The Forbidden

Prologue

Sixteen Years Ago

The summer sun was merciless, beating down on the fields in waves of golden fire. Sweat dripped from Nina’s brow as she moved through the rows of cotton, her swollen belly leading the way. She had learned to ignore the ache in her back, the weight pressing down on her feet, the way her hands trembled from exhaustion. This was life, and life did not wait for rest.

Her baby stirred inside her, a strong, eager kick against her ribs. She smiled despite herself, running a calloused hand over her belly. A boy—she could feel it in her bones. A fighter, just like his mother. She whispered to him beneath her breath, a soft promise of love, of survival, of something better, even if she could not yet see it.

From the shaded porch of the grand house, Mrs. Whitmore watched. Her delicate fingers gripped the arms of her chair as a servant fanned her lazily, but it did little to ease her discomfort. At seven months pregnant, nausea clung to her like a second skin. The weight of her unborn child made her restless, irritable. She longed for the days when she could move freely again, return to her books, her embroidery, the quiet order of her life.

Her gaze drifted to the field, to the dark-skinned woman laboring under the sun, belly full with child yet still moving with a strange kind of grace. Nina. Mrs. Whitmore did not know her well, nor did she particularly care to, but there was something about her—something irritatingly resilient. She worked with a smile, as if she carried no burden at all.

Mrs. Whitmore envied her. Not her life, of course—never that. But the ease with which she seemed to bear it.

When the time came, both women screamed into the same night, their cries carried through the walls of the big house and across the fields. Two children were born hours apart, their first breaths filling the same humid air.

Hope stirred on the plantation that night. Two lives beginning, side by side.

They did not yet know how tangled their fates would become.