She did her best to forget her mother Sky except at night before bed when Aurora prayed to whatever there was left to believe in that Cyrus’s death was a result of Sky’s choices, based on her beliefs in a myth, and how those choices played themselves out through Seth. Cold comfort. But Aurora did not want to live so powerlessly under the weight of what felt like an ancient curse—the myth of Isis and Osiris, Nepthys and Set—unable to rewrite her own story.

All Aurora could do was study hard, become an attorney one day, try to right the wrongs of the past; or help someone at least. She could make a new home for herself and Dog and Yard, a home with honey-scented candles and chocolates shaped like roses, an herb garden in a window box, books and music, tea and yoga, and runs by the sea. She could try to forget Ever, too, the man she had rescued and then lost, but the more she tried to forget, the more she could feel pain running through her bloodstream to help form the baby growing inside of her.

The night she’d slept with Ever, they conceived a child.

Aurora had been so caught up in the moment that she hadn’t asked him to wear a condom; later, she had been so distraught over Cyrus’s death, she didn’t realize she’d skipped her cycle.

But, yes, she was pregnant. And she had not told Ever.

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When Aurora gave birth to Keaton nine months after she met Ever, the midwife had looked into Aurora’s eyes, while she writhed on the cushions, and told her to breathe.

Aurora kept closing her eyes, and the midwife kept telling her, “Look at me! Look at me!”

She forced herself to stay present, stay there in the room.

“This isn’t pain,” the woman said. “This might hurt but it’s not pain.”

The baby was ripping Aurora apart. Literally. She felt her pelvis ready to shatter. The pain (it was pain) soared in crests. It made her feel as if she were levitating.

Ever. She wanted Ever. But he was gone. After what she had put him through, she felt she had no right to reach out to him again. She hardly knew him. And, if she were to be honest with herself, she feared more loss.

“Keep pushing,” the woman said. “And look at me.”

Aurora looked at her. All she saw was a sea of blood.

What if they had to cut her open?

He was bigger than they’d thought. Nine pounds, eight ounces. Huge. He was going to kill her.

But she loved him. She already loved him. She’d die for him, easily. She’d die, but then who would care for him? She couldn’t die.

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