A Blessing, A Curse

Lailah looked down at the child in her arms.

So new.

So lovely.

So wrong.

This wasn’t the child she had expected. The one she knew without a doubt she would have. The child had the soft white hair and blazing red eyes as she had suspected they would, a perfect specimen just as she and every mother before her had been.

But it wasn’t the right child.

A marvel.

An anomaly.

An impostor.

How could this happen?

What had she done so wrong?

Why was God still continuing to punish her when she had been tormented enough?

And him?

What would he do to her?

To the child?

Lailah frantically looked around the room, as though things could have possibly changed between her labor and now, but found nothing more than cold stone and the bed under her drenched and soiled with the child’s birth.

There was no escape.

There had never been one.

There would never be one.

She could only wait.

And watch as the door opened and the devil entered.

“Show her to me.” The demand low and forceful.

She kept her head bowed as she raised the child before her. “I… I don’t know what happened.”

He looked down at the naked child being offered. “Why is it a boy?”

Her mouth opened and lips trembled, but not a single noise came from them. She didn’t have an answer.

“Why is it a boy?!” His voice so loud, eyes filled with fury. “Fae don’t birth boys!”

“I don’t know.” So feeble and weak as the child was brought tightly against her chest, a meager attempt to shield him from a fate unavoidable. “I’m so sorry. Maybe… maybe you were wrong. Maybe I’m not fae.” A cry spilled from her as his fingers tangled in her hair and pulled her up to meet his ferocious gaze.

“You are fae!” he snarled, tightening his grip. “I would have never kept you if you weren’t. You were supposed to give me a girl! This one’s blood is wrong! You’ve tainted it!”

What was she to do?

“I’ll give you a girl.” The promise a jumbled mess. “The next one. I swear. I swear it’ll be a girl. Just… please. Please let me keep him.”

This child, this boy, had ruined everything. There were expectations of her, ones that were certain, and he had destroyed all of it. He had put her in a position to further her pain, her misery, her suffering. The devil would never forgive her for this.

God would never forgive her.

And it was all the boy’s fault.

He was an abomination.

He was special.

He should have never been created.

He must be protected.

He was nothing.

He was everything.

“No.” His fingers slipped from her white tresses, and she fell back to the bed before he plucked the child from her arms.

The warmth.

The light.

Gone.

He made her watch as he snuffed out the new child’s life.

The perfect creation being mutilated and mangled before his flesh and bone would twist and mend, returning to its infinite glory.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Outlasting the devil’s rage.

Until he left the child on the floor.

Alone.

And turned his attention to the one he could control.

The devil went to the woman and snatched her by the hair once more, yanking her from the corner she had tried to disappear into and towards the door. “I’m done being gentle with you. This time you’ll give me a girl, and that creature will rot here.”

The cold stone passed beneath Lailah’s exhausted body, biting at her flesh and snagging her stained dress. Her weak attempts to struggle against the devil’s hold was as futile as it had ever been. Why did she even bother when her grip was too feeble and screams too soft? Why did she even bother to try? It would only end the way it always did.

With her suffering.

And now his.

In the last moments before she was pulled from the room and the door slammed behind her—separating her from her coerced creation— she managed to twist and met the gaze of the child on the floor.

Crimson.

Calm.

Understanding.

Looking at her without a sound, serene, the only light in the darkness.

She stared down at him in horror.

In awe.

The child was a monster.

The child was a miracle.

The child was hers.

How she wished he wasn’t.