UsernameEmailRegionInterestAOL IMICQ IDYahoo! IDMSN IDJabber

Hearing those words said out loud, as they had never before been uttered in her life, was like a knife stabbing through her heart. The trail the blade left burned as if on fire, and Nona lifted a hand to her breast in the hope that she might actually be able to soothe the imaginary but horribly tangible wound.

Those six months had been the loneliest of her life. The realisation she was pregnant, the last minute decision to accept studying Healing abroad… Alone in a foreign country with a massive workload, a steep learning curve, all while struggling to study for her H.O.R.S.E. exams. Oliver's words nearly made her laugh, but all that came out was an ugly sounding sob she choked back.

"Left you behind?" she wanted to know.

Anyone who remembered the name Comstock had the ability to research the famed and tragic family. Brilliant, rich, and dead. Nona had been young when Oliver's family had been murdered, but she remembered the story that shot across the school like wildfire. When she was older, when Oliver had become inexplicably entwined in her life, she was old enough to read back and remember. And feel. Nona's family defined her, she could only imagine what it was like to lose it—any of it. Did Oliver feel now, what she had done, the actions she had felt it necessary to take, and would take again, had robbed him of family once more?

The guilt and hurt and anger swelled in her again, threatening to break her down.

What Nona did next, she could not define as cruelty or kindness, if it was one or the other, or both. And, whichever it was, did not dwell upon if she had Oliver or herself in mind when the words came out of her mouth.

"Is that so?" She raised her eyebrows. "My mistake."

Oliver towered over her, but she raised herself to her highest height and felt her curtain of hair slide away from her face. Nona took a deep breath to steady herself, and perhaps to delay the inevitable about to spill from her lips just an infinitesimal second longer. "I had no idea you had any interest in raising another man's child."