Chapter 2

Declan stood over Liam’s small, still form in the sterile hospital room, his face a mask of confusion and nascent anger. "He’s… gone?" he mumbled, looking at me. Cassie was quick to reinforce her narrative. "It was her, Declan. Her backward ways. She didn’t trust modern medicine. She wanted him to suffer with her folk magic." "You," Declan snarled, his gaze focusing on me with sudden, chilling clarity. "You did this. Your mountain filth. It killed him." "No, Declan!" I cried, fresh tears streaming down my face. "It was because he didn't get the medicine! The doctors said—" "Doctors don't understand your kind of interference," Cassie cut in smoothly, placing a comforting hand on Declan’s arm. "You brought this on him, Elara. Your stubbornness. Your refusal to adapt." Declan seized on her words. "You always resisted. Always clung to those… those primitive superstitions. You thought your ways were better than real doctors, didn't you? You wanted to prove something." His voice rose, each word a blow. "This is what happens. This is your fault. You thought you knew better." He was twisting everything, blaming me for the very thing I fought for – proper care for Liam. He was making my love for my son, my heritage, into a weapon against me. "He was my son!" I sobbed. "I loved him!" "If you loved him," Declan spat, his eyes blazing, "you would have let proper science help him. Not your… your dirt and leaves." It was a grotesque distortion of the truth, a complete denial of his own catastrophic decision.

While I drowned in a grief so vast it threatened to swallow me whole, Declan turned his attention to Cassie. He gently guided her to a chair, his touch tender. "You mustn’t upset yourself, Cassie," he murmured, his voice suddenly soft. "The baby. Our baby. We need to protect our child." He stroked her hair, his expression full of concern for her and their unborn child, even as my own child lay dead because of his actions. The contrast was a fresh stab of pain. My son was gone, and Declan’s only thought was for the woman who had orchestrated this horror, and the child she carried. He ordered tea for Cassie, fussed over her comfort, ensuring she wasn’t "stressed." I was invisible, my grief a nuisance, an uncomfortable reminder of the tragedy he refused to acknowledge as his own doing. The world had tilted, and I was a pariah in my own suffering, while the architect of my pain was coddled and cared for.

I couldn’t leave Liam there, in that cold room. With a strength I didn’t know I possessed, I arranged for his small body to be taken, to be prepared for a journey back to our mountains, to be buried with our people. Grana was shattered, a frail, weeping shadow of herself. The seven-year agreement with Matilda was nearing its end. My plasma donations had continued, even through this. I found Matilda in her study, the ledgers of the Thorne empire spread before her. "Matilda," I said, my voice flat, devoid of emotion. "Liam is gone. I will take him home." She looked up, her face etched with a sorrow that seemed genuine, yet distant. "Elara, I… I am so sorry." "The agreement," I continued, "it’s fulfilled. My service here is done." I was pregnant. A tiny, new life, conceived with Declan in a rare moment of his lucidity, a moment before Cassie’s poison had fully taken root again. A moment I now wish had never happened. "I am leaving. And I will be ending this pregnancy. I cannot carry his child. Not after this." Matilda’s eyes widened. "Elara, no. The child… It’s innocent." "Innocence died with Liam," I said. "I am done."

The hospital room replayed in my mind, a constant, agonizing loop. Liam’s small, hot hand in mine. His labored breathing. My desperate pleas to Declan to see the doctors. "He needs the medicine! Please!" Declan’s face, hard and unyielding, parroting Cassie’s cruel words. "No. Her folk remedies are fighting it. We wait." The monitor’s steady beep slowed, faltered. The frantic rush of nurses, their grim faces. The final, terrible silence. I remembered trying to push past Declan, to scream at the doctors to do something, anything, but his hands, strong and unthinking, had held me back. "Stay away from him with your superstitions!" he’d roared. I was forced to watch, helpless, as my son slipped away, a victim of ignorance and malice.

While I made arrangements for Liam, whispers followed me through the Thorne mansion. Two maids, their voices low, not realizing I could hear. "That poor woman. And her boy…" "And the old one, her grandmother. Miss Lowell has her weaving day and night." "Healing blankets, she calls them. For her and her baby. Says the mountain woman’s hands have a special energy." My blood ran cold. Grana. Her eyesight was failing, her hands gnarled with age. "But the old woman can barely see. I saw her weeping over the loom, her fingers bleeding." "Miss Lowell doesn’t care. Says it’s good for her soul. Penance, or some such nonsense." Cassie wasn’t just cruel; she was systematically torturing my grandmother, under the guise of some twisted spiritual need. And Declan, in his fog, allowed it. He probably even believed it was for Cassie’s good.

I found Grana in a small, cold utility room off the main kitchen, a place they sometimes used for storage. The loom was there, a complex pattern half-finished, the threads stained crimson in places. Grana wasn’t there. "Grana?" I called, panic rising. A terrified kitchen maid pointed towards an old outbuilding, one used for storing garden tools, unheated, its windows broken. "Mr. Thorne… he… he locked her in there last night," the maid stammered. "Miss Lowell said… said the old woman was putting hexes on her baby. Mr. Thorne got angry." A paranoid Declan, fed lies by Cassie. I ran, my heart pounding with a new dread. The door was bolted from the outside. I fumbled with the rusty latch, my fingers clumsy. Inside, it was freezing. Grana lay on the cold, damp earth floor, curled into a small ball. She was so still. "Grana!" I knelt beside her, shaking her gently. Her skin was like ice. Her eyes were closed, a faint, bluish tinge to her lips. She was gone. Perished in the biting winter cold, locked away like an animal. On the rough wooden wall beside her, she had scratched a message with a shard of pottery, her last act. "Liam… home… mountain…" My grief was a raw, physical force, tearing through me.