For all of them, she pretended.
Only when she was alone, in the darkest hours of the night, did she unleash the hurt, curling in on herself. Soaking the pillow with tears. Muffling her sobs with a quilt. Every time it tore me apart, filled me fury, and sent me in pursuit of my uncle, where I begged, pleaded, and raged that he allow me to go back.
The answer was always the same.
* * *
Childbirth was not easy for her. Two days of pain, Sabine and Josette’s eyes filled with the fear that they would lose her, the marks on my fingers tarnishing and blackening at the tips as she labored and bled.
Then our son was born.
From the lands of endless summer, I watched the arrival of this small half-blood boy who would never know me, but whom I already loved above all things. So caught up was I in examining his perfect little features, that at first I didn’t feel the flux of power as a portal formed between our two worlds. Noticed only when the room filled with a warm glow and my uncle stepped into the room.
Cécile lost her mind, throwing herself from the blood soaked bed and crawling between him and our child. “You cannot have him, too,” she screamed. “You cannot take him.”
He bent down to say something in her ear; then, ignoring her pleas, his insubstantial form passed through her so that he could bend over the wailing infant and whisper a name in his ear. A command, binding him from using his magic before he ever knew he had it.
Then he was gone, leaving Cécile to clutch our son to her chest, all the anger, pain, and fear she’d pent up over the months unleashing in a torrent.
I tore into his court, my fury splintering into countless nasty creatures that clawed and bit, scattering all those present until my uncle’s creations rose to battle with them. Monsters made of fear and thought multiplying and attacking. We stood in the center of a war of nightmares, and in countless worlds, the seas rose high and the winds raged.
And finally, his temper snapped.
“You do not belong there,” he snarled, a storm of wind and heat, thunder and lightning punctuating his words. Claws caught me by the throat and hurled me to the ground, defeated.
“You could have told her that I love her,” I said into the dirt. “You could have told her that I can see her. Hear her.”
A scaled foot tipped with bloody claws dug into the ground next to my face. “And what would knowing do for her?” he said, shape blurring and shifting into a human form. “How well would she live her life knowing you were constantly looking over her shoulder?”
“It might be some small comfort.”
“For her? Or for you?”
* * *
They were wise words. Not that I listened, the stubbornness that was my best and worst ally pushing me back to my portal to watch the life I longed for. The life that should’ve been mine.
Cécile, by contrast, lived.
With Sabine and our son, who’d eventually informed her his name was Alexandre, in tow, she moved back to Trianon, where she met with the banker, Bouchard, about taking the reins of the businesses she’d inherited from Anushka, the foremost of which was the Trianon Opera House. She took control of it with characteristic ferocity, ruthlessly firing those who stood in the way of her vision, while hiring the best and brightest stars, who she paid exorbitantly, or in her words, “Precisely what they’re worth.”
It took several months of work to repair the damage done to the opera house while it had housed refugees, and I smiled every time she muttered, “It’s your cursed gold that’s paying to fix this, Tristan.”
And on opening night, she took to the stage in front of a sold out crowd. I opened a portal in Bouchard’s box, watching over his shoulder as she sang her heart out.
She did not stop there, investing in opportunities with a keen eye for business that I wouldn’t have expected from her. For Sabine, she provided the funds for a dress shop, and my coconspirator swiftly became the most in demand designer in Trianon, her creations worn by nobility and songstresses alike. After much argument, she convinced Chris to accept the gold needed to import stock from the continent, and he spent his days surrounded by horses and Souris’s growing number of progeny.
When all was settled as she wanted it, Cécile toured the continent, singing on every great stage and becoming as famous for her voice as she was for her role in the events that had taken place on the Isle, which had become legendary throughout the known world. And with her, she always brought our son, raining affection on him even as she castigated him for all the less desirable traits he’d inherited from me.
He was a clever boy, dark-haired and slight, and constantly getting into trouble. As he grew older, he took liberal advantage of his fame and good looks, and kissed half the girls in Trianon before Aiden and Zoé’s daughter took a liking to him, thus ensuring he never looked twice at another girl ever again.