Court of Shadows

by Miranda Honfleur

It was less a question than a choked cry, pained and shrill like that of a wounded animal.

  He could hear her heart begin to race again, her breath quicken, and it was all he could do to stay where he was. “She’s going to have a son. My son.”

  No movement. No reaction. And then her eyes watered, her expression unreadable until she bit her lip, lowered her gaze. For a long while, she just sat, still, staring, tears welling in her eyes.

  She wasn’t pulling away. She wasn’t leaving. She wasn’t angry.

  Just… still.

  The fire crackled in the hearth, and she should’ve said something, screamed, cried. Looked at him. But she did none of these things, claimed by a deceptive stillness, an eerie stillness, like a quiet wood where unseen wolves lurked deep within, waiting, hungering.

  Kehani would be giving him a son, and it wasn’t exactly how he’d planned to have a child, but… he would be a father. He would love his son. He would be in his life.

  There would be no more talk of Father claiming the boy. He would be brought to Tregarde as soon as he was old enough to leave his mother, and he’d be protected, raised as a Marcel. And Kehani, if she wanted her life to stay as it was, wouldn’t fight him on it. He wasn’t about to leave the protection of his son to anyone else.

  He wasn’t just… him anymore to her, but him and his child.

  “I know this changes things,” he said carefully.

  Her head turned slowly to his, her eyes narrowing, her lips twisting bitterly. She stiffened, clenching her hands into fists.

  Now she was angry.

  “It changes things,” he repeated, “but it doesn’t change how I feel about you. I love you, want to spend the rest of my life with you. We can still marry, live our lives together, have our own children when we’re ready, if you can accept that I’ll be in his life. Just don’t… walk away from what we have, and what we still could have.”

  She blew out an exasperated breath and shook her head.

  “Isn’t there room enough in my life for both of you?”

  She closed her eyes, and this time, the tears that had welled there now broke. “You’ll raise him.”

  “Of course.”

  “And you should. He’s your child.” She chewed her lip. “But I… By your side, I’ll watch a child growing up… But not my child. Not Sylvie.” She dropped her face in her hands. “I can’t even look at other children without seeing her. Not for months. Not now. Maybe not ever.”

  No, this couldn’t—she couldn’t—

  He wouldn’t live without his son, but he couldn’t live without Rielle either, and she was—what she was saying was—

  He couldn’t choose between living and breathing.

  There had to be some way that they could coexist. There had to be, because if there wasn’t, he would do anything to make it happen. He would say anything, do anything, swear anything—if she’d only just agree to try.

  But this… her hurt over losing Sylvie…

  If it were him, and his daughter, he’d be destroyed, too. He’d mourn the life she’d never have, the daughter whose face he’d never see, the family that would never be the same without her in it.

  But Rielle’s grief had frozen her, frozen her heart, and if she didn’t even attempt to thaw it, even a little, it would remain ice indefinitely. For months, years, maybe even decades, she’d freeze in the arctic wasteland of her grief, always looking back on a past she could never change instead of toward a future that could still hold some happiness for her, and a family that couldn’t erase her grief over Sylvie, but still had the power to warm her heart, give her enough joy to keep going. “Rielle, I know your loss was painful, but if you keep dwelling—”

  “You think I want to?” She uncovered her face, tear-streaked and red, for an anguished moment. “I loved her, wanted her, but I don’t want to have this hurt inside of me, to feel this pain, to look at other children and see only loss.”

  “Then think about moving forward, even taking a little step. Think about the family you could still have, if you want it.”

  She shot off the sofa, scowling at him, and rubbed her face. “How can you even say that? Haven’t you been listening to me at all? I can’t—”

  He stood and faced her squarely. “You can’t just stay frozen in the past forever, stuck in a tragedy you can never fix,” he said. “And if you can’t even think about moving forward, what do you want me to do, choose between you and my child?”

  “No!” She shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut, tears escaping their confines. “I’d never ask you to do that. But don’t tell me this changes nothing about our relationship. Don’t tell me everything is going to be fine. And don’t tell me to just move on and have another child.”

  She wiped at her face and paced before the fire, shaking her head.

  “What, then? How are we going to live a life together if you can’t accept this? If I can’t even ask you to accept this?”

  “You can ask me to accept this, Brennan,” she said softly, “but you can’t ask me to feel nothing about it. And you can’t tell me to just ‘move forward’ and have another child. I’m not ready. I can’t, not when I’d look at him and just see the one I lost. Don’t you understand? I need… I need time.”

  It had been three months already. “How much time?” He wanted a life with her, a family, but she’d made no steps forward yet, and seemed to have no plans of doing so anytime soon. But he loved his nephews, wanted his own, more than one… and she couldn’t even give him a time frame. “Do you need a year? Two years? Five? Ten? At least tell me so I know what to—”

  “I don’t know,” she whimpered. “I don’t know!” Louder this time. “However long it takes. I told you that. I told you that day in Stroppiata that I’d need time. I told you, and you agreed.”

  He had agreed, but he hadn’t agreed to give up. And now that he’d have a firstborn son…

  A firstborn son of a firstborn son…

  “Circumstances have changed,” he said delicately, reaching for her. But she pulled away. “It’s not just me anymore, Rielle. An innocent child will be born cursed. I don’t need you to tell me this instant, but I do need an answer. We need an answer.”

  Her face went slack. “What…?”

  “It’s not just about you and me anymore,” he said softly. “If you don’t have an answer for five years, ten, or more, and then decide you don’t want children, you’ll be allowing an innocent child to suffer for the sake of your grief.”

  She averted her gaze, curled her fingers into fists, and headed for the door.

  Rielle rushed down the stairs, as fast as her feet could take her. He was hot on her heels, but it didn’t matter, nothing mattered, nothing but one foot in front of the other, farther and farther from that room, that moment, that conversation, from everything he’d said to her and everything she’d lost and everything he’d wanted to sweep aside as if it were nothing at all.

  “Stop,” he called after her, boots pounding down the steps. “Talk to me—” He grabbed her arm, but she jerked it away.

  No, she’d tried talking to him, but he wasn’t interested in what she had to say, but only in what he wanted from her. They needed time, apart from each other, to sort out their feelings.

  She loved him, loved him with everything she had, and wanted to make him happy, but not at the price of herself. If that’s what he wanted, what he expected, and he wouldn’t bend, then she couldn’t stay here another minute or she’d break.

  He raced ahead of her and blocked her path, grabbed her shoulders. “You can’t run from this,” he said, shaking them. “But that’s what you’ve been doing, ever since Xir.”

  The solution to every problem wasn’t forcing it. “Grieving is not running, Brennan. What I’ve done my entire life, suppressing my emotions, ignoring my grief, that was running. No more. I can’t live that way.”

  He glared at her. “It’s gone on since—”

  “Yes, and it may go on even longer,” she sna
pped back at him, trying to wrest free. But his grip didn’t waver. “If I died, would you just replace me? Would you just find a new woman to marry and move on?” She searched his eyes as their intensity faded. “Or would you see my face in every potential love? See happy couples and think only of your loss? Wouldn’t you wait until the ice of your heart melted, so it could open again, welcome new love?”

  “That’s not the same,” he bit out.

  “Isn’t it?” She held his gaze until he blinked and shook his head. It wasn’t wrong of him to want to know when she’d be ready, but it wasn’t wrong of her to not know yet either. “You push me to move on, but is it really for my sake?”

  “And my son’s sake?”

  She leaned forward, into his space. “Your first Change manifested when you were fifteen, Brennan. We have over a decade to spare him the curse. So why are you pushing me so hard now? Not for my sake. Not for his.” She pushed his hands off her shoulders, and expressionless, he let them fall. “We agreed to be honest with each other, but you need to be honest with yourself first, and ask yourself why. What pushes you to hurt me for this, to demand I set aside my grief to fit your timeframe, to try to force me to your will… and against mine?”

  Blinking, he shook his head.

  No answer. Until he stopped this pushing, until he admitted the truth to himself, there could be no peace between them. And she wouldn’t stay here and be told what to feel, how, and when to move on.

  She stepped around him and descended the stairs. She’d grabbed her cloak and her coin purse, and she wasn’t stuck here. The other candidates were staying at an inn called Staff & Stein. That’s where she’d go. That’s where she’d stay until he came to his senses.

  She’d almost reached the landing when the low grit of his embittered voice called her name.

  “You’re going to him, aren’t you?” he spat. “You just can’t help yourself, can you? As soon as the opportunity arises, it’s back to him. Always to him. Well, you know what? He doesn’t want you. He won’t have you. So go. Throw yourself at his feet and cry in his arms. For all the good it will do you.”

  She froze, a shudder weaving through her like a needle, and when she turned to him, she threw an ice spike just off to the side of his head, buried in the wall.

  He flinched, eyed it, and the contorted frown began to fade.

  Tears seeped from her eyes. I wasn’t—

  Gathering what little of her composure remained, she glared at him through the veil of tears, at his maddened rigidity that now wavered and unraveled. He caught the railing.

  “You are a beast, Brennan Karandis Marcel.”

  Chapter 47

  Brennan stood on the stairs, frozen, staring at the emptiness where Rielle had been. She was leaving.

  His hand anchored to his hip.

  Why had he said it? He’d known, almost as soon as the words had left his mouth, that they were wrong, that she wasn’t going back to Jon, that she wouldn’t. And yet, he’d said them anyway. She’d glanced over her shoulder, face tight and squinting as if it had hurt to look at him, as if the mere sight had been claws through the heart. She’d looked at him like that.

  And she was leaving. He couldn’t let her leave, not before he apologized, took that back.

  Breaking free of his thoughts, he rushed down the stairs, only to run into Marfa on the landing.

  She moved into his path, planted her feet squarely, and glared at him, her eyes flashing amber, her fangs emerging as she growled, low and menacing.

  He froze, staring her down, but she didn’t budge.

  A hand hooked his arm. Una’s. “Bren,” she said gently.

  “Let. Me. Go,” he snarled, yanking his arm. But she clung tightly.

  “If she’s leaving, she wants space from you.” Una tightened her grip. “Give her that, or you’ll both end up saying things you don’t mean.”

  He’d already done that.

  Cooling, he lowered his arm, then took a step back.

  Marfa, her fangs bared, took two steps back before rushing for the front doors, presumably where Rielle had exited.

  Una tugged his arm. “What happened?”

  “Kehani is having my child,” he said, and she gasped. “I just told Rielle it changed nothing between us. I asked her for an heir—while she’s still grieving a miscarriage.”

  Una’s lips twisted as she winced. “Oh, Bren…”

  He dropped his head in a hand. How he’d said all that, he had no idea. That conversation had gone nothing like he’d planned, other than telling her the truth. That should have been it. He should have told her, assuaged her concerns, then ended the night with her in his arms, comforting her, reminding her she was loved and appreciated.

  Una patted his bicep. “Tell me all about it… and I’m sure you could use a drink.”

  So frayed, he couldn’t bring himself to argue when a drink sounded like the best thing in the world right now.

  He followed her to the library, where she poured him a snifter of brandy and shooed him toward the sofa by the hearth. While he sipped the warm comfort of his brandy and told her everything save for the curse, she listened attentively and leaned against him, laying her head on his shoulder.

  “She told me to ask myself why I pressed her, to be honest,” he said, then took a long sip. He’d already told her why—to balm her grief, and to spare his son the curse.

  “When she was leaving, you accused her of going to Jon,” she said gently. “Is that how you feel? Like she’s just waiting for an excuse to go back to him?”

  There was no going back to Jon. The man would be dead inside of a year or two, and had stated, very clearly, that he had no intention of being with Rielle. That he’d never allow her to suffer with him as he met his end, no matter what it took. There had been no lie in his voice, no lie in his pulse. Just cold conviction.

  But… Rielle didn’t know that. For all she knew, the situation hadn’t changed at all, and maybe she believed that the future she’d thrown away—being a royal mistress for the rest of her life—was still available to her.

  Maybe she occasionally weighed discarding a future as his wife in order to become Jon’s lover, all the while ignorant that she would never again be Jon’s lover no matter what she gave up or did.

  Maybe he believed she wanted that sometimes.

  “Sometimes,” he confessed, and Una nodded against his shoulder.

  “What do you think holds her back?”

  He shook his head. “We’re getting married in four months.”

  Una took a drink. “So, a promise? You think if she wanted to be with him, loved him, imagined the rest of her life with him, that a promise would keep her?”

  Not when she said it like that. “What are you saying?”

  A heavy sigh. “Is it possible, Bren, that there are no nefarious intentions on her part and it is your insecurity ruining things between you?”

  He scoffed. Insecurity. No. Never.

  “You act like Nox’s gift to women—”

  “I am Nox’s gift to women.”

  “—but when it comes down to it, you just can’t believe your fiancée might actually want to be with you, and only you, forever.”

  He frowned. Was that it…? If Jon weren’t king, wouldn’t she have chosen him? Even after all that had happened in Courdeval, wouldn’t she have…?

  But he’d had the past months with her. Things were different now. He shook his head. Rielle wanted him—his werewolf senses left no uncertainty. “I know she loves me, but—”

  “But you don’t know if she loves him more. You don’t know if she’ll stay.”

  There was still a risk, wasn’t there? That she’d leave him? If she found out Jon was dying, she could throw everything away to go be with him in his last couple years, few months, whatever he had left.

  But not if she had a child.

  Once she gave birth to his child, she wouldn’t leave. Not Rielle. She couldn’t, could she? Never.

  He’d wan
ted a family and he’d wanted her, but asking her to live that future before she was ready would be binding her to him irreversibly. Cruelty to the extreme. That same ugliness taking over.

  He dropped his head in his hand and squeezed his eyes shut. Great Wolf, if she really loved Jon more, would he want to keep her in misery? Would that make anyone happy? Tying her to him if she wanted to leave?

  No.

  That would be his own special kind of misery. Loving a woman who wanted to leave but couldn’t. He rubbed his forehead. He’d wanted to make her happy, had wanted her, but somehow those two desires had fallen out of balance.

  No—he’d let them. He’d let it happen, and had made a mess of things. Maybe even one he couldn’t fix.

  His son was a part of his life now, and Rielle had seemed willing to accept that. That part of their argument seemed resolved.

  But the other…

  He still wanted a family with her, but it had to be when she was certain she could commit to that next step. And not a moment before.

  “If she loves you and wants to be with you, all of this is just going to… It’ll push her away. It won’t be a question of whether it’ll all go up in flames, but when.”

  He sat still, Una’s words sinking in.

  How he’d treated her, ignored her feelings, thinking that making her his, forever, would be the answer to everything—she might not forgive him. And maybe she shouldn’t. “What should I do?”

  “Apologize,” Una said, patting his arm. “And mean it. And maybe beg a little.”

  Beg. He almost wanted to laugh, but—Nox’s black breath—he wasn’t beyond begging her forgiveness.

  He straightened. “Well, thank you.”

  She grinned. “I like her and want her in our family… but things have to work between the two of you, or it would be for nothing.”

  He stood, rubbing his forehead. There were no words for how badly he’d ruined everything.

  He had a mess to clean up, and didn’t even know where to begin.

  In the dark, Rielle strode from the Marcel villa’s grounds and cast a candlelight spell to light her way.