Wolf Omega: The Lykanos Chronicles 2

Chapter Four

Apollonia helped me back upstairs to my bed, while Cecco sought to fetch the midwife, who slept three blocks away. I was in too much pain to protest Apollonia's help, though I wanted to scream and damn her for betraying me. I held to her arm like a child, terrified of the searing pain as blood dripped on my feet with each step.

By the time Cecco arrived home with the midwife, a short and bawdy woman named Stefania, I didn't need to catch her sharpened expression through the dim candlelight to know something was wrong.

"Please," I begged her, though I couldn't articulate another word.

Blood continued to seep out between my legs, and with each drop, my certainty grew. An hour of Stephania's feeble instructions ended with the birth of a small boy delivered stillborn.

I begged them to let me hold and kiss him. I wanted to whisper words of love to wake him, but Stefania covered the dead infant and ordered Apollonia to remove him from the room.

From the hallway, I heard her scream and fall to the floor. Moments later, Apollonia returned to help clean me. Her face was flushed, and she wouldn't look at me.

Cecco had struck her; I was sure of it.

Silence lingered between us for another hour until dawn arrived, when my bleeding finally stopped, and the midwife could leave the house.

"Why?" I whimpered at the traitor, but Apollonia never responded to my plea. She would not explain why she had betrayed me. She wouldn't even look me in the eye.

Nor would Cecco, who waited two days before entering my room, though I had called to him again and again. Despite my hurt, I desperately wanted to see him. I wanted Cecco to hold me and comfort me as I wept. I wanted to grieve with him over our loss. But all I received were silent declines, delivered from him by the simple shake of Apollonia's head.

When he did arrive in my room, I had become a different person. The fragile tenderness of my wounds had hardened, and I bore nothing but venom for him, certain I could never forgive his cruelty. And as he sat down on the bed beside me, I wanted to spit at his face.

"Father Piero delivered the eulogy, and we buried Adelchi this morning," he said with a defeated, somber voice.

I struggled to understand what Cecco meant.

"The father will be around sometime tomorrow to tend to you—to hear your confession."

"Who has died?" I asked with a sharp shake of my head.

For the first time, Cecco looked me in the eye. He seemed confounded by my question.

"Adelchi," he said, "my son."

My mind suffered more at his answer than all the pain of childbirth, of the loss of the baby, or of Stefania's refusal to let me hold him.

"You named my boy?" I whispered in agony.

"I named my son!" Cecco roared at me.

His words, filled with such unexpected rage, startled me, and I became frightened of him.

"I named my son so he might return to God and not suffer eternity in Limbo, where you've condemned him to!"

I had never heard the word, 'Limbo,' but the way he spat it at me filled me with dread.

"What is that? What do you mean?" I pleaded.

Cecco didn't answer my questions, even when I repeated myself.

"Father Piero will come to the house to hear your confession," he answered without emotion, his change baffling me again.

"Confess?" I asked. "What have I to confess? Shouldn't he come to hear your confession? You and that miserable—"