“I did not give it to her,” Micah hissed. “Sara came by it on her own.”
“It’s true,” Sadie interjected. Was everyone in the hall? “I went with her to the apothecary.” Silence followed, and I hoped the fighting was over. Was I ever wrong.
“Still,” Dad grumbled, “you should have disposed of it. To leave Sara in harm’s way—”
“I did no such thing!” Micah roared. “Sara is my wife!”
“What do you know of marriage?” Dad sneered.
“I know that I would not abandon my family in order to save myself,” Micah countered.
“Hey,” I croaked. The bed curtains were flung aside, and I saw that they were in the room with me, not out in the hall. And yes, everyone was there. Awesome. “I need Micah,” I said, tucking the blankets under my arms. They all nodded, but no one moved. “Alone.”
“Just call if you need us,” Mom said as she brushed a tendril of sweat-soaked hair from my brow. Ignoring glares from both Dad and Max, Micah sat on the bed beside me. Once the rest had filed out and the door clicked shut, Micah took my hands.
“How do you feel?”
“Terrible.” My shoulder throbbed, my eyes were sore, and my guts felt like they’d been ripped out, rearranged, and put back in the wrong places. “And pretty dumb.”
“The silverkin summoned me as soon as you fainted,” Micah said, his voice hardly more than a whisper. “You were shaking, lying in a pool of blood… there was so much. At first, I thought you’d been run through.” He concentrated on my hands, tracing intricate patterns across my knuckles. “Sara, why did you do such a thing?”
“I…” I sighed. “I was scared.”
“Why didn’t you just come to me?” he asked. “Sara, you can come to me for anything.”
“I know.” I tried to sit up, but between the pain in my shoulder and the pain in my gut I didn’t get very far. “I freaked. I just freaked. And I didn’t know that Queen’s Lace would make me sick. I just…I don’t know. I guess didn’t really think about what would happen after I drank it, just that I needed to drink it.”
“Love, you could have died.” He turned to me then, and I saw his silver eyes were swollen and red. “Do you really prefer death to bearing my child?”
“No,” was all I got out before hysterics took me. I bawled so hard I retched, forcing poor, heartbroken Micah to summon the silverkin for fresh clothing for him and linens for me. Then Micah exchanged the fouled blankets for fresh ones, washed my tear-and vomit-streaked face, and dressed me in one of his old, soft shirts.
Micah, whom I’d just hurt even more than I’d hurt myself.
“It’s not that I don’t want children, someday,” I rasped as he dabbed at my neck. Yes, I’d gotten puke on my neck, too. “It’s just…Micah, my family pretty much sucks.” His eyes flicked toward mine but he said nothing, so I went on. “I mean, my brother’s a jerk. My sister’s a wimp. And my dad…my dad is not the man I remember.”
Micah moved to sit behind me and started brushing my hair. I am going to burn in hell for all the ways I’ve hurt this wonderful man. “And we talked about no babies, at least not just yet, and I bought the tincture but I never took it, and then you said that thing about what we haven’t done since we were married,” I babbled, becoming hysterical again and nearly hyperventilating. “And I remembered that I never took it and then you said that and I figured if I took it all at once we’d be good.” I stopped for breath. “For a while.”
“You mean to tell me,” Micah murmured as he placed his warm hands on my shoulders, “that you were not with child?”
“No. I don’t think so.” I mentally counted days. “Definitely not.”
“And, because I wanted to lay with my wife, you drank an entire bottle of poison to keep from getting with child? All because your family is somewhat argumentative?”
“Somewhat argumentative” might have been the nicest term ever used to describe the Corbeaus. “Um. Yeah.” He leaned his forehead against the back of my head, and made an exasperated noise that might have been a laugh.
“Wait,” I said, suddenly understanding his reddened eyes. “You thought I was trying to get rid of our baby?”
“Queen’s Lace is an abortifacient,” Micah replied.
“I thought it kept you from getting pregnant,” I mumbled. If at all possible, I felt even more foolish, the implications of my actions spiraling out before me. “Micah, I would never do that. If I was pregnant, you’d have your heir. No going back then.” I tried to turn around, but yelped in pain instead. Micah gently rearranged us so we were lying on our sides, facing each other.