Page 165 of His Darkest Desire

Kinsley accepted the call and lifted the phone to her ear.

“Kinsley?”

Hearing Liam’s voice for the first time in so long was oddly…anticlimactic. Everything she would’ve expected to feel was absent. There was just…nothing.

Unprompted, he went on and on about how concerned he’d been, about how he’d known at heart she would be okay because he just couldn’t imagine life without her.

And she was honest with him. She congratulated him on his beautiful family, his adorable child. She told him she was glad that he was happy, and she told him that she hadn’t been for so, so long. That he’d hurt her very, very deeply. Had abandoned her. And she pointed out that for someone who claimed he couldn’t imagine life without her, he really hadn’t seemed to notice how much she’d withdrawn in the past few years.

He was silent for a moment, and when he spoke again, his voice was hoarse and thick. “I’m sorry. I know after everything I put you through, it doesn’t mean much, but I am. You never deserved the pain I caused you.”

Kinsley had heard so many apologies from him over the years. She’d never found meaning in them before, and that hadn’t changed. But she didn’t need meaning from Liam’s words. Didn’t need his sincerity. She didn’t need anything from him, didn’t want anything from him.

“I know you wanted to keep in touch, but whatever this is between us, it’s done.”

“Kinsley, please. We can still be friends.”

“No, Liam,” she replied in a gentle tone that would’ve made Shade proud. “I lost my friend years ago. Goodbye.”

After the call, she felt a little lighter, a little less burdened. She’d moved on from Liam during her time with Vex, and she’d hardly thought about him. But finally saying those things to him, finally speaking up for herself after spending so long trying to keep the peace, felt good. This was…closure.

She quite swiftly—and happily—returned to not thinking of him.

Strange as it was to be living with her mother after years away from home, Kinsley fell into a comfortable routine with Emily. They cooked and ate breakfast together every morning, took walks along the dirt road or the shore of the loch when the weather was fair enough, enjoyed lunches and teatime. They did puzzles together, played a few of the old boardgames that had been stored in one of the cottage’s cabinets, and talked more than they had in years.

Kinsley didn’t record her hikes and explorations nearly as much as she’d intended, but she still journaled, scrapbooked, and kept in touch with her audience. And she took up another craft, one she used to do as a child, which her followers enjoyed.

She began making little forest displays and fairy houses using items from the surrounding woods—sticks and bark, stones, moss and nuts, as well as leaves and flowers that she and her mother dried and pressed. And Emily joined in occasionally, finding delight in something new to her.

Before bed every night, they called or video chatted with Kinsley’s father, and they did the same with her sister and aunt at least a couple times a week. Though Madison remained skeptical and uncertain after being brought up to speed, whether she believed or not made no difference. All Maddy cared about was that her sister and her soon-to-be niece or nephew were safe.

And every evening, before the sun set, Kinsley went to the fairy ring to talk to the wisps and Vex, who she always felt there. His presence was undeniable, more familiar with every visit, but always out of reach. She kept them up to date on the baby, but information was regrettably limited. There were no doctor visits to recount, no test results to share.

That had been the only thing about which she and her mother had fought. Emily had insisted Kinsley go for regular check-ups. Under any other circumstance, Kinsley would’ve agreed wholeheartedly. Only after a long, emotional, tear-filled conversation had Kinsley finally convinced her mother to see her point of view.

This baby wasn’t human. And Kinsley could not risk the truth being found out by anyone outside her family. The potential danger to her child would’ve been too great. How the hell would they explain it if the ultrasound showed tiny claws on the baby’s fingers, or little wings sprouting from their back?

Thankfully, her mother had relented, though on one condition. She made Kinsley promise that if anything went wrong, they would immediately race to the hospital.

With research about pregnancy, childbirth, and home deliveries added onto her daily activities, Kinsley had no shortage of things to do, and she rarely found herself alone. Yet the days weren’t easy. Winter’s worsening chill had nothing on the cold at the center of her heart. Her trips to the fairy ring sustained her, but each was a single drop of water on her tongue as she faced dehydration in a desert of loss and loneliness.

But the visits weren’t the only thing sustaining her. No matter how much Kinsley missed Vex, no matter how much it hurt to be apart from him—and some days hurt more than any pain imaginable—her spirit was always uplifted by the life growing inside her.

Because twelve weeks of pregnancy had turned to thirteen, then fourteen, and she’d spent the next seven days battling rising panic. She’d never carried a child past that point. Had never made it so long, so far, and every bit of her, ever cell in her body, every neuron in her brain, every drop of blood in her veins, willed this child to hold on, to keep going. To live.

Then fourteen weeks became fifteen, sixteen…

At seventeen weeks, she realized she was showing. Just a small bump, nothing that anyone else would’ve noticed, but she saw it. And the first morning she noticed it, she stood in profile before the bathroom mirror, gently running her hands over that bump and smiling the biggest, warmest smile of her life, barely aware of the moisture gathering in her eyes.

Not long after, she felt the baby’s first movements. The very next day, it was all she could do to stop herself from sprinting through the forest to get to the fairy ring and tell the wisps what had happened. While she held her shirt up, they hovered before her belly, their little ghostfire arms tickling her skin. Though the baby didn’t move for them, the wisps remained like that for a long while, making soft, awed sounds reminiscent of the wind sweeping over a grassy meadow.

They said they felt the lifeforce inside her, said they sensed the magic, the strength. When they departed, they were brimming with eagerness to share the news with Vex.

Afterward, Kinsley and her mother spent a lot of time sitting in front of a crackling fire with blankets over their laps and their hands on Kinsley’s belly, waiting with bated breath to feel even the faintest stirring from her womb.

As the days passed, Kinsley’s new crafts blossomed into a modest but fulfilling business. There was demand from her audience for her little displays, so she opened an online store. In addition to building a lovely website for Kinsley, Emily demonstrated an impressive knack for packaging the often-delicate creations, and happily offered to put them in the post during her weekly trips into the nearest town for groceries and supplies.

Even as winter railed against the coming spring, bringing late season snow, Kinsley continued her visits with the wisps. She wouldn’t have stopped for anything. But those visits were hard sometimes for reasons that had nothing to do with the weather.

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