When I reached my hospital room again, showered, changed and incredibly exhausted, Lia was waiting for me.

"I'll stay with her." She told Helen the midwife, who has been around me since I arrived at the hospital hours ago.

"Thank you, Helen." I told the woman once the two helped me get in the bed.

"Anytime, Samara." She said, smiling at me good-humouredly, making me shake my head immediately in response.

"Oh no. No thank you. I don't intend to repeat the experience."

Lia laughed while Helen reminded me that we would see each other again before I would be discharged from the hospital, then she was off, leaving me alone with my friend.

"My baby... She's born, Lia." I stated the obvious, still incapable to wrap my mind around the fact.

The thought was exhilarating, and liberating in a way, but it also made me feel... empty. As if in giving birth to Aurora, I lost a part of myself.

"Where is she?" I asked, missing her whom I started to consider an inseparable part of myself over the long nine months.

I needed to see her, to touch her, to make sure that she was real.

Pulling myself up, I pushed my blanket away and scanned the bright, shiny, linoleum floor for my slippers. The strong smell of disinfectant reached my nostrils and made the room spin around me. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, determined to stand up anyway. But before I collected enough strength to leave my bed, Lia was at my side, pushing me back down into the pillows.

"You've lost a lot of blood, Samara, you must rest." She said, sitting down next to me. "I'll bring the baby over as soon as your visitors are out, and my mum stops fussing around her. Your Aurora has a slightly odd heartbeat and she's smaller than what they expected her to be. They are all puzzled about it. But as Abraham had told you it's perfectly normal for those like her, so calm down, and rest while you wait."

Reaching inside the pocket of her green scrubs, she passed me her phone with dozens of pictures of my baby. "You are welcome," she smiled.

"She is..." I whispered, at loss for words, as my vision blurred because of the annoying tears gathering in my eyes again.

"She is beautiful, Samara," Lia said as I stared at the pictures, transfixed. "Her hair is like yours, just a little darker."

"And her eyes?" I asked, realising that I still did not see their colour.

"Incredibly green. Like..." she started, then stopped when she noticed the tears now trickling down my cheeks. "Well, you know whose." She added simply, passing me a tissue. "Pull yourself together. Everybody's here to see you."

"When can we go home?" I asked, trying to distract myself from my thoughts which kept strolling to Vlad, as I wiped the tears away.

"I'm sure they'll keep you two here for a few days at least, until they invent a reason why Aurora is different from the other babies. Abraham says it might take even a full week."

It doesn't matter at all how long you'll stay here. Your child is healthy and you know it, that's the only thing that matters right now, my subconscious murmured, making me relax a little.

I looked at Lia and nodded, then my eyes dropped to her hands, attracted by an unfamiliar movement. Lia, who never wore rings, was caressing a pink, oval gemstone glittering brightly as it caught the single ray of sunshine which found its way inside the room through the half closed blinds...  A diamond ring?

"Lia, are you..."

She followed my gaze, then beamed at me as she replied, "Engaged to be married. Since last night."

"Wow." I said as my tired mind struggled in vain to offer any more appropriate words. "Congratulations."

She leaned closer, pulling me into an embrace. "We would never have met if it wasn't for you, Samara... I... Thank you." She whispered, then quickly dabbed at the corners of her eyes with her sleeves as someone knocked on the door.

Mum, Lucas, Nicole and Stoker flooded the small hospital room with their chatter, laughter, flowers and even colourful balloons.

"She's wonderful, honey!" Mum said, kissing me on both cheeks. "Doctor Murray showed her to us through the window of the nursery."

"She's as ginger as you!" Lucas added, handing me a pack of brownies.

"Hopefully she won't be quite as stubborn." Stoker, appearing behind Lucas, chimed in. "That would be too much even for someone as calm and patient as..."

Luckily, Lia put her hand over his mouth before he could finish, and Mum would notice. She still had no idea who Aurora's father was, and I preferred it that way, at least for the moment.

They stayed, talking over each other happily until Doctor Murray asked them politely to finally let me eat and rest, half an hour later.

Lia followed them outside promising to bring Aurora to me, but got back empty handed; the baby was asleep. Her mum would bring her over as soon as she woke up, Lia said, embracing me again, then leaving me alone to rest.

But despite feeling incredibly exhausted, I couldn't fall asleep. I let my mind ramble freely as the hours passed, to people and places I loved and missed, to my complicated past lying behind me and my uncertain future stretching ahead...

Once the sun set, and my room filled with silence and darkness, I opened the drawer of my nightstand and reached for my phone. I couldn't call Vlad, but I could call one person who knew him well.

"Alina, hi. It's me, Samara." I said when the receptionist from the hotel in Bran picked up on the third ring.

She replied in a fast-spoken Romanian, language I only used in my dreams since I left the castle. Her stream of excited sentences about how she had wished for me to call her and how she had thought about me often, made me feel... better. Closer to home. Why on earth have I not called her before? I wondered, smiling as she kept talking.

"My... our baby was born. And I'm definitely coming back in October." I said, making her squeal with surprise, once she paused for breath.

Soon after we promised each other to really keep in touch from now on, and I put the phone down, even as Lia's mum entered my room with Aurora in her arms.

"Seeing that you are not asleep, I thought I'd bring her over," she said, as I took the baby from her awkwardly. "She's been up for a while now and she's hungry. Well, you know what to do, Samara. I'll leave you two alone."

Doctor Murray smiled at me, when she noticed my rising panic. "You will be a great mother, Samara. Don't be scared." She encouraged me softly, as she walked out of the room again.

Right. I can do this. I thought, cradling my baby in what I hoped was a correct nursing position, and realising that it was actually her who somehow knew what to do better than I did.

As Aurora settled in my arms contentedly, her tiny lips pressed to my breast and her green eyes staring into mine, I fell in love for the second time in my life. Everything about her was perfect-- her tiny hands, her soft ginger hair, the unusual scent of her delicate, rosy skin and the small, content sounds she was making...

Are you still sure that you'll be strong enough to leave her here in five months and go back to him? My subconscious whispered, making my heart skip a beat.

As I watched her fall asleep slowly, I wanted to scream. It had been so hard, pulling through the separation from Vlad, all the emotional pain I went through was still too fresh in my memory. And soon I would have to go through it again, because leaving her, my baby, in this world, while I attempted to reach Vlad again, would not be easier...

Does everyone have to pay such a high price for love, or is it only me? I despaired, shaking my head, trying to disperse the awful thoughts. I could not think about it now, I was too tired and my exhausted mind was making everything look so much worse.

I was struggling to keep my eyes open when a nurse sent by Doctor Murray came to pick Aurora up, promising she would bring her back whenever she woke up hungry during the night. Then, banishing all my nagging, conscious thoughts, I finally succumbed to a dreamless sleep.

Luigi and Veronica came to see us the following day, and Anne with Mr. Turner... There seemed to be no end to my visitors during the days we were kept in the hospital, chattering happily, offering their help and advice and taking my mind off everything else but the here and the now. Which was exactly what I needed.

The best advice I got came from Stoker, and I decided to follow it, if I wanted to enjoy the months to come at all.

"Do not think. Or at least, do not think too much ahead. Five month of your life are a long time to have them poisoned by doubts and indecision. Try to live each day as if it was the only one you had, and then, when the time to consider your next step comes, you'll follow your heart's advice. No one else can tell you what to do."

That piece of wisdom kept me happy until the end of the week, when we were finally discharged from the hospital. The doctors were still none the wiser about Arora's condition, but because they were reassured by the fact that she was eating regularly and growing as expected, they let us go home.

Then, as I stepped out of the cool and dim building into the warm, sun-lit afternoon, Aurora in my arms, Lucas, carrying my bag at my side and Lia, who tried to steer us through the crowd of patients towards Lucas' car in front of us, my bubble of temporary happiness burst in an instant. It seemed that it was pierced by the rays of summery sunshine which suddenly shed more light on my situation, after the week I had spent in the shadows of the hospital.

Unexpectedly, I wanted to cry, because despite having so many devoted friends, it wasn't them whom I needed the most right now. I needed Vlad, he should have been the only one there with us.

In that moment I realised with perfect clarity that my heart was broken in two halves, between Aurora and Vlad, and I would never feel whole and happy until I would find a way for the three of us to live together.

Forever.

                
                    ~~

"When you've been lost as I have, you get good at finding your way home."
-Emily Henry, A Million Junes
                   
                     ~~

         End of part two.