Episode 87: Preg-not (Lilla)

Early in the morning Lilla slipped a pill to induce puking. It was the fourth one she had taken. The fourth morning she had spent on her hands and knees hovering over the toilet in an effort to make Ulysses believe she was pregnant, that she had either been lying to him or stepped outside their marriage.

Today was the day, she could hear him behind her, “You’ve been so sick.”

“I must have eaten something bad,” she replied. She had to be innocent to sell the affair idea. He had sent someone to follow her for days and she had set up various random meetings.

The plan was coming together.

She would die – soon.

“Every day for a week?” he asked. “We should check your breakfast food to be sure it hasn’t been poisoned.”

“I’ll go see someone today,” Lilla replied.

“Who?” Ulysses asked. She could hear his tone – malicious, accusing, angry.

“My doctor or an associate if he is unavailable,” she replied.

Her stomach turned again.

He waited.

“No, I meant who is the father,” Ulysses replied. He walked around the bathroom perimeter, pretending to be a triumphant wolf stalking its prey.

She tried to look afraid.

“You think it’s someone else’s?” she replied.

“I’m fairly certain intercourse is necessary for conception, in most cases,” he said. He kneeled and attached a bracelet to her ankle – one that would prevent her from doing magic.

She didn’t need magic anymore. Wherever she went next, she had done enough magic in the past few days to entice whoever might want her. Whoever Leonora was sure would want her.

“We’ve never had intercourse?” Lilla replied.

“Not recently,” Ulysses said as he sat on a chair, covered in deep red velvet that he had pulled up from the bathtub edge to her side.

“Not eight weeks ago, at the Vallence Hotel?

“You had tea that night.”

“What kind of tea?”

Ulysses ran his hand through his hair, “Suppose that I’m wrong. We’ll just do a little test and find out who the father is. If it’s me, I may even let Delaney live.”

Lilla rolled her eyes, “Not my precious Delaney.”

Killing Delaney would hurt him far more than it would hurt her.

“Some other price, then? If I am wrong?”

Lilla felt a small shrill of excitement. She was done serving Ulysses. Leonora wasn’t afraid of death. Lilla would be free.

“If we sacrifice this child, we’ll control the largest rival cult within Sylem,” Lilla said.

Ulysses’ hand gripped her hair as he shoved her head into the toilet. Her face mixed with her bile and coated her face in slime. Her forehead crashed into the basin, and she could taste her blood mixing with the filthy water.

He held her under until she was forced to breath in the water more than once; her body responding in desperation for air – her lungs pleading and her brain suffocating.

He pulled her away from the water, each hair threatening to pull free from her head in favor of his hand.

“You had one job, Lilla,” he whispered into her ear.

He slammed her face against the basin and the porcelain cracked under the pressure.

It would have hurt, except she had been medicating herself since she enacted the plan. She expected the pain. This was just inconvenient.

“If you kill me, you have an entire new rival,” she lied.

Pleading would push him, fuel him. Ulysses was an emotional being.

“Hedging your bets?”

“Do you blame me?” she asked.

“I was touched by all your talk of partnership with me,” he said. He pulled her head back more, tilting it backward so she was forced to look at the ceiling.

If he were more intelligent, he would notice she wasn’t struggling.

“This is a disappointing turn of events,” Ulysses stated as he threw her forward, her body hurled against the toilet. Her hand slipped into the water.

He stood and washed his hands while she pretending to be afraid and hugged the toilet. He dried them, one at a time, then moved toward the doorway. She sat up.

“What are you doing?” Lilla spat.

He didn’t reply; he was back in a moment. Whatever he wanted he had prepared before he confronted her. In his hand he had a towel full of herbs. “Hedging mine.’

He held the fabric and herbs across her face and the scent pulled at her mind. She felt herself shutting down, the panic before passing out, the adrenaline.

Then – after her body tried to fight it in the most convincing display of objection – everything was black.

Lilla awoke a while later, her body drenched in her own blood and the medication to reduce pain wearing off.

She could hardly open her eyes – her body was too drugged in agony as what Ulysses had done became more clear.

“How are we feeling?” Ulysses asked.

Her stomach was cut open; he had cut the imaginary child out of her body.

“What is your plan?” Lilla asked. She knew she only had moments of consciousness left in her; moments to pretend and be strong.

“Not to tell you my plan. That’s always the flaw of masterminds in their stories, and they always lose. I don’t intend to lose.”

“You are weak and pathetic,” Lilla spat, her mouth full of blood.

Her heart skipped a beat and her body shuddered as he touched her open flesh.

“Probably,” he replied. His grin was one of the last things she saw as she closed her eyes. Her body was shutting down again; permanently. Whatever was to happen next she would accept.

“I’ve spent my life accustomed to a certain standard,” Ulysses stated. “Any last wishes?”

Lilla mustered every last drop of life left in her, “that you enjoy watching your work be destroyed.”

“Which work is that?” Ulysses asked.

“Caelum,” Lilla replied.

He was destroying them. Destroying everything. He had no vision.

She had no vision. Her eyes refused to open, her body ached and tears escaped her eyes despite her desire for them to be held back.

She felt something course into her body. The weight of pain lifted as the emptiness returned.

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