"Ngh..." A strangled groan escaped my lips. My knees buckled, and I nearly collapsed to the floor.
"Miss Ashford!" Quinn caught me in his arms before I hit the ground, his face going ghost-white in an instant.
I looked down with shaking hands. Bright red blood was streaming down my legs, soaking into the hem of my gown.
"Blood... my baby..." I clutched Quinn's jacket with everything I had, the pain so severe I could barely breathe.
William saw the blood pooling on the floor and panicked completely. He rushed toward me. "Seraphina! How is this happening? Someone call an ambulance!"
"Get away from her!" Quinn's foot connected with William's chest, sending him flying backward. Quinn's eyes were rimmed red, his voice raw with fury. "You animal! She hasn't touched anything these past few days except that chicken soup you made her with your own hands!"
William hit the ground hard. The words registered slowly, and then all the blood left his face. He turned, stiff as a corpse, to look at Alma.
Alma stumbled backward, her face ashen. "No... it wasn't me... William, I just thought Seraphina seemed stressed, so I added some herbal ingredients to help her cool down... I didn't know it would cause a miscarriage!"
"It was you..." William's eyes went wide, horror and rage flooding through him in equal measure.
The tonic he had brewed with his own hands for his wife, meant to protect their unborn child, had become the poison that killed it.
The debt of gratitude he'd never stopped talking about had destroyed everything he had.
"Seraphina... I'm sorry... I didn't know..."
William crawled toward me on his knees, tears streaming down his face.
But I was already fading in Quinn's arms, consciousness slipping away as darkness swallowed me whole.
"If anything happens to her or the baby—"
Quinn carried me toward the exit. As he passed William, he left behind a single, ice-cold sentence.
"William Stephens, I will bury your entire family."
