Clasp {Book Two of the Deathly Consequences Series}

Chapter 7

"Congratulations Guild Leader! You are currently three months pregnant!" Healer Phineas, a man with a heavy resemblance to Santa Claus and nearly as ancient as Yasmina with the gift of Healing and Sight to see the dead, announced happily.

I stared blankly at his ruddy face. Both unsurprised and shocked stupid by the announcement. While my brain misfired, Yasmina's wrinkled face broke out into a broad grin. Positively beaming with excitement for me as she patted my thigh. Julienne finally showed emotion other than fear. Her mouth flopping open with surprise while her doe eyes sparkled with awe. I held up a hand to halt her oncoming congratulatory words, coming back to my senses enough to force questions past my suddenly dry throat.

"The gender?"

Phineas paused, peering thoughtfully down at my stomach before grinning brightly.

"Twelve weeks is normally too early to tell an infant's gender, but from what I'm seeing you are going to be the mother of a healthy baby boy."

"How can you tell?" I croaked, my thoughts too scrambled to figure out the how's myself.

"By it's soul aura of course, Guild Leader." Phineas answered merrily.

Due to being gifted with both Healing and Sight, Phineas could also see the living's auras. Because of his gifts, that talent came in handy to help him discern the living from the dead. Or so he told me when I first met him last year when he joined the Guild.

Before Lucien died, he had expressed to me the need for our Guild to have its own Healer. Due to the nature of our gifts and the general hatred the rest of the Clans had for us, finding our own personal Guild Healer had been a struggle. It wasn't common for an offspring of Death to have a Life power. But after a couple through months of searching, we eventually found Phineas. Living in the ass-end of nowhere drinking away his sorrows after the loss of his wife and only child during the Necromancer purge. Believe me, the old man hadn't been so fucking jolly back then as he was now.

"Of course." I whispered numbly.

Yasmina squeezed my thigh to offer me comfort. I barely felt it.

"Do you know," I paused when my voice came out hoarse and weak. I cleared my throat, shoving down my emotions. Got no fucking time for that shit.

"Do you know if it's going to have the same powers as me?" I asked.

Phineas leaned back in the armchair, stroking his thick white beard in thought while his warm brown eyes went distant. Yasmina squeezed me again, but this time I didn't even react to the pressure as I stared blankly at the Healer. Julienne was as quiet as a mouse on the other side of me, holding her breath in anticipation. A quick but discreet sniff from me also told me what else she was feeling. Dread. Whether from what my possible reaction to his answer will be or from simply sitting next to me on the couch, I didn't fucking know.

"Due to your pregnancy still being in the early stages, I cannot say for sure that he will or will not be a Necromancer. However, from his aura alone, I can tell you that he will have Death's gifts." Phineas assured me.

Ice flooded my veins. It was to be expected of course. Lucien and I both had Death's blood and the powers that came with it, but the thought of bringing another Necromancer into this world now...it turned my stomach. What parent wants their child to be hated from the moment it's born?

I was the product of such a birth and look at where I am now? Alone, depressed, and heartbroken. Fucking A.

"Great...just great." I whispered. An indescribable weight settled on my shoulders and I sunk back into the couch bonelessly as my new reality suckered punched me in the face.