Page 122 of Obsidian Throne

“Did you ever find out if you were…” She looked significantly at my stomach, and it dawned on me.

How badly I had wanted to hold on to this dream. How saying the words out loud effectively killed the last part of me that saw a future with babies and laughter and my and Mila’s children growing up together.

With Evander and I being whole again.

Maybe it didn’t make any sense to mourn something you never had, but here I was, barely forcing the words out.

“I did,” I said quietly. “There’s no baby. Just a mountain of stress, as it turns out.”

Her brown eyes carefully scrutinized mine, and she didn’t say any of the things that would have been difficult for me to hear. In fact, she didn’t get a chance to say anything at all before a different voice sounded behind us.

“You thought there was a baby, and you didn’t think to tell me?” Evander’s low voice echoed in the cavernous room, coated with an emotion I wasn’t sure I had ever heard from him before.

Mila abruptly realized she needed to be somewhere at that very moment and left the room without so much as a backward glance.

Reluctantly, I got to my feet, turning slowly to face my husband. His expression was...shattered. Maybe like me, he realized just how far we had come from when we had lain in our bed with his hand on my abdomen, talking about the children we would have one day.

My chest tightened, each breath coming in more strained than the last. Still, I kept my features neutral and my tone even, trying to hide the defeat that was steadily creeping its way into my soul.

“Let’s not pretend we have the kind of relationship where we tell each other everything, Evander,” I said in a low tone.

His features went distant, hardening into a version of his usual mask.

“So because I kept something from you, you would have, what, taken our child to Lochlann and never told me?” He huffed out a disbelieving breath.

“Of course not.” I didn’t bother to hide the offense in my tone. “I would have told you when and if it became relevant, which is, by the way, more courtesy than you have shown me. But there’s really nothing to concern yourself with, because there is no baby.”

And I...I had thought that saying the words out loud to Mila were the final straw, but I could see now this was infinitely worse. A solid lump formed in my throat, but I forced myself to speak past it.

“There never was,” I continued. “So, that’s a relief, right?”

Evander held my gaze for a single, stuttering heartbeat. “Yes. A relief,” he said coldly.

Holding myself together with the last vestiges of my self-control, I nodded to Evander and walked calmly from the room.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

EVANDER

Istood stunned in the empty tearoom after Rowan walked out.

A relief.

It should have been, perhaps.

But all I could see was my wife lying in our bed while I traced circles on her flat stomach and wondered if it would ever grow round with something that was entirely ours.

All I could hear was her telling me she wanted our children one day, and how it had been enough to steal my breath.

And now.

Now we were here, at a point where she wouldn’t even tell me that was a possibility. What the hell had happened to us?

Even as I asked the question, I knew.

Ihad happened to us.

I had pushed her so far that she went from sleeping in my arms every night to saying it was a relief we didn’t have a child to worry about.