When Her "Death" Couldn't Break Him (Cecilia and Nathaniel)

Cecilia could no longer remember how to cry. She simply called for her mother again and again, voice cracking like ice.

At the shout, the nurses and doctor rushed in, stethoscopes already searching. Nathaniel barreled past them, gathering Cecilia into his arms before her knees buckled.

She stared at the motionless figure on the bed, her entire body trembling.

"Quick-someone wake my mom up!"

The doctor pressed his stethoscope to Queenie's silent chest one final time. A long breath deflated his lungs, and the gray in his face deepened. Turning to the family, he spoke in a hush that seemed afraid to break the air. "She's gone."

The words were boulders dropped from the ceiling. Cecilia felt every vein flash- freeze, as if her blood had turned to winter glass. She could not breathe, could not blink-could only stand inside the shattering silence.

Blindly, she seized Nathaniel's hand. Her fingers locked so hard his knuckles blanched, yet her eyes stared past the walls, emptied of focus or light.

"Got it," Nathaniel murmured, voice low but unarguable. He motioned to the staff. "Please give us the room."

The door closed behind the nurses. Only the two of them remained, the scent of antiseptic now thick with something larger-grief, raw and echoing.

Nathaniel folded Cecilia into his arms. One hand kept a slow rhythm on her shoulder, as though rocking sorrow itself. "If you need to cry," he whispered near her ear, "let it come-loud as it has to be. It will help you breathe again."

The gentleness in his tone pried open the dam. Tears slipped, then streamed, then rained, each sob tearing loose from the cage of her chest.

All my life I've craved a mother's arms-thought the luxury was meant for someone else. Then fate led me to my own mother at last, and I believed we still had time-ordinary, sun-lit time to be a family. But her body dwindled day by day, and Cassandra's poison only sped the clock. Now the clock has stopped...

"Nathaniel, it hurts-my heart feels like it's tearing apart..."

He held her tighter, as if his embrace might stitch the wound. "I know," he breathed. "I know."

the room couldn't help shed tears, too. Quiet weeping threaded

last, Cecilia wiped her eyes, steadied her breath, and stepped from the room-face

relative that Queenie had slipped away. The

gaze anchored on Queenie's face, as if willing her eyelids to lift

The single title trembled out of him-half greeting, half

never dropped the formal address-always her loyal

A broad-shouldered man sank to

would form, so he offered the only thing he had left-her

in silence for years, content to orbit her world, guarding from the shadows. He would

yesterday she wanted to go home. Come

gave

her aunt, Brooklyn,

the confirmation cracked her composure, and she wept until her

tears, she promised to tell their parents

while, and company matters were handed to her deputies. She

dabbed at

dabbed

her cheeks,

voice to steady even as

cilia

the edges

things: I give you

though it