HE PUT HIS HAND ON MY BELLY—RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY PARENTS I don’t know if he did it on purpose, but it sure felt intentional. We were out in Bar Harbor with my parents for the weekend. They’ve always been… polite to Dariel. Never outright rude, but you can feel that weird tension sometimes. My dad tries too hard, over-laughs at his jokes. My mom avoids saying his name like it’s a trigger word. Still, I figured things were fine enough. We’d been married almost a year, and this was the first time they invited us on a little trip. Progress, right? Anyway, we were on a trail overlooking the water, and my mom wanted to snap a photo of us. I stood next to Dariel, just smiling like usual. But right before the camera clicked, he slid his hand around my waist and rested it gently—very deliberately—on my stomach. Not low like a casual hold. Not high like a hug. Dead center. Right over my belly. My mom lowered the phone. My dad blinked. No one said a word, and I just stood there frozen, wondering if they noticed. I mean, of course they noticed. You’d have to be blind not to. I glanced at Dariel, but he just kept smiling like nothing happened. Thing is… we hadn’t told anyone yet. Not even close. I wasn’t even sure we were going to tell them anytime soon. Later that night, my mom pulled me aside at the inn. She didn’t ask directly, just stared at me with that smile she uses when she’s pretending not to be upset. And Dariel? He was already acting like the secret’s out. I don’t know if he did it to force the conversation… or to see how they’d react. But what he doesn’t know is what my mom said to me after that photo. — —

In the waning light of Floralia’s final hour, I, Julia Aemilia, stood at the threshold of our modest villa overlooking Bar Harbor’s restless waters.

The wind came swift as Mercury’s winged sandals, stirring the lace of my stola and carrying the briny breath of the sea. Behind me lay the marble hall where my parents,Titus and Flavia Cornelius, awaited my husband’s and my arrival—our first journey together since our nuptials, one year hence.

All their life, my parents had shown Dariel of Pontus courtesy tempered by reserve—their laughter at his jests perfunctory, their salutations measured.

Yet now, beneath the evening star, I felt a tremor in the household’s foundation, as though they suspected a secret I would not yet whisper.

Thus begins the account of how a single gesture—his hand upon my womb—shook the pillars of propriety, and how truth, once loosed, reshaped our family’s destiny.

I. The Pilgrimage to the Cliffs

At sunrise, we donned our traveling cloaks and descended the narrow path hewn from living rock. My father, with gait precise as a centurion on parade,

led the way; my mother, serene yet watchful, followed. Dariel and I brought up the rear, hand clasped in hand, our steps measured against the cliff’s edge.

Here, the portals of the world opened upon azure waters, dotted with isles like emerald testaments to Neptune’s craft. My mother stilled and raised her bronze mirror of observation to our countenances. “Smile,” she urged in gentle—yet insistent—tone, raising the ivory tablet of her likeness-maker (the “camera,” in modern parlance).

In that instant, Dariel’s arm curved about me, his palm alighting upon my belly with such exactitude—plants of my very heart turned to flame. Not the tender cradle of a lover’s embrace, nor the casual tether of companionship, but the firm, deliberate press of hands upon the secret within.

My mother’s hand faltered. My father’s brow arched. For a heartbeat, the air held its breath. Then, soft as the susurrus of cypress boughs, the likeness-maker shutter fell mute. No word was spoken. Only that seal of flesh upon flesh, branding our truth before any tongue could betray it.