Three months later, cradling a positive test she’d taken three times, Rachel Steele looked in the mirror. Her dark hair was wild, her eyes wide, and beneath her linen smock, the faintest curve was beginning to show. “Impossible,” she whispered. But the compass, now hanging from her necklace, vibrated gently.
It was Elias who finally explained. He invited her to his back room, filled with ticking clocks that all showed different times—and yet, somehow, all struck midnight together. “Leo wasn’t a cartographer of land,” Elias said softly. “He was a cartographer of thresholds. The spaces between here and there, now and then. And you, Rachel Steele—you are a compass. You find lost things. You found him. And he left a piece of himself behind. A child who can exist in two worlds at once.” rachel steele pregnant
The night she went into labor, a storm unlike any other hit Harrowfield. The rain fell sideways. The wind howled in chords, not screams. And as Rachel pushed, sweating and roaring, the compass grew hot against her chest. The room filled with the scent of wet earth and distant thunder. Juniper never left her side, purring like a tiny engine. Three months later, cradling a positive test she’d