by E. A. Copen
He took the scent in with closed eyes and sprouted a smile. “Raspberry. A very good white tea.”
I put it back and got another. We went through three jars of loose leaf tea: ginger, mint, and a reddish one called rooibos. When we’d gone through them all and put all the jars back, it left a single empty space that, if filled, would have left the drawer full. One of the jars was missing. It had to be the one Odette had gotten her tea from that morning.
I looked around, trying to spot a jar matching the rest and suddenly remembered she hadn’t gotten the tea from a jar at all. There had been a small wooden box, and she’d taken it to the table with her.
“I know where the tea is.”
Declan followed me down to where the breakfast table had been standing. The table was still there, but everything had been cleared away, including Odette’s tea box. I spied the servant who’d brought out the teacups on the silver platter earlier wiping down and stacking chairs nearby. At my approach, she shrank, and her eyes darted for the nearest exit.
I held up my hands, so I didn’t scare her off. “Relax. I just need to know where the breakfast spread was taken. Specifically, I’m looking for the wooden box that had Princess Odette’s tea.”
She blinked and pointed to a door tucked into the side wall of the palace. “I wrapped everything in the tablecloth and took it to the kitchen. If you hurry, you might catch them before they put everything in the incinerator.”
Incinerator? Great. Just my luck the faeries would burn all their trash along with my evidence.
I took off for the door. My limbs ached, and my head had started to pound. When was the last time I’d had anything to drink or eat? I couldn’t recall. With time being funny, I didn’t think my stomach knew either. It twisted itself into knots and did a few somersaults that halted only when I got to the door and jerked it open.
The scent of seared meat and spices drifted from the kitchen, scents that I could pick apart and recognize. Lamb, pork, and veal cooked in real butter and seasoned with herbs and garlic. Had I been in a cartoon, the smell would have lifted me off my feet and pulled me into the kitchen, caressing my cheek. Instead, I staggered into the kitchen, wild-eyed and smacking my lips to gather the taste from the air.
Headless lamb carcasses lay on metal racks stacked around an open pit of fire. The bodies had been split in half lengthwise and put on the racks to cook with the legs still attached. Fire and smoke rolled off the pit in the center, kissing the meat with perfect even heat. Fat melted and dripped down the racks, hissing when it met the hot coals. The meat was still red, fresh and tender. I reached for it. Just a taste.
“Is this what you were looking for, sir?”
I whirled around, eyes wide, shoulder hunched, a snarl caught in my throat. Who would dare interrupt me? I hadn’t eaten in days, and here before me lay a feast for the taking. If he thought I was going to share, he had another thing coming.
Declan shrank and held a small wooden box out to me, stretching his arms as far away from his body as they would go. The terrified expression morphed into something…stranger. His eyes widened, his nose wrinkled and he reared back, gasping in a deep breath. A fraction of a second later, that breath exploded in three violent sneezes, one after another.
Part ghoul or not, the snot explosion that came with Declan’s sneezing shut off the hunger reflex. I cringed and stepped away from the meat.
“Sorry, sir. I…” He sneezed again. “Must be—” Sneeze. “—all the smoke—” Sneeze. “—in here.”
I yanked a dish towel from where it rested on the big double sink and grabbed the box before he could completely coat it. “Let’s get out of here before our bodies betray us again.”
He looked like he was going to sneeze again but stopped himself.
A few minutes later, Declan and I sat at the breakfast table with the box between us. He frowned at the loose stalks of dried, green leaves from the far side of the table. It didn’t look like any of the other teas. These were whole leaves, for one. She would’ve had to crush them with her hands to place them in the diffuser.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Declan said, shaking his head. “I don’t know this one.”
“I do.” I picked up one of the stalks and held it pinched between two fingers. “Sideritis scardica. Used to make what we call Greek Mountain tea. More commonly known as ironwort.”
Declan sneezed. “Sorry.”
I put the ironwort stalk back in the box and pushed the sweating pitcher of water one of the servants had brought toward him.
Declan poured himself a glass, then splashed more of it on his face, rubbing it in his eyes. After a little more sniffling, he added, “I’ve never seen that plant before, but it sounds like a human plant.”
“It is. It’s the same plant I used to kill Nyx.”
“The Shadow Queen?”
I nodded.
Declan was smart. He did the math in his head and came to the same conclusion as me. “This could be war.”
“Not the cold war Summer and Shadow have been fighting the last few years, either.” I closed the box and lowered it to my lap. “When I take this to the queen, she’ll have no choice but to punish Kellas. I have no doubt her justice will be swift and deadly. Since her marriage to Kellas is the only reason there hasn’t been an all-out war yet, any pretenses of peace will dissolve. Armies will mobilize. New Orleans becomes the battleground for two fae courts duking it out. Thousands will die.”
“Fae and human alike.” He folded his hands atop the table. “What can I do to help?”
I stared at the box in my lap, debating the same thing. This was bigger than me and Declan. Hell, it was bigger than anything I’d ever dealt with. Maybe it wasn’t too much for the Pale Horseman, but I didn’t see what I could do to stop it. War wasn’t my element. That belonged to another Horseman that I didn’t know.
Titania wasn’t going to listen to reason. To her, the humans in my city were pawns that could be thrown away in favor of seizing another, more strategic target. People like Titania used phrases like “acceptable losses” and “maximum acceptable casualties.” There was no way to confront Kellas without turning this into an inter-court incident, but maybe I could do something to keep the fighting contained.
Quick footsteps through the grass behind me made me shoot to my feet, gripping my staff in a fist. I turned and barely stopped myself from swinging it at Beth as she ran up. “Beth.” Why was she away from Odette? She should be with her, healing her. Unless…Icy fingers gripped my heart and squeezed. My voice came out a small squeak. “Odette?”
She gulped in a breath of air. “Odette’s in labor.”
I stared at her, trying to process exactly what she’d said. In principle, I understood the meaning of each of those individual words; strung together like that, none of them made sense. She’d tried to shove a square peg into a round hole, and my brain just kept spitting it back out.
Beth grabbed my hand and yanked as if to drag me toward the infirmary. “Come on. That baby’s coming, whether you’re ready for it or not.”
Suddenly, the world snapped back into focus and the words made sense. Odette was having her baby.
Our baby.
Beth let go of my hand when I didn’t go with her and huffed at me.
“Oh,” I said, swaying on my feet. “Is that all?”
Something dropped in the pit of my stomach. The world tilted. I had a momentary feeling that I ought to announce I was going to take a nap before the ground met my face.
Chapter Nineteen
If you spent any time watching 90’s sitcoms, you know the trope. Nervous, first-time father-to-be paces outside the delivery room in his white shirt. The top button is unbuttoned, and his sleeves are rolled up. His tie hangs loosely as if he’s forgotten how to tie it. Meanwhile, everyone around him is either trying to console him or get him to calm down.
You know the scene I’m talking about.
I was so far from that guy, I wasn’t even in the same univ
erse.
I was coming out of the haze of having passed out at the news, lying in a very uncomfortable cot when a deep, guttural moan yanked me upright. It was a sound unlike any I’d ever heard before, the sound of unfiltered human suffering. A white sheet was all that separated me from whoever was on the other side making that horrible sound. I snarled and ripped it in half, breaking through ready to murder whoever was hurting that woman.
Odette lay naked in a bed with the head section tilted up so she could sit. Her fingers dug into Beth’s hand as her whole body tensed. Someone had cut Odette’s dress off of her. It lay in strips on the floor like streamers. Her hair hung in limp, damp curls, hiding her face. I didn’t need to see it to know she was the one making that sound.
Blood drained from my head and pooled in my feet. This was real. It was really happening. Holy shit. It couldn’t happen now. I wasn’t ready.
Odette’s death grip on Beth loosened, and Odette’s cries of pain turned into exhausted whimpers.
Beth glanced over her shoulder at me. “Oh no, you don’t. Don’t you dare pass out on me again.” She let go of Odette’s hand long enough to storm over to me, grab me by the shoulder, walk me to the other side of the bed, and shove my ass into a chair.
I stammered through trying to say a dozen different things at once, my limbs numb, my head a detached balloon.
Meanwhile, Beth took Odette’s hand and put it in mine before turning her back.
She’s leaving. Beth is leaving me alone with her to do this. “I can’t do this,” I squeaked.
Beth paused on her way out of the little medical cubicle to glare at me. “Yes, you can. All you have to do is show up. Be here. Leave us to do the rest.”
Us being her, the midwife named Willow I’d met earlier, and Odette.
I was just supposed to sit there and hold her hand? I couldn’t do that. There had to be something, anything, that I could be doing. I needed to find Kellas, fillet him and send his remains to the nearest questionable Chinese restaurant. I needed to find a cure, to not be a monster, to stop a war.
“I don’t…I can’t…” My stupid mouth just wouldn’t stop going.
Come on, Laz. She’s about to push a watermelon through a straw. You can make a coherent sentence.
I swallowed and looked down at Odette’s hand in mine. “Do you even want me to be here?”
She squeezed my hand. “Yes.”
That steeled something inside me. Screw all that other shit I needed to do. None of it mattered. Thanks to Faerie, I had time, and I needed to spend it doing the one thing that mattered: being there.
I blew out a breath and nodded. “Okay. Then I’m here.”
Over the next eight hours, I had a lot of time to think. Odette wasn’t much for conversation, and I didn’t push since she seemed to want to rest. She bounced between ten-minute naps, crushing the bones of my hand, making that awful pained noise, and crying. Wasn’t much room for talking in there.
Somewhere in there, it dawned on me that this was my fault. I was at least partially responsible for all the pain she was in, and it killed me to know that. All I wanted to do was take that pain away.
“Can’t you do something?” I asked Beth the next time she came in, this time with a cool towel for Odette’s sweaty forehead. “She’s in a lot of pain.”
Beth just leveled her gaze at me and repeated a line from The Princess Bride. “Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”
“Inconceivable,” Odette whispered with a smile.
I waited for her to squeeze my hand, but she didn’t.
Beth smiled back and had me help her pull Odette’s hair away from her face and into a messy bun. “How many times did he make you watch that one?”
“I lost count,” Odette said, shifting her shoulders. “I swear, he quotes it in his sleep.”
“I won’t be ashamed of that. That’s the most quotable movie ever made next to Monty Python and The Holy Grail.”
Beth ran through checking Odette’s vitals and frowned. She looked up from the pulse and met my eyes. Fear. Worry. Something was wrong. Maybe it was taking too long. I had no idea how long this was supposed to take. My only real experience with childbirth was what I’d seen at the movies.
“Get some rest, Odette,” Beth urged, adjusting the thin sheet over her. “I’m going to take Laz and make sure he gets something to drink before he passes out again.”
Odette didn’t respond. She’d closed her eyes and drifted back into one of her catnaps again.
It took some doing to pry her hand from mine and place it on the bed next to her. After so long, I swear our skin had practically grown together. Beth motioned for me to step out of the cubicle and I did.
The midwife joined us, a grave expression painting her face.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She kept her voice barely above a whisper. “And maybe everything. I’m not exactly experienced in fae births, Lazarus. I’ve never even helped with a normal birth. I know she’s feverish and weak with dilated pupils.”
“Iron poisoning,” said the midwife. “We’ve used our magic to keep it from traveling from the mother to the child, but that means the poison is trapped inside of her. The constant exposure to iron is doing irreparable damage to her internal organs.”
I shook my head. “I don’t understand. She seems fine.” Feverish and tired maybe, but fine.
The midwife put her arm around me and led me a little further from Odette’s side. “I understand that you’ve successfully performed the Kiss of Life.”
A jolt of electric fear shot through me. The Kiss of Life was one of a necromancer’s most powerful spells, used to bring someone recently dead back from the grave. There were restrictions on how and when it could be used—lots of them—and I’d only successfully done it once. It had bound Emma Knight to me tight enough that we shared dreams.
If we were talking about that, it meant the midwife didn’t expect Odette to survive the ordeal. That wasn’t an option. She had to live, to make it out of Faerie with our son. I wasn’t a good option to care for him. A baby needed a mother. More than that, I cared about Odette. Maybe we didn’t have any real romantic love, but she didn’t deserve the situation she’d been put in. She certainly didn’t deserve to die.
I swallowed. “Once. But I don’t have my magic anymore. Just the Horseman powers. I can’t do it.”
Movement at the end of the hall caught my eye. I turned and found Athdar lurking, pretending he was examining a sign on the wall. He gave me the side eye and jerked his head, indicating I should come speak to him.
What could he possibly want now? Hadn’t he heard that his beloved princess was having a baby? I was obviously busy.
He didn’t quit making that motion with his head, even when I gave him my best death glare.
“I’ll be right back,” I snarled at Beth and Willow before stalking down the hall to Athdar. “What is it?”
He turned and looked around as if checking to see if anyone had noticed him. Too late, big guy. A giant tree guy standing in a narrow hallway was kinda hard to miss. “Did you get my message?”
“I got your leaf. Whatever that was supposed to mean.”
Wood creaked as he turned his mouth into a frown. “The trees are speaking to me.”
“Good for you.” I turned to go. Whatever it was he wanted, I didn’t have time to deal with it.
“They had much to say about the spell that hit William, the Summer Knight.”
I stopped mid-step and turned. Of course, the trees! They must have seen who’d fired it! Athdar was the only one who could hear the trees, but everyone I had talked to believed Athdar to be an honorable guy. Even when I’d first thought he might be behind the attack, everyone else was certain he wouldn’t. He loved Odette. He’d never hurt her. If anything, he should be as invested as me in finding the assassin.
He loves her. My guilt suddenly weighed a hundred pounds. She might die, and he won’t get a chance to
say goodbye.
Athdar’s eyes shifted to the hallway behind me and back to me. Worry creased his forehead. “How is she?”
“They don’t expect her to live through the labor.”
The stalwart Dryad nearly toppled.
“I know it was Kellas. I just can’t prove it. If you’re willing to accompany me to tell the queen, she’ll execute him.”
Bark scraped as he made a fist. “I will ask for the honor of tearing out his spine myself.”
A low moan of pain carried through the hall of the infirmary. The midwife rushed into Odette’s room.
I caught Beth’s eye before she could. Odette had asked me to stay, and I had promised I would. I wouldn’t go back on my word, not now. “Athdar, find Declan. Have him get a message to Titania. Tell her I need to speak with her here right away.”
He started to go but paused. “You will make sure she knows I was here?”
I nodded. “I’d offer to get you in to see her, but—”
Athdar shook his head. “The birth of a child is sacred. I wouldn’t intrude. Just tell her I have been here, and she is in my heart still.”
He lumbered away to get my message to Titania, and I returned to Odette’s side.
It was twenty minutes before Titania came to the infirmary. By that time, I was angry. She should’ve come sooner. Her daughter was giving birth, she was dying, and Titania hadn’t come once to check on her. For my own health, I kept that thought to myself when Titania stepped into the room.
But when Kellas followed her in, I surged to my feet and stepped between them and Odette.
Titania’s eyes sparked with fiery rage. “Move, Knight, or I shall remove your head.”
Kellas flexed his claws and gave me a victory smirk.
Keep smiling, Sylvester. I’m going to wear your claws as a trophy when I’m done with you.
“Your Highness, as your knight, I feel it’s my duty to inform you that you’re standing next to the man responsible for all this.”
Titania didn’t move.
“Or should I say the cat responsible?” I pointed at Kellas.
