The morning sun streamed through the tall, arched windows of the solarium, painting stripes of warm gold across the Persian rug. It was a cheerful room, the only pocket of defiance in the otherwise gothic gloom of Crowe Manor. Zalie shifted the tiny, wide awake bundle in her arms, her son's breath a feather-light puff against her neck. He smelled of milk and clean linen, a scent so fundamentally good that it felt like she was recharged just by holding him in her arms.
Across from her, nursing a cup of what was surely an offensively strong black coffee, sat the master of the manor himself. Darius Crowe.
He lowered the newspaper he was pretending to read, his dark eyes – the same eyes she had once knew to belong only to a villain – fixed on her. "The director's letter was on the breakfast tray. He's practically begging."
Zalie didn't look up from their son's perfect, miniature face. "It's a good part. That is the kind of role that doesn't come around often."
"You've just had a child." It wasn't an accusation, just a flat statement of fact, delivered with his usual lack of inflection. It was, she'd learned, his version of expressing concern.
"Mothers act. It's been done before," she countered, her voice light. "Besides, it's only rehearsals for the first month. Nothing strenuous. Also, you forget that this is the only lead we have to find the witch."
"You call twelve-hour days of weeping on command 'nothing strenuous'? The witch can wait. It's not like I am dying tomorrow, Zarlina." He folded the newspaper with a crisp snap and placed it on the table beside him. "The answer is no."
Zalie's head snapped up, her eyes flashing. "You don't get to answer for me. It's my career, and I choose how I use it."
"It's my son you'll be leaving in the care of a rotating staff of strangers," he shot back, his voice still quiet but with an edge of cold steel. "He needs his mother."
"He has a father, doesn't he?" she retorted, a familiar thrill running through her at the challenge. "Or does your involvement end at brooding over the newspapers next to us every morning and making unilateral decisions for my life?"
A muscle twitched in his jaw. She was goading him, and they both knew it. This strange, barbed dance of theirs was as much a part of their morning routine, just like the bitter coffee he drank. He stood up and walked to the window, his tall frame throwing a dark silhouette against the bright glass.
"This is not a discussion about my parenting," he said, his back to her. "This is about your… impulsiveness. You throw yourself into things without thinking of the consequences. We're not even sure if the lead was right. I'll make a call to Mother. If you won't listen to me, perhaps Mother will knock some sense into you."
A short, sharp laugh escaped her lips. "Running to your mother, Darius? Ugh, how you wound me. I thought we were both adults. I thought the fearsome master of Crowe Manor was above that." She rocked the child in her arms, bouncing her knee up and down. "She can try. But we both know this is the best lead we have. Unless you have a better plan for how to stop the witch from killing you?"
"Amidst working, you expect to find more leads when there have been none for so many years? I would rather we delegate it to someone else."
"I have to fulfill my terms of the contract before I leave, and if I can do it while doing what I love, then I am content. You should try doing what you love sometime. It's more fun than always scowling at everyone and everything." She scrunched her brows down at the baby in her arms, "Your daddy likes to do this." He babbled excitedly in her arms.
He turned, and for a moment, the sunlight caught in his dark hair, and the hard lines of his face seemed to soften. He looked at her, then at the baby who was blowing saliva bubbles in her arms, and a flicker of something unreadable crossed his features.
He sighed, "My life was remarkably uncomplicated before you decided to come knocking on my door."
Zalie smiled, a genuine smile that reached her eyes. She stood and padded to him, closing the space between them until only a few feet remained. The baby reached out for his father, making a soft cooing sound.
"Don't lie," she leaned closer, whispering just for him, the scent of his coffee mingling with the sweet smell of the baby. "You'd be bored to death without me."
He watched her, his expression a carefully curated mask of indifference. But she could see the truth in the depths of his dark eyes. He exhaled, a slow, resigned sigh that was as close to a confession as he would ever get.
"…Unfortunately," he murmured, his gaze dropping to their son, "I suspect you're right."
A comfortable silence settled between them, a small, private truce. In that moment, with the sun on her face and her son in her arms, and the reluctant, complicated man before her, it almost felt normal. It almost felt right.
But as he reached out a hesitant hand, his long, elegant fingers gently tracing the curve of the baby's cheek, the spell broke.
Zalie smiled, and looked from his hand, to his face, to the gothic splendor of the room around them. A sharp, painful pang of regret hit her. This, right here, felt like a life she could want, a life she could almost reach out and touch. But she couldn't. She had to leave. Her happy ever after, the one she fought for, the one she would bleed for, did not have the Crowe family in it. They were a means to an end; a dangerous necessity before she and her son could truly be free. She had to remember that. She had to hold onto it, or she would lose herself in the comfortable lie of this moment.
Charles, that bastard, was the reason everything started in the first place. She wished he was in this world so she could smack him.
And as she thought, a single question washed over her, as it did every so often, weighing her down with its weight.
How in the world did I get to this point?