Ten hours earlier...
Nevan
I made it to the garden before my legs gave out.
I found a stone bench beneath the oak trees. The same garden where I'd kissed Rosamund days ago and sat down.
The result was negative.
She wasn't pregnant. There was no child. The possibility I had carried inside my chest since the physician's examination, the terrifying, miraculous possibility that had kept me awake at Wellspring and driven me back to Crestmere through the night, had been nothing—a false alarm. A misread set of symptoms, and Rosamund had delivered the news with so much coldness that I even felt the chill.
You don't need to worry.
As though a child was something to worry about. As though the thought of a life growing inside her, our life, something made from the collision of two people, was an inconvenience she was relieved to discard.
I pressed both hands over my face and bent forward until my elbows touched my knees.
