The Poisoned Throne

Chapter 29

Aurora

Aurora’s pregnancy had at first pleased her. Her goal in all things, after all, was to be good at it. In order to be a good wife, you had to birth children. It was very simple.

But then the morning sicknesses began, and the changes in her body arrived, and she began eating more.

“I feel so bloated,” she complained to her handmaiden.

Alison smiled and looked up from the candle she had just lit for Aurora. “You’re pregnant,” she said. “You carry a life within you. That is not something you can go through unchanged.”

Unchanged. That was what she wished she could be. To stay the way she was now, at her prime age. To dance. She could not do that if her hips were wide and her body grown fat. But carrying a child changes you, she thought. You knew this.

She had known what her fate was every since her betrothal had been settled, and yet she did not realized until that moment. This child that grew within her would destroy her. It would take all her chances at fulfilling her dreams and bring them crashing to the ground. How could she love something that took all of that from her? She already hated her husband for it. She could not be a mother to the child that robbed her of her future.

“Sometimes I wish I had never conceived,” she admitted, in a whisper. “Of course, that’s not possible.”

Alison’s face paled and she lowered her gaze as she moved on to the next candlestick.

Aurora narrowed her eyes. “It is impossible, is it not?”

Alison’s gaze flickered up to Aurora’s but quickly averted itself again. “Yes, of course, my lady,” she muttered. “And even if it were possible, it would be a sin.”

“Even if it were possible?” Aurora lifted herself so that she was kneeling on the bed, her nightshift spread around her body in a circle. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Alison sighed and blew out the flame on the matchstick before coming to sit with Aurora on the bed. “Please, do not laugh,” she said.

Aurora took her hand. “Why would I laugh?”

“Because that’s what people always do,” she said. “Laugh or burn us.”

Aurora’s mouth fell open in realization. “You’re a…”

“Witch, yes,” Alison said. “Well, my mother is.”

“But it’s been centuries since the last witch burned.”

She nodded. “We learned our lesson, you might say,” she said. “In any case, my mother has a method… well, it’s very dangerous, but it does lead to a miscarriage.”

Aurora could not help but feel hope. If I miscarry, who can blame me? she thought, even if she knew that her husband would not care if it was her choice or not. “How do you do it?”

“Aurora, even though the child has not been born yet, it’s still murder.”

“You do not approve?”

Alison nodded. “If it’s for the right reasons,” she said. “But you were not raped, and you are married. Your child would have a good, secure life if it is born - unlike most of the children we… take care of.”

“But would it still be a good, secure life if its mother cannot love it?” Aurora asked. “Because I don’t think I could. I honestly do not think I could.”

“You’re a highborn lady,” Alison said. “You have wet-nurses that can love your children for you.”

“But I don’t want that.” Aurora shook her head. “I don’t want to ruin my life and have to look at the evidence of it every day and know I should love it. I just can’t.”