too much about that. Now, though, it was weighing on my mind. I was running low on time to decide... anything.