“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Even if I hadn’t married Ben, I think I would have tried to find a way to go with you guys. I love Rebecca, but you’ve become my sister just as much as she is – and she has Evelyn now. I missed you and William when you were gone more than I think I’ll miss everyone here.”
“What about Thomas?”
A shadow passed over Linnea’s face, but then she nodded toward Owen. “It sounds like that problem might find a way to solve itself.”
“Maybe so.” Quinn had no idea what to make of it.
“If he’s right, I can find a way to make it happen,” Linnea whispered.
“If he’s right?” Quinn was speaking under her breath, though Owen didn’t seem to be paying any attention to them at all. “He was right when he dreamed that William needed that medicine. He brought it.”
“Well, then, he’s probably right, and we’ll all be together in Philotheum, and you won’t have to worry about dealing with a baby nurse hand-picked by Sophia. Which she is busily trying to do, you know.”
“What?”
“Oh, yeah. William got a message last week from Ruth about how Sophia was driving her nuts, making people come in and practice putting sheets on the cradle and listing out their daily baby care schedules to the minute.”
Quinn had to take a deep breath in through her nose and let it out slowly. Ruth was the head of housekeeping at the castle in Philotheum – and Quinn’s biggest ally in the daily struggle for control she had with Sophia.
“There’s a reason William didn’t tell you about the message. He wants to try to get it sorted out before you have to deal with it, but I think you should know how serious it is, if there’s any chance we could come up with a much happier solution.”
“How long am I required to allow the old queen to stay in the castle? Forever, since she’s my grandmother?”
“My parents built a really nice estate by the sea for my grandmother less than a cycle after my grandfather died and my father was crowned. And I don’t think she was as bad as Sophia is.”
“She wants to take over my child.”
“Yes, she does. She wants to have a say in every detail of everything you ever do with him. What she really wants is to raise him herself.”
“Well, that is not going to happen. Whether she’s my grandmother or not. I’m tired of hearing people say ‘but she means well’ – I don’t think she does. I think what she says is exactly what she means. She’s the woman who raised Tolliver.”
“I know. But relax, Quinn. You’ve got a couple more weeks here in Eirentheos with him, and then I’ll be going back with you.”
“Thank the Maker for that, Nay. Really. I’ve missed you so much.”
“I’ve missed you too, Quinn,” Linnea said, putting an arm around her and squeezing her shoulder. “I love you – even if your baby hates me.”
Quinn shrugged. “Nobody can hate you forever, Nay. You won’t let them.”
“That’s true.” She bent down and kissed the top of the baby’s head. “You’re not going to have a choice but to love your Auntie Linnea, little man. You’re stuck with me, too.”
“Zander!” Owen called from the bench below them. “Up here!”
Zander, Ben, William, Mia, and Thomas had all just arrived at the field, after going upstairs and getting changed for the game.
It was still just so weird to see Zander here; she wondered whether their tenuous peace would hold.
He was smiling as he climbed up into the bleachers to sit by Owen, though, which was a good sign. She had meant what she’d said earlier – there was no part of her that wanted to fight with him. She’d always cared about him, even when she’d broken up with him, and now that he had saved William’s life, and brought Owen to her – she would hate it if he was miserable and angry the whole time he was here.
“What do you think?” Zander asked, holding his arms out to display one of Ben’s green-and-white-striped crumple shirts. “Do I look like I belong here yet?”
“Next thing you know, you’ll be eating our vegetables – and liking them,” Linnea teased.
He rolled his eyes, turning his attention to Linnea. “I wouldn’t go that far. Are you playing too?” he asked her, sounding a little surprised.
She was just finishing pulling her long, dark brown hair into a ponytail. Her eyes narrowed at his tone. “Just because I’m a girl doesn’t mean I can’t knock you into the ground at crumple.”
“Oh?” Zander’s eyes twinkled at the challenge. “It’s hardly fair when you have a husband who would slice open my throat if I touched you.”
Linnea shrugged as she stood. “I never said I’d play fair.”
“Girls,” Zander said, shaking his head.
“I know, right? Always one step ahead of us, no matter how hard we try.” Thomas had his hand on Mia’s shoulder as he spoke. It made Quinn happy to see that. Maybe things were looking up between the two of them. She wondered if they’d talked.
A moment later, though, one of the babies started crying, and Mia ducked away from him to see if she could help. It was a normal enough thing, but the look on Thomas’ face as he watched her go told Quinn that no, they hadn’t talked, and that things weren’t going so well.
And considering what Owen had just told her about Mia…this was getting complicated.
“Are you going to play, too, Quinn?” Zander asked, taking Linnea’s place on one side of her as Linnea climbed down toward the field to help Ben and her other brothers finish setting up the goals. William took the seat on the other side of her.
“Hopefully I’ll get to take a few turns as an alternate, if this little guy will let me.”
“You’re playing, right, William?” Zander asked.
“I wish I was. My ordeal with this isn’t over yet, though,” he said, tapping gingerly on the bandage wrapped around his arm. “This is killing me today; I don’t think I could throw a ball if I tried. And I have to be careful with it anyway. There’s at least one of the bite marks that needs stitches when Nathaniel gets back. If I get tackled, I’m going to make it bleed everywhere.”
“Where is Doctor Rose, anyway?” Zander asked.
“He went to stay for a couple of nights at a clinic in a village a few hours from here,” William answered. “He’s getting married in a couple of moons and his fiancée lives in the village. He’s been helping her get her farm ready to sell. He was going to come back later today, but I sent him a message last night about you bringing the medicine, and now he’s going to take another day or two.”
“Doctor Rose … finally getting married. That would shock some people at home.”
“Not nearly as much as they’d be shocked to find out about me and William.” Quinn said.
“That’s true.” Zander actually chuckled.
The baby had finished, and she lifted him up to her shoulder to burp him.
“So this is him,” Zander said. “Your … son.”
“This is him.” She turned him so that he was facing Zander.
“He really doesn’t have a name yet?”
“Not officially. We’re going to name him after my father, though – my real father, who died when I was little. Samuel.”
“Samuel Owen!” Owen piped up. The look of pride on his face sent shivers through Quinn’s body, and she had to blink a few times.
“Wow. I never… Wow, Quinn. He’s beautiful.”
“Thank you. I kind of think so.”
At that moment, the baby let out an enormous belch.
“And a real prince already, I see,” Zander teased, as they all laughed.
“I’m going to go and find Alice, okay?” Owen asked. Stephen and Charlotte had just arrived with the rest of the younger children.
“Of course,” Quinn answered.
They all watched Owen run down the bleachers to join them. Although, in theory, they were preparing for a game of crumple, everyone was kind of milling around, chatting more than anything. Two large tables had b
een set up along the side of the field, and they were covered with food – bread and toppings for sandwiches, many different kinds of fruit, and fixings for salad.
“Is this what you usually do in a castle?” Zander wondered.
“Sort of,” Quinn said. “Today is Sixth Day – the first day of what we would think of as the weekend, so it’s a bit more relaxed. Almost all of the servants are off either today or tomorrow, or both, so there’s not a lot of hot food. The family usually tries to spend more time together. And the weather’s really nice. We’ve had a lot of days where there’s either been rain or snow, or the ground’s been too wet to play, so we’ve kind of missed crumple. Or they have. I don’t think I’ve played since before I got pregnant.”
William put his hand on her knee. “You really want to play, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I kind of do.”
“You’re sure you’re up for it?”
“I had a baby, Will, not a traumatic injury.”
“Sorry, I was just asking.”
She put her hand over his. “You do take good care of me. Sorry if I’m ungrateful about it sometimes.”
Zander coughed and stared intently down at the field. “They look like they might finally be getting ready to start.”
Quinn followed his gaze. William’s two oldest brothers, Maxwell and Simon were standing on the sidelines, trying to gather up teams.
“I have no idea what I’m doing,” Zander said. “But I’m going to go figure it out.”
“Let me hold Samuel,” William said, as Quinn watched Zander walk away.
She looked at him in surprise. “It hasn’t been twenty-four hours yet.”
“I know, but it’s been more than half that, and I figure it’s time for me to compromise a little, too. Besides, I miss him. I need some father-son time. If I don’t stop being an idiot, he’s going to forget how much he likes to snuggle with me, and then he’ll cry like he does when Linnea holds him.”
“Thank you,” she said, laying the baby in the crook of his good arm.
William’s whole body relaxed a little – just enough for Quinn to be able to see it – when the baby twisted contentedly, searching for the most comfortable position, and the sight flooded her with warmth, with love for this man and the child they shared.
“This feels good,” William said, taking hold of her hand as he looked down at Samuel. “I’ve missed it so much.”
She smiled. “Yell down to me if he gets hungry.”
“We’ll be fine, love.” He didn’t let go of her hand like she expected him to, instead he pulled her toward him. “Come here for a second.”
She raised an eyebrow, confused until she realized what he was trying to do. The kiss was tender and sweet, and very hard to pull away from. When she finally managed it, she gave him a wry look. “That wasn’t because you’re jealous of him, was it?”
He shook his head, looking sincere enough that she believed him. “I was avoiding doing that while he was watching, actually. I know you’re mine, I don’t need to rub his face in it. I needed that for me.”
Smiling, she kissed him on the forehead. “I needed it too.”
“Wish I could play today – I’d kind of like to be down there when Zander experiences his first taste of sports in our world.”
She giggled. “I’ll fill you in on any funny things he says later.”
“Thanks.” He rubbed the back of her hand with his thumb. “Things seem to be going pretty well with him right now. I’d suggest playing on the same team as him if you want to make sure to keep it that way.”
“I love you,” she said, squeezing his hand.
“I love you, too. Now go have fun.”
* * *
“That game is exhausting,” Zander said to Quinn when the game finally broke for halftime.
“We’re winning, though.”
“Yeah, no thanks to me.”
Quinn shrugged, taking a plate from the long table and beginning to fill it. “Linnea’s an intense goalkeeper.” She was being nice. Quinn hadn’t had any difficulty scoring four goals against her. Even Queen Charlotte had managed a goal when she’d traded in and out with Quinn for short breaks.
“I never pegged you for such a sports girl,” he said. “You never played any in Bristlecone.”
“I never did a lot of things in Bristlecone.”
“I suppose that’s true.” He chuckled, looking up into the bleachers to watch William, who was carefully climbing down with the baby in his arms.
“Are you doing all right with all of this?” she asked him.
“I don’t know. I think I’ve decided to just ignore reality for the next ten days. Pretend I’m on some sort of weird, unexpected vacation or something.”
Truthfully, he’d been enjoying himself today. Crumple was fun, and he was really enjoying William’s older brothers; they were so different than anyone he had imagined being related to William Rose – or at least the version of William that had existed in Bristlecone. Here, he was discovering an entirely new side of him.
He’d been playing so hard that even the strange spreads for the sandwiches set out along the table looked almost appealing. He was even sort of tempted by some of the bowls of fresh fruit – although he was definitely still intimidated by the green berries Quinn was scooping into her bowl.
“What are those?” he asked her.
“They’re called glasberries, and they’re amazing.”
“That’s kind of a weird name.” Although, for some reason, the name was ringing a bell, which was impossible – where would he have heard it before? “What do they taste like?”
“Um … they taste like glasberries.”
“You’re very helpful.”
“I don’t know Zander. They’re kind of sweet. What does an apple taste like? If you want to know what a glasberry tastes like, you should eat one.”
“They’re green.”
“Blueberries are green on the inside, and you eat those. Apples can be green, so can pears. What’s wrong with green?”
He rolled his eyes, but held out his hand. She dug in her bowl for one of the berries, and gave it to him.
“Well?” she asked, watching him as he chewed.
“It’s good. I don’t know if I’d call it amazing, but they’re definitely not as scary as I thought.”
“They’re my favorite food here. I’ll be sad when it’s the middle of the winter and we can’t find any.”
And suddenly, he remembered exactly where he’d heard the word before. “Quinn, do you know someone named Alvin?”
Her reaction to the name was immediate, her whole expression changed as she looked around the field and the bleachers, just as William reached them. “Yes, I do. Why, is he here?”
“Is who here?” William asked.
“He just asked me if I know Alvin,” Quinn answered.
William started looking around, too.
Zander frowned. “Wouldn’t you have seen me if I was talking to him here?”
“With Alvin, you never know,” William said, “but if it wasn’t here, how do you know about him? Did you see him somewhere last night or this morning?”
“No. I saw him in Bristlecone.”
“In Bristlecone?” Quinn looked shocked. “Like when you and Owen were crossing the bridge?”
“It was before – I wasn’t with Owen. It was a few days ago – in Bristlecone time, I guess.”
Quinn’s shock had turned to alarm as she looked at William. “You don’t think the gate has been open for longer, do you?”
“I don’t think so,” Zander interrupted her. “I don’t know exactly how all of it works, but Owen was carrying around this big chunk of rock that he put in this weird hole in the ground before we went through the gate. If I’m right, I don’t think it opened until he did that.”
She nodded. “It’s a magnet. I don’t know how it works either, but we know there’s somehow a magnet on each side. We tried to find the one here, but we never could. Alvin t
old Owen where the one on the other side was, though. We never knew for sure if he was the one who closed it, but that was our guess.”
“Well, now you know.”
“Where did you see Alvin?” William asked.
“It was actually close to the gate. I was walking down by the river, and he just came up to me and started talking to me. He introduced himself … and he mentioned you.” He didn’t like saying that last part, because he was afraid it was going to open up all sorts of other questions about why he’d been down at the river in the first place. He didn’t want to admit to how much he’d been thinking about Quinn back in Bristlecone.
But nobody commented about him. “Do you think there could be another way to open it?” Quinn asked. “Or another gate?”
“Anything is possible, but … it’s Alvin. I don’t know if he needs a gate.”
“I suppose that’s true,” Quinn said, setting her half-filled plate down so she could reach for the baby, who was beginning to fuss. Her eyes were still scanning the field as if she expected him to be here.
“Wait … what?” Zander spluttered. “How could he not need a gate?”
“Do you want me to finish making your plate?” William asked Quinn, seemingly unperturbed by the whole idea. “You don’t have a sandwich yet.”
“Yeah, he’s hungry again, I think. I’m going to go sit down and feed him. Can you get me a drink, too?”
“Of course. I’ll come find you in a second.”
Quinn carried the baby back toward the bleachers, leaving Zander in open-mouthed shock. Was this kind of conversation just normal for them?
When his thoughts were finally halfway coherent again, he turned back to William. “Are you having a greenhouse built wherever you live so Quinn can have those berries all year?”
“Yes,” William answered. “Although it’s supposed to be a surprise. Who told you?” He frowned. “Linnea wouldn’t have told you.”
“No. It was that guy. Alvin. I had no idea what he was talking about. He called you the king of Phila-whatever.”
“Philotheum.”
“Whatever.”
Canes of Divergence (Dusk Gate Chronicles) Page 20
