by C F Rabbiosi
“Kassien, you should hold him one last time,” Persephone’s voice cuts through my reverie.
“He could still—” I swallow hard, and the reality of her words crush me into oblivion. Gerakon doesn’t dare look at me as he continues to work, but I realize it’s a show. He’s done all he can, but my baby was never destined to live, born many months before he was ready. I long to burst out of my skin and tear this whole place down around me.
Instead, I walk slowly to my small boy and place a hand on his still chest.
31
Calypso
A nauseating crack resounds within my pelvis as the baby relentlessly pushes through. My lower body screams with shattering pain, and my mouth freezes open, unable to utter a single sound.
“The infant is stuck!” I hear the echoing of a voice as black dots swarm my vision. “We have to extract now!”
“Should we run the anesthesia?” another voice resounds.
“We either risk it or cut her open right now…”
“Run it,” I say hoarsely. They don’t hesitate and I’m relieved, not having the strength to argue. “Goodnight,” I whisper, strength building once more at the prospect of finally being free of this torture.
“Did you do it?” The blinding pain dulls, and I close one eye to peep at them with the other. “Are my veins rotting away?”
“It is done,” says Efaelty. The liquid-like arms descend over my belly without a sound, and I flinch, or my mind sends the signal to flinch, but I stay perfectly still.
“I’m going to be awake?”
“Of course,” says Vaerynn.
What a horrifying relief. I don’t want to be asleep to possibly never wake up, I want to be within every frightening moment even if it’s up until my last.
Before I can fully realize my fear of being cut open, a feeling of light pressure slides across my pelvic region and Efaelty dips her hands inside to pull out the large bundle that I’ve come to love in the last few months. My stomach recoils and Efaelty takes the fluid-covered infant to wash off in a basin. “Is he all right?” I ask as Vaerynn sets the micro healers to do their flawless work on my incision.
“The child is,” she rubs his chest and a robust cry bursts through the room, “well!”
I sob with joy. Just like that? After what Scarlet went through I praise the heavens and tell her, I made it. I wish you could be here now, my friend. We made it! I can move again, and I realize Vaerynn’s at my side, inputting new controls to cease the nerve paralyzing agent. “Can I hold him?” I ask. All the reading I did on how to care for an infant has fled me, but the one thing I do remember is that he needs to feel my skin. And my heart longs to feel his.
“Vaerynn,” comes Gerakon’s voice, and she quickly goes to him. His brows furrow and his composure wavers. Oh no. Poor, poor Kassien.
“Rise,” says Efaelty, and my bed moves into a sitting position. The wiggly crying baby passes into my arms, and I get lost in his perfect features. He turns his head toward me, his mouth open wide. Its utter cuteness puts a happy tickle in my soul.
“He wants to nurse.” My mother appears in the doorway, and that’s when the tears flow endlessly. “He’s so beautiful,” she says, wiping her eyes to embrace us.
“I can’t believe my joy right now! Just to hold him, it’s the best thing I’ve ever felt,” I caress his soft, light hair. I didn’t expect this! Yes, I was fascinated by him, loved the way he felt against my palm when he moved around in his liquid home, but this. I could live here forever.
“Here.” Momma positions him in my arms against my breast. “Pinch the nipple and put the whole thing in his mouth. The whole thing. Shove it right in.”
I would laugh, but I’m entirely too focused on the moment. She lifts a thin blanket over us. I awkwardly do what she says, sure I’m going to fail, but his full lips latch tight and his crying turns into relieved whimpers. His cheek flutters, happily suckling. “Let him eat all he wants, and encourage him to,” says Momma. “He’ll likely fall asleep, that’s okay.”
Vaerynn and Efaelty whisper together in the corner, and Gerakon departs. Efaelty’s face pales, and she brings a hand to her chest. Her troubled gaze falls on the bundle within my arms. I can’t ask. I can’t have Kassien’s torment confirmed, not now.
“Calypso,” says Vaerynn, “I must tell you something.”
~Kassien~
Gerakon’s hand warms my shoulder as I mourn. My insides have collapsed and I’m nothing but a hollow shell. The strongest being in the world and I’m too weak to even fall to the floor. “My child.” The words are heavy and break as my chest is racked with pain. “I could not save you, precious one, but know that I would lay down my life for you this moment.” His skin stays warm under my hand, and I don’t know if I can ever move it away for fear of him growing cold. “If only I could.” I know now that we were meant to die, just as Calypso once said. Our world had come to its last, and hanging on as long as we did, fighting, was a fine effort. It’s over now. What is left for me to live for?
Calypso and her people find joy in everything. They use their voices to sing, to laugh, to pretend they’re someone else, and their imaginations to pretend they’re in faraway places. I was bred to be huge, to be skilled in fighting, and to survive, but for what?
This is the one thing I wanted.
“I should have told you,” Gerakon says, and the fear shaking his voice makes me turn, my hand slipping away from my baby forever.
“Told me what?” I stand, his haunting visage prickling the hairs at the back of my neck.
“They wanted me to lie to you so you’d follow in line. So you’d mate Scarlet and leave Calypso to Brekter.” He steps back, and only then do I realize I’ve rushed into his face.
Anger ripples through me, and the need to snap his neck is only outweighed by my desire to hear his truth out loud. “Calypso’s child?”
“Is yours.”
I slam my fist through the air, stopping a half inch from his face. He doesn’t so much as blink. “Why would you do this?”
“Drakon told me to lie. He wanted Calypso to be Brekter’s to torture you. He knows she is your weakness.”
“Knew she is my weakness,” I correct with a sneer, enjoying even more the way Calypso splattered him all over the wall.
“I betrayed you once more, brother. I understand if you must take my life.” He kneels and bows his head. “Your son has been born healthy, strong,” he offers.
I gaze upon the sad little body of my son, still being artificially heated and oxygenated, trapped within a body that will never grow, never run, and with a heart that will never love. I should be overjoyed by the news of another, yet how can I betray this child that I’ve loved every moment of his existence? Am I just to move on now without a care? “I—”
“Kassien?”
From behind me comes a voice, a sound that vibrates through my surface and holds my aching soul so tight the pain ceases.
Calypso’s face shines with tears and uncertainty as she edges toward me. I swallow every pain, every fear, and take her into my arms. I can’t form a single word, and neither can she. “This is our life now,” she says. “Be with me. Live this beautiful life with me.” I set her down and she sucks in through her teeth, her balance faltering. She takes my hand.
As we move from the room, Gerakon bounds to his feet and looks strangely toward the incubator.
* * *
Efaelty and Vaerynn bow their heads and leave us to be alone. Calypso takes her child in her arms and rocks him lovingly, coming toward me, but I take an involuntary step backward.
Her satin brows scrunch together. “Kassien?”
“My—” I choke on the word and force myself to stay calm. I don’t understand what’s happening to me. “My child just—”
“Oh, of course. I’m sorry.” She takes him away, and her mother gives her a reassuring nod.
“Hold him, Kassien,” Efaelty says from the doorway. “You must love this one the way yo
u did the other.”
I know, you damn female, but I can’t! Calypso holds him out to me and I want to take him, to get to know this new child, but a wall has formed. Only minutes ago, I thought him to be my enemy’s, and it’s suffocating even to look upon him, so I turn away and storm out.
The cry is what stops me at the end of the corridor. I place a palm against the wall and listen to the sound. His demanding cry beckons me back, forcing me to push my own turmoil down and be the father he deserves. I can at least hold him so he knows who I am.
The women stand to attention when I step through the entrance of the med room. “Give him to me,” I say, feeling stone encase my heart.
Calypso brings him to me, and though he’s bigger and more active than the other, I still fear hurting him. He rests in my arms, but I still can’t look him in the face. He’s precious silk against my skin, and sweet utterances make their way to my ears and soften my resolve. I don’t mean to, but I meet his eyes, so wide and bright, and I’m captivated.
I bring him close and break, weeping into his chest.
32
Calypso
The waves crash onto the shore and white foam streams up to the tips of my toes. I lay back in the warm sand and stretch my arms above my head. White clouds shift and blend above me, and I think of all the Koridons out there in space. They haven’t come for me yet for killing their high-ranking brethren, but Kassien says they will. He lifts Kaden into the air and spins him in circles, nearly stepping on Jane as she scurries out of the way.
“Calypso,” he says over our son’s giddy laughter. “You will be all wet for the ceremony.” I sit up and bid farewell to the deep blue to take my seat. In the last year, my mother cultivated a garden that produced some good vegetables and all these sweet smelling lilies that decorate the chairs and aisle. She looks beautiful sitting in the other row, her auburn hair twisted into ornate braids and tied up, her striking royal blue gown shining in the sunlight.
“Is it time yet?” I ask Kassien as he sits next to me. Blond Alice’s baby crawls across the ground to play with Kaden, and I bask in a life I never thought possible. Arek grabs her as she walks by and playfully pulls her into his lap, telling her that’s her newly assigned seat.
I take a moment to think of Mary-Shelly, who disappeared the day I had my son.
“There she is!” says Julianne, one of the human servants that lives free now. Vaerynn holds a bouquet of fresh cut flowers and two more ex-servants play a wedding march on their violins. The Koridon female is a vision: golden shadow sparkling on her face and wrapped in a white lacy gown just like the one I envisioned Bella wearing in one of my favorite old vampire books. She approaches the anxiously awaiting Finn, and though he’s all human, he has her locked down as hard as any Koridon male—as evidenced by the very human wedding taking place instead of the horrid tradition of Vaerynn’s kind.
She places her arms around his neck. Her protruding belly presses into his and he kisses her as Gerakon reads from his notes in a hilariously monotone voice. “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today…”
Kassien gives Gerakon a teasing smirk and he stumbles over the next line. They have certainly become close again after what Gerakon did for him. Infusing his own blood for a period of weeks, never sleeping, never leaving the med room, he nearly wasted away from starvation and exhaustion.
Efaelty walks down the aisle with that panther grace I’ve always admired and hands Kassien his little boy. Kassien’s face lights up as Scardrek happily grabs him around the neck, wearing a pristine black tux that my mother made. Something catches my eye on the shore by the cliffs. A familiar desire tugs at me as I see him and my heart races. I go numb with fear but when I blink, the figure’s gone. “Don’t you look handsome,” I whisper, pulling my attention back and kiss Scardrek’s cheek. “Momma!” he says too loudly and giggles. He reminds me so much of his mother.
Everything is new, everything is unknown, but we’re all on the same page, working together for the world we have always dreamed of. As I watch my eldest son run along the shore with his smaller brother, being careful not to pass him, I don’t know what the future will throw at us, but as my amazing mate puts an arm around my shoulders and holds me tight, I’m not afraid.
I’m ready for whatever I must face.
End Book 2
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