No one below could see that armed sentinels and a number of priests stood just inside the doors that opened from the Level Six meeting room to the balcony. If Liane tried anything, anything at all, she would not get far. She had been instructed to remain still and quiet, to look and behave as a proper empress should, at least for a few minutes.
Sebestyen gave a curt bow and stepped back into the room. He held the baby snugly with one arm and drew Liane with him with the other. The cheering died, and the crowd below continued with their celebrating, which included drinking to excess and dancing like clumsy fools.
One of the priests who had been entrusted with the care of the heir reached for the baby. Liane came to life as he did so, her head snapping to the child and then to Sebestyen. “Let me hold him," she asked breathlessly.
“I’m sure that’s not wise,” Sebestyen answered, and yet he did not release the child to the impatient priest. In the corner of the room, Gadhra waited. She would be with the escort that would see Liane back to her prison. The witch shook her head, indicating that she did not approve.
“I’ll willingly do anything you ask of me,” Liane whispered. “Anything. Just let me hold him for a few minutes.”
He should not allow it, after what she’d done, but the pain he’d been suffering increased as he watched her face. She was desperate. He had never known Liane to be desperate until this moment.
Ignoring the protests of the priest and the obvious disapproval of the witch, Sebestyen cut the bonds at her wrists and handed the baby to Liane. She took her son with tender, anxious arms, and she actually smiled. “He has grown so much.”
“Yes, he has.”
“My goodness, he looks very much like Duran,” she said, her fingers barely ruffling the pale strands of his fine hair.
He had always been jealous of Liane, and as she mentioned another man’s name, he felt a surge of anger. “Who is Duran?” he asked sharply, shooing the pesky priest away.
“My brother,” she snapped.
The anger faded as quickly as it had come upon him. “I did not know you had a brother.”
“I once had four of them. Duran was the baby. He’s dead, beheaded by one of your soldiers last year.”
“He was a rebel, then?”
Liane nodded; she did not take her eyes from the baby. “Yes, as were the other three. Valdis and Stepan are also dead. I killed the man who murdered Duran. I cut his throat and watched him die on the floor of one of your prison cells. Only Kane lives.” She lifted her gaze briefly to look at him. “Do you remember him? I suppose you knew Kane only as Ryn, which was a false name. He’s the rebel who took Sophie Fyne out of this palace. He is your son’s uncle.” She seemed to take some perverse pleasure in the fact that his child had rebels among his blood relations.
Liane dismissed him and looked at the baby again. In spite of her apparent refusal to eat, she had not lost all the weight she’d gained during her pregnancy. The slight roundness to her face and her bosom suited her very well, and as he watched her, he was assaulted with unexpected sensations he could not push away: love, regret, hopelessness, ruination.
It was ruination that he felt most deeply. Ruination not at the hand of traitors or rebels, but by his own.
He leaned forward to speak to Liane in a low voice no one else could hear. Gadhra and the priests and the sentinels could see, but they could not hear his words. “I wish I had made different choices, Liane. I wish when Arik had professed a desire for the throne I had given it to him. I wish I had offered my bastard brother this palace and all that goes with it, and taken nothing from this place but you. Maybe we would have been happy, then. Maybe we would both know peace.”
She lifted her head and looked him in the eye. “Do you think I could ever know peace with the man who disposed of my second-born son because he was inconvenient. What did you do to him, Sebestyen? Did he suffer?” Tears filled Liane’s eyes. “Did you do what had to be done yourself, or did you pass the unpleasant task to another so your hands would not be soiled?”
He wanted to tell her that the child he’d named Alixandyr was alive and healthy, that he had never intended to murder his own flesh and blood. This is what she thought of him. She thought him a monster who would coldly murder his own babe...and that hurt more than anything he had imagined possible.
She returned her attention to the baby in her arms and even bent down to kiss his soft forehead. “I, too, wish that I had made different decisions.”
Perhaps she wished, as he did, that they could go back and undo all that had gone wrong. “Do you?”
“Yes.” She lifted her head and looked him squarely and bravely in the eye, and she whispered, as he had, so no one else could hear. “I wish with all of my being that when I finally had the opportunity to stand before you with a knife in my hand, I’d found the strength and the courage to drive the blade through your heart.”
Chapter Nineteen
“We're moving away from the palace!" Lucan complained. It was not the first complaint he’d voiced in the past two days, since they had been joined by the Anwyn party.
“That’s correct,” Juliet answered calmly.
“Exactly how long do you expect me to wait?”
Juliet cast a gentle smile at him. “I expect you to wait until the time is right, as any shrewd soldier would.”
He continued to grumble. “I don’t need an army to do what needs to be done. I could turn back and go into the palace on my own.”
“You could,” Juliet countered. “But you won’t.”
Her confidence told Isadora that while Lucan did not like waiting, he would.
Juliet smiled at Isadora. “This man of yours is very impatient.”
“He can be.” But there are times when he has an abundance of patience.
Juliet grinned as if she knew her sister’s thoughts. Maybe she did.
Isadora took Lucan’s hand as they continued on, moving deeper into the forest, following a trail that just barely lived up to its name. They were moving toward Sophie, Juliet said. Within a matter of hours, she would finally be reunited with both her sisters.
There would be hugs and kisses and apologies. There would be a depth of gratitude she had never before known.
And then they would address the issue of the curse. With Juliet’s enhanced powers and what Isadora had learned from Thayne, perhaps they could make what had always seemed hopeless—breaking the Fyne Curse—a reality.
Thayne had said that before that happened, they would each hold that which they’d believed to be impossible in their hands. One, two, three. What could those impossible things be? If she could easily conceive of them, they wouldn’t be so impossible, now would they?
One step at a time. First, the reunion. Then saving Liane and her baby. Only then would she have time to ponder the details involved in breaking the curse.
“I do not like this,” Lucan said in a lowered voice.
“I can see that.”
“Your sister has taken complete charge of my battle plan.”
“She knows what is best.”
He scoffed but did not offer an argument. “The redheaded, surly soldier, he eyes me as if he would like to rip off my head.”
“If you persist in yelling at his daughter, he might try.”
Isadora would have thought it a great coincidence that she and Juliet had both found their fathers in recent past, but if she had learned nothing else, she knew that there was no coincidence in life. All that happened was meant to be. Juliet said she’d seen that Sophie had found her father, too. What did the three men Lucinda Fyne had taken as lovers have to do with what was happening here and now? Was it possible that they would play a part in ending the curse that had kept Lucinda from daring to love any one of them?
Maybe it was just a gift, of sorts, that these men had reappeared in their lives, one after another. As women, she and her sisters had rarely spoken of the men who’d sired them, but as children there had been moments when they’d wondere
d, aloud to one another and in quieter moments to themselves, about their fathers. Their das. Their papas. Maybe, just maybe, that long ago wondering was being rewarded now, years later. Could they have drawn the men to them...or rather, drawn themselves to the men?
It was only supposition, and still...she wondered.
“Juliet has become a bit demanding since being made Queen,” Isadora observed. “I suppose that’s only natural.”
“I suppose,” he grumbled.
She squeezed his hand. “Don’t worry. You’ll like Sophie. She’s so gentle and sweet-tempered she wouldn’t harm a fly.”
“Get your hands off of me, you filthy, wretched, good-for-nothing man!” Sophie screamed.
Kane looked quite taken aback at her outburst. Then again, he had missed labor with Ariana, and had no idea what to expect.
Sophie’s anger turned to tears. “I’m sorry, but it hurts, and it’s too early, and I tried to make the baby wait a while longer, but she won’t wait, she insists on coming now, and the timing couldn’t be worse.” She gasped for breath. “I don’t like pain. I know another beautiful daughter is worth any sacrifice, and I should be stoic and mature and I should suffer in silence, but why does it have to hurt so much? Pain is not good, Kane, and I don’t like it at all. It just isn’t right that something so beautiful should be marred by misery.” Her apology turned to blubbering, but when a hapless soldier opened the tent flap, she screamed at him, “Get out!”
Well beyond the tent, the flame of the campfire grew with a burst of power, flooding the campsite with light for a moment. What little bit of sense she had left grasped how dangerous directing her anger there could be, so Sophie turned her roiling passions up, away from the rebels and friends who camped near the tent where she lay. In the distance, a crack of thunder rumbled in the night.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I do not handle my emotions well when I’m in labor.”
Kane nodded. “I can see that. Should I clear the campsite? Are the soldiers here in any danger?”
“No,” Sophie answered, only slightly offended. “Odd things may happen, I’ll grant you that, but I promise not to hurt anyone.” Ariana was in another tent placed far away from this one, in the keeping of Maddox Sulyen—Sophie’s father, Ariana’s and this child’s grandfather.
“How long before the baby comes?” Kane asked, a touch of hope in his voice.
“By morning, if we’re very lucky,” Sophie answered. His eyes went wide, and in the glow of the lantern it seemed he paled. “By morning?” he asked, as if he might have misheard.
“If we’re lucky.”
Kane nodded and began to prepare. He had never delivered a baby, but then neither had anyone else among the rebels. This was not Sophie’s first child, however, and she would be able to direct him as the hours passed. He helped her to remove her clothes, and then he laid her on a thick bed of blankets and the finest sheets available to such a poor band of soldiers. He wrapped her warmly, and then he sat beside her and held her hand.
Ariana had been born in a soft bed in the family cabin on Fyne Mountain. This little girl would come into the world in a small tent, padded ground as her bed. For now.
Sophie squeezed Kane’s hand. “Just remember, no matter what I say in the hours to come—I do love you.”
“I love you, too.” She could tell he was more scared than she was about what was to come and about the fact that the baby was arriving early.
She could feel a new pain coming, and she tried to ignore the warning signs. “The next child will be born in a bed. With a midwife to care to the delivery while you wait in another room, as is right and proper for an anxious new father.”
“Maybe in a little house on a farm,” Kane said.
“A farm?” she said, her voice rising in hope. “You’ve never said much about what you want when this war is done. I thought maybe you’d like to be a soldier, still.”
“Arik offered me a post in the palace.”
Sophie’s heart lurched. “He did?”
“I declined.”
She squeezed Kane’s hand very tightly as the pain grew to a height she could not ignore. As disturbing as the physical pain was the realization that ending the curse would now be all but impossible. Without Kane’s baby inside her, without the added power, she would be weak again. Just a few months ago, a year together had seemed like such a long time. A year to share love, and try to find a way to end the curse, and simply be together.
Eight months later, that year seemed very short.
Sophie swore, using words she had heard in her months with the rebels. Above her head, another rumble of thunder sounded in protest.
The pain faded. She took a deep breath. And Kane leaned down to kiss her sweating forehead.
“I like the idea of a farm,” she said, as if their conversation had not been interrupted.
“Me, too.”
“I think you have seen enough soldiering in your lifetime.”
“That I have.”
Kane was months from thirty. Mere months! If she did not break the curse, he would not live to see that birthday—or his farm.
The wind came in unexpectedly, pushing against the travelers and all but forcing them back. Overhead, thunder and lightning crashed and crackled on occasion, coming and going, coming and going. No rain had begun to fall as of yet, but Juliet had assured them rain would soon fall.
They had walked through the night, at Juliet’s insistence. Even though she was very pregnant and considerably smaller than any of the soldiers she commanded, she led the way with assurance and without a hint of tiredness.
Dawn was coming, graying the sky, but true light was not yet upon them as Isadora ran past a handful of soldiers to reach her sister. She did not have to look back to know that Lucan was with her.
“This is not a natural storm,” she shouted, to be heard above the wind.
“No, it is not,” Juliet said, without slowing her step.
“Sophie?”
“She’s in labor.”
The soldiers fought against the wind, and the trees in the forest danced dangerously, limbs bending almost to the breaking point. The lightning flashes and rumbles of thunder came closer together than they had when the storm had begun. “She’s causing this?”
“Yes.”
“This didn’t happen last time,” Isadora argued.
“If you will remember, it did rain a bit, there toward the end. We didn’t think anything about it, at the time. Sophie is much stronger than she was when Ariana was born. Frighteningly so. She cannot always control what happens around her.” The wind whipped tangled red curls, but Juliet did not seem to be affected by the gusts she fought to move forward. “We must hurry.”
Behind her, Lucan mumbled, “I could not have fallen in love with an only child. No, that would be much too simple and ordinary and easy.”
“If you love me, then you must love my sisters, too.”
“I did not say I would not love them,” Lucan said in a louder voice. “I only made the observation that they are not simple or ordinary or easy.”
“Neither am I.”
“No.” He took her hand, as he had often through the night “You are none of those things.”
She threaded her fingers through Lucan’s. Her small hand felt at home enveloped by his larger, stronger hand. With him behind and beside her, she felt safer than she ever had before. Nothing but danger and uncertainty awaited them in the days to come, and yet she was not afraid. “What if we never have easy?” she asked as she lifted her face to the wind and dancing fingers of lightning whipped across the sky.
“Then we will make our happiness surrounded by all that is difficult. If we can do that, then when easy comes, we will have no worries.”
No worries. It was a nice idea, but at the moment she could see nothing but worries.
There was a moment of tension when Juliet’s soldiers and Arik’s rebels met, but Juliet quickly commanded truce, and there was truce. Isador
a still had a difficult time understanding how and why her sister had changed—and then there were those moments when she looked at Juliet and realized that in many ways the middle Fyne sister had not changed at all.
Sophie was easy to find. Dawn lit the camp, which had been ravaged by wind. The lightning storm continued, and at last the rain began, falling slowly but in fat drops that plopped on the ground and the soldiers and the sisters. “There.” Juliet pointed—a gesture that was unnecessary— to a large tent in the middle of the campsite. A ray of unnatural light rose from the tent, and it was from that ray of light that the storm originated.
Like the rebels, the Anwyn soldiers and Lucan hung back, keeping their distance. Juliet and Isadora fought the wind and rain to run to the tent.
Inside the tent, Sophie was screaming vile words to her beloved husband, and Kane looked as if he were about to pass out on his feet. Apparently it had been a long night for both of them.
Kane’s head whipped around as he heard them enter. Isadora had not thought the man would ever be relieved to see his wife’s sisters, but at the moment that’s what she saw on his face: relief. “I don’t know why or how you’re here,” he said, ‘‘but thank the heavens.” He studied Juliet carefully, noting the changes in her appearance, and his forehead wrinkled with a frown. There was no time for explanations. Not now. “I thought I could do this on my own, but I need your help.”
The contraction ended, and Sophie lifted her head wearily. She even smiled, though it was certainly not her best effort. “You’re here! Both of you!” The raindrops that had been pelting the tent gentled, and the wind died down substantially. Kane seemed to breathe more normally.
Isadora gave the weary man a glare. “You may wait outside with the other men.”
Kane backed away from Sophie, but he did not leave the tent. “I’m not going anywhere. I need your help, and I’m grateful that you’ve come, but I’m not running away now.” He moved to give the women room to hover around Sophie, but he did not leave, and Isadora did not try to force him from the tent. If he’d survived Sophie’s labor so far, he deserved to stay.
The Star Witch Page 24
