One day I had Gregoire leave his room and sat in a chair in the room as Cecile laid there on two pillows, stomach now almost fully bloated at seven months. It passed so quickly, our happy breakfast and dinners like a big family. Uriel came to talk to me or draw me, Yves came to banter, and the girls joining in for fun.

I was looking at Cecile as I thought of this. The birth would signify my death. I would have to leave.

"Cecile, a mother already," I murmured to myself. She giggled at what I said.

"I'm older, Margery. And I always wanted children, boy or girl. You were forced to by Agnes."

"True. I can't wait to travel around without children, be independent and free." I hugged myself jokingly.

"Where are you going to go?"

"Well, around popular tourist places. Just sightseeing. When I have had enough I'll leave the country and go to another. I heard there's more than a hundred countries, I'll be fine."

"You don't have a passport or legal documents though," Cecile pointed out. I shrugged.

"I'm sure there's an underground vampire web I can get help in. I am beautiful, and human or vampire, men will be ensnared." She smiled as I rocked back and forth on the rocking chair in their room. It was far bigger than Lark and mine, as though it were made for a married couple.

"But I'll be sad leaving you," I found myself whispering. "I'm still afraid of the dark. I'm more scared of Elsie than the twins—and I will miss the girls, too. I wanted to help them, but they've found a family already. Now I realized I was the one who clung to them for remnants of Sabine and even Primrose."

I sobbed, realizing everything I'd been holding in and thinking about. Cecile gestured for a hug, so I crawled onto the side of the bed and laid my head on her shoulder as she patted my head.

"Margery," she said, "I'm the same. I've been trying to find a family for so long I wonder if I can make one. But I want you to know, you must absolutely not leave someone who loves you without a word. I don't want to lecture you, but please talk to Uriel."

"No!" I cried through my tears.

"Listen, Margery! If he went and died tomorrow you'd be hurt all the same. You'd hate him because you love him. It'll be the same for him, who loves you so much it's engulfing him. I know, because I loved Gregoire like that too."

I nodded as I rubbed my eyes on her, making her laugh and turn her body to hug me. I looked at the big belly.

"Doesn't it hurt?" I asked.

"You're like a child sometimes, Margery." Cecile laughed. "Do you want it to be a niece or nephew?"

"Nephew. Too many girls and humans here, I need a vampire boy to bully," I said with an evil smile. Cecile's laughter was like the mother I always dreamed of. "What about you?"

"I don't know yet. Names are hard to choose, too, because Gregoire wants me to choose but I want him to choose. He's getting old, so he's scared he'd be an embarrassment to the child. He's so adorable." Cecile closed her eyes. "I just know our child will be like him, studious, passionate, maybe slightly awkward, but they would be like him."

"Don't you want them to be like you, too?" I asked.

"Hmm," she hummed, "I'm still growing as I live in this world. Still learning and changing—I don't know how they'd be like if they took after me."

"They would be pretty, or handsome—or both." I sighed. "Maybe have your white hair, even."

"I don't think so, Margery. Even my mother was brown-haired," she said. Then, "I'm sorry I mentioned it."

"It's fine. I'm glad I found out my mother was such a monster. Like Agnes and Edith—maybe it runs in our blood. That's why I don't want to bother Uriel with this disgusting bloodline of mine. I truly want him to find a happier life." Even if it was without me.

I pulled back and gently reached out towards Cecile's tummy. I knew she'd be a great mother, and only wished no one would disrupt her peace with Gregoire. That they would be together forever.

"Margery, be this child's godmother, please." Cecile held my hand softly, her hand so soft and pleasant I thought I had wrapped it in cool cloth. "Even if you choose to travel and go far away, protect this child."

"Don't say that! Of course I will, but you are here to protect them too!" I was stricken with fear deep in my soul and when I saw her I thought I saw the same mirrored back.

"I feel strange. I hope I'm thinking too much and it's just childbearing doing it's toll but I have a strange feeling sometimes."

"How?" I asked, alerted, and her hands squeezed mine.

"I think in my heart I always decided. If it's a daughter, I have a name for her. If it's a boy Gregoire should decide."

"Stop saying that as though—"

"We all have to take precautions," Cecile said firmly. "My mother was frail too, I've barely vampire blood in me, and therefore my child would be human. All I want is for them to be happy, whether they choose the path of a vampire or human, I want them to be safe."

"Gregoire will protect your child, he's that kind of man. Stupid and stubborn, he'd butt heads with even Agnes to stay with you. And bringing you to his house or something instead of meeting us here directly after leaving Jardin."

Cecile smiled peacefully, and began to rub her stomach. It was only about the size of a human head, but in her frame it seemed big, especially in the wide gown Veronique, once again, made. She made what she called maternity gowns, they were less like nightgowns and colorful, and suited Cecile perfectly. Her hair had grown again, and the dye came off so now her head was a mix of silver and gold. Platinum I suppose, but I liked the silver strands more.

"Cecile, I love you. Don't leave me." I put my head on her shoulder, our hands interlaced.

"That's exactly how Uriel feels about you," she whispered, no longer like she was lecturing me, but in a melancholic way.

I asked her what the female name she wanted for her daughter was and she told me. It was somehow familiar and yet not. After that, I left the room, with Gregoire rushing up after he saw me go downstairs.

"Wait!"

Gregoire stopped, turning to me. He smiled.

"I'm sorry, Margery, I've always meant to thank you—for helping us leave, even supporting Cecile and us through marriage and starting a family together. I'm just so busy and forgetful—I feel so strangely young again." He laughed and it was the epitome for happiness. He was so innocent.

"I don't need your thanks, Cecile would've have listened to whatever I said," I said. "I wanted to talk to you about a more serious manner."

His face changed, as though I had told him I was going to smack him. He faced me, shoulders towards me, and the two of us stood at statement.

"What is it?"

"Cecile has a very unique bloodline," I began. "Her family was a mix of half vampires again and again, so much that she became—well, I'm not very well-informed in your universities and studies of vampires and even what was it, anatomy? No, well, things. Sciences! That's the word."

I was panicking inside as I spoke, but I kept going.

"Cecile is weak. She always has been—she got sick and often needed blood or sometimes she would simply vomit it up. Whenever she visited me she seemed skinny and malnourished. Recently she's gotten better but she's—she very weak."

I turned away in shame.

"I beg of you, if it comes down to the mother or the child—please save Cecile." 

I hadn't realized what I was asking, but Gregoire took my hands, and holding them like Cecile had done, he looked straight into my eye.

"Cecile is my everything. I would never choose anything over her, and that includes our child. I love Cecile and I would never, never, do anything to lose her."

He let go of my hands and I swallowed the uncomfortable knot in me, and nodded to his answer.

"And Margery—I really wish you and Uriel would be happy together."

"What?" I stared at him in horror before looking down. "Well, it's a pity that no one else but Cecile and you think that. I don't believe I can bring him with me, he's only feeling this way because we were on the tower together, and he's—he pitying me."

"Uriel genuinely loves you, Margery. It's often the ones who cannot explain it who have the deepest love. Uriel can't talk to us, but he can to you, can't he? Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

I recalled Uriel's eyes that day as he looked up, offering him arm, blood, anything I asked of him. Those eyes seemed so helpless and instead of lust I saw something like the desire to be taken seriously. It was full of desperate longing, and I despised it.

I've never seen such eyes.

"I'll be going to Cecile," Gregoire said with a tip of his head. "Goodnight."

He ran again, with the vigor of a young man in love. I wanted to see Uriel, too—smell his human scent, not even drink his blood. I only wanted to hug and with that, comfort one another as people in love do.

Tears flowed when I realized how pathetic I was.

Beauty? Bloodline? Having rein over Sabine, power greater than Primrose? Everything I had been so proud of now was gone, and now not only did I mourn the loss of the mother image I held close to me and motivated me to leave the tower.

Now there was only me, alone. Sabine was in Jardin. Lark, Bernadette, and Adalyn had their own lives, and Cecile had Gregoire. She would be happy, she had a child, too.

But it wasn't simple Veronique who kept me from telling Uriel to follow me and be happy—it was the slightest possibility he would regret it. The fear of me returning to the ugly me from before, turning into Elsie or Agnes or Edith.

But instead of wallowing in my own despair, I knew one thing. I wanted to talk to him and explain all these complicated reasons why we can never work out.