pang and power

by Saintcrowe, Val

  She pounded her fists against his chest, but not very hard. She didn’t have the energy to really hurt him.

  “It’s not your responsibility to fix the world, Nicce.”

  “But I feel like I have to. But there’s a voice—”

  “It’s lying to you,” he said. “That voice is lying.” He tightened his grip on her, and it sounded like he might be crying too.

  This was too much for her. Something inside her broke.

  “Come home?” he said again.

  “Yes,” she whispered through her tears. “Yes.”

  He pulled back and beamed down at her. “That’s good.”

  In the distance, she could hear the chirp of birds, unaware of her own drama. She looked up at the sky, and it was blue and beautiful, and she wondered why she never noticed it.

  She sniffed. “I still don’t think I’m very good at being a mother.”

  “You’ve barely been a mother for what? Two weeks? I hear it gets easier when they sleep more. Surely you have time to improve. And there must be some parts of it you like?”

  “Well…” She thought about it. “She is very perfect. I like to look at her. I like it when other people are holding her because all she does is root for milk whenever she’s in my arms.”

  “I hear you have a wet nurse,” said Absalom, letting go of her. He began deftly untying her horse. “Why don’t you just let your milk dry up and she’ll stop doing that.”

  “I couldn’t!” Nicce was horrified. “Mothers have to feed their children.”

  “I really don’t see why,” said Absalom. “I think it’s a frightful use of perfectly good breasts, to be honest.”

  She snorted. “You’re… you’re… You can’t say things like that.”

  “And yet, here I am, saying them.” He gestured to the horse. “Do you need help mounting?”

  “I can do that myself,” she muttered, pushing past him.

  “Oh, excuse me,” he said. “I see how it is, then. You can’t bear asking for help in any endeavor. You must be the best at everything. Fix the world, feed a child from your body, and do it all on two hours’ sleep. Yes, it’s all very rational.”

  “Shut up,” she said. “Help me onto the sun-taken horse.”

  “Anything for you.” He winked.

  For the first time in a long time, she smiled.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  When she and Absalom got back the keep, Eithan met them at the gates, and he was as apologetic as Absalom had said he would be, but Absalom cut him off in the middle of whatever he was saying, and said, “This is how it’s going to be. She’s going to bed. For days, if she likes. She’s going to sleep, completely uninterrupted for as long as she needs, and you are not going to disturb her, and no one is going to—”

  “I need to nurse the baby,” said Nicce.

  Absalom turned to her, shaking his head. “Didn’t we speak of this?”

  “I haven’t expelled milk in a very long time, and now I have two painfully full, rock hard lumps on my chest, and I need to nurse. Now.”

  “All right,” Absalom said. “Never tell me that much information about your body ever again, and have at it. But after that, sleeping for days.”

  She laughed. She hugged him and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you,” she whispered in his ear, and then she turned to her husband. “Take me to our baby.” She was somehow eager to see Ama, and she didn’t know why, or what had changed, but…

  Maybe it was that it was physical relief to feed her daughter. Or maybe it was only that, somehow, some awful pressure had been released. Or maybe it was because she did sleep. Not for days, but for a long time. She woke to feed Ama, but then she drifted back off with the small, warm bundle in her arms, and she felt it for the first time, a little trickle of it.

  Love.

  She had loved the baby all along, she realized. She hadn’t thought she had, but it had been there. It was only that she was so physically wrung out that she didn’t have energy for it.

  It seemed to her that she loved the baby more every day, as if with each passing moment, each time she stared into the little girl’s face, her heart swelled more and more full.

  She and Eithan finally talked. It wasn’t the first night, when she came back, and it wasn’t even the second night, when he slept curled around her, when he whispered to her that the only thing that would break him now is if she left him, and when she put his cold fingers to her mouth and kissed each of his knuckles one after the other.

  It was sometime later, and she was holding the baby, who was sleeping on her chest. She was in a rocking chair, moving back and forth in a slow, rhythmic pattern.

  Eithan was sitting on their bed, just gazing at the two of them. “I should have come in when you were in labor.”

  “Eithan,” she said softly. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “I should have been there. You needed me. I knew you needed me, and they told me not to come but—”

  “Eithan—”

  “I should have noticed more,” he said. “I could see that you were exhausted. I could see that something was wrong—”

  “Eithan, my love,” she said. “This was not your fault. You are simply married to a crazy woman.”

  “You’re not crazy,” he said. “You’re amazing. You’re larger than life. You’re… there’s nothing you can’t do. I love you. I worship you.”

  She smiled at that. “You always have. You’ve always been on my side. You’ve supported every wild, mad idea I ever had. You said you’d chase me to the ends of the earth, and I know you would have. But I… this thing inside me, it got too big for me. I thought nothing could get too big for me, but I pushed and pushed, and I found limits. It was all too much. So, I did. I went crazy.”

  He sighed. “No.”

  “You went crazy too, didn’t you? It took you fifteen years locked in the dungeons, but all it took for me was—”

  “You grew a human,” he said. “Stop it. And I think I lost my mind after a week in those damned dungeons.” He was across the room now, leaning over her, his hand on her cheek. “Do you want me to take Ama?”

  She smiled. “She might wake up if you take her.”

  He smiled. “I don’t mind.” He took the baby, who didn’t wake, but snuggled against her father’s chest and let out a little sigh.

  Nicce laughed softly. “She’s happy when she’s with you.”

  “I’m happy, too.” He gazed down at the baby with awe in his eyes. “If it’s too much, Nicce, you know that I’ll do whatever you need.”

  “I know,” she said. “I should have talked to you before. You’ve never rejected me, no matter what I did.”

  “How could I? I courted you by chasing you around and demanding that you let me drain your blood. I don’t think, between us, anyone could say you’d done nearly the amount of horrible things I’ve done. I don’t deserve to be as happy as I am. I don’t deserve—”

  “You do,” she said.

  “But I want you to be happy too.”

  She took a deep breath. “I… I think when I’m quiet, and I tell that voice in my head to shut up, then I’m exquisitely happy.”

  In some ways, it was as though she’d been struggling against this her entire life. Whatever it was within her, it was built-in, and it wasn’t all bad. Yes, she was driven and single-minded. Yes, she did impossible things. Yes, she was never satisfied.

  It was only when that part of her was left unchecked and untempered, when it consumed her like a dragon eating its own tail, that it became harmful.

  She tried to explain this to Eithan, but he knew.

  “Just tell me when it gets too big again, and I’ll save you,” he said.

  “Can you do that?”

  “We’ll keep saving each other, and saving Ama, as long as we live,” he said. “And if you want to go back out and look for some cure for immortality—”

  “No,” she said. “No, I don’t think so. I think the world can fix itself t
his time. I think I’ll just stay here with my husband and my little girl, and I think I’ll work on being exquisitely happy.” She gave him a tentative smile.

  He kissed her. Hard. The baby was between them. When he pulled away, there were tears in his eyes.

  She touched his face. “I love you, Eithan Draig.”

  “I love you, too,” he murmured.

  But it wasn’t as if the voice went away just because she’d ridden away from that temple with Absalom. It didn’t. It still spoke to her. It still urged her to find out about those strange drawings on the walls of Phir’s temple. What did they mean? Who had drawn them? No one was going to find out if she didn’t, after all.

  But she told the voice to shut up and ignored it.

  It got nasty.

  It called her a cow again. It whispered venom in her ear over and over.

  And still she ignored it.

  Eventually, it curled up in the corner of her mind and sulked and was quiet.

  Not always, of course.

  It could come back. When it did, sometimes it spoke with a different voice, and she didn’t recognize it right away. Sometimes, she was seduced by its whispers, but what always gave it away was that it was disdainful of her. It always told her that she was worthless if she didn’t accomplish something that would make her worthy.

  And that was a lie.

  She wasn’t worthless.

  She had only to look into her daughter’s eyes to know how important she was to another human being. She had only to feel the press of Eithan’s lips at the back of her neck to know she mattered to him. And she had only to wander into the dark forest, where all the nightmares used to live, and see that it was empty of monsters, to know that she had changed the world.

  Maybe it wasn’t completely fixed, but she’d left it better than she came into it, and that was enough.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Feteran died in a carriage accident when Ama was two years old.

  Nicce couldn’t believe it, because he was a half-god and not easy to kill, but apparently, a wheel had flown off and taken off his head, which had landed a good twenty feet from the carriage and the rest of his body.

  There was no healing that.

  The kingdom was thrown into a turmoil for a few days, but then Graydon and the rest of the royal line came back from their exile and took over in the castle.

  And just like that, there was no more worry about whether or not there would be an ageless king on the throne for all eternity. Nicce wished she could say that she was reassured, but instead she was shaken. Since she’d pulled back from her mission to find the cure for immortality, she’d grown accustomed to the idea that she would live forever, and that so would basically everyone else she loved.

  This reminded her that death was a reality no matter what.

  Anyone could die.

  King Graydon decided that he was disbanding the Guild, because they had risen up before and helped to take away his kingdom and give it to Feteran. It was reasonable enough, but they’d all grown used to living in the keep and being together. They didn’t have nightmares to fight anymore, however. They had all become lazy and sedentary.

  Perhaps it was time for a new chapter in their lives.

  Everyone had heard the stories that Nicce and Eithan had shared, about the other lands they’d visited across the seas, and an adventure agreed with everyone.

  Well, almost everyone.

  Jonas’s oldest son had just married and settled down with a woman in the village. He didn’t want to go anywhere. And Jonas and his wife weren’t about to be separated from their impending first grandchild. So, Jonas and his family would stay behind.

  And there were still members of the Nightmare Court scattered throughout the Four Kingdoms, so there would be other ageless people left behind on the continent.

  But everyone else boarded boats and sailed out on a bright sea that reflected the sun above.

  They sailed out toward the horizon, and Nicce held little Ama and pointed out the fish that were jumping up out of the water here and there. Ama was just learning to talk and quickly concocted her own singsongy litany about fishy fishies which she pronounced in solemnity to anyone who would listen.

  Philo knelt down, eye level with her, and asked her what she liked about fish.

  “They scaly,” she said. “And swimmy.”

  Philo nodded sagely. “I like this about them too.”

  Eithan appeared next to them both on the deck and swooped Ama up into his arms.

  She squealed with delighted laughter.

  He kissed her cheek. “Who’s Papa’s pretty girl?” he asked.

  “I am, I am,” crowed Ama.

  Nicce could see the other boat behind them. She could barely make out Xenia and Revel on the deck. Lian, Pati, and Absalom were with them too, while Septimus and Diann and their brood were here on this larger boat. She thought the others had just wanted the relative quiet of the childless boat. She waved to them, and they waved back.

  Nicce made her way to the other side of the boat, dodging the three-year-old twin girls and their older brother Jordonn. “No running on deck,” she said to them sternly. “You don’t want to slip and fall overboard.”

  “Ha!” said Jordonn. “I’ll send the lot of you overboard. I’m Captain Redbeard the pirate!”

  She chuckled, patting him on the head.

  The other side of the deck was empty and quiet.

  She shut her eyes and the sun warmed her face. The sea breeze smelled of salt and opportunities. She wasn’t displeased to be leaving the Four Kingdoms behind because there were so many exciting new things ahead of them all. Things to discover, things to conquer, things to enjoy. She was ready for it all. She was alive and hungry and eager.

  She could hear the sounds of Eithan’s booming voice and Ama’s laughter from the other side of the ship.

  She smiled.

  Her heart swelled with her love for them both, for all of them on this journey together.

  This was greatness. This was her destiny.

  She couldn’t ask for anything better.

  * * *

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