He scoffed. “You wouldn’t even be the first person today, love. Speaking of this, though,” he ran his finger lightly over the edge of the bandage, lifting it to peek at the ugly, bruised cut underneath, “do you want me to patch it up, or wait for Nathaniel and I’ll distract you while he works?”
“I can handle it. Right now, I just want you.”
Before he stood, he kissed the uninjured part of her forehead. “You’ve got me.”
He was afraid he’d have to leave her for a moment to go and find his bag, but before he was halfway to the door, he spotted his medical bag sitting on an end table. Seeing it made his eyes a little watery; they had so many people to be grateful for.
Samuel was nearly asleep, his whole little body curled into his mother’s side as if he wanted to attach himself there, under her skin so she’d never be separated from him again. William didn’t blame him. He grabbed another blanket and laid it over both of them, kissing the baby’s head again before he looked back at Quinn.
“So tell me what happened. I know Thomas killed Tolliver – wish I’d been there to see that.”
“I’m glad you weren’t. I kept telling myself I was willing to fight however I needed to, but I really thought we were all going to die.” Her lip trembled a little. He leaned forward and kissed it again before turning his attention to his bag.
“But you didn’t. Everyone is safe. Where was Sophia in all of this?”
He nearly dropped and broke the syringe he was filling when she told him about Sophia giving her the dagger. “Where is she now?”
“She’s in a cell. Hopefully the same one she stuck me in earlier. She’d better hope that if and when Jonathan ever decides to show up that he has a good explanation for that, or I’m going to leave her there.”
“You don’t think she meant to save your life when she gave you that dagger?”
“I don’t know what she meant. I’m grateful she did it, but I don’t trust her motivations… and even if I thought it was true, it’s not an excuse. There are ways to do things, there are ways to treat people. She’s my grandmother. If she can’t support me as queen until after I win a public death match against her son, then she doesn’t deserve… I don’t know, Will. I’ll see what she has to say once things calm down, but don’t plan on seeing her at the dinner table on a regular basis.”
“Now that I don’t think I can argue with.”
~ Forty-Five ~
The Window Seat
HE KNEW HE WAS dreaming, but he couldn’t wake himself from it even so. Not that he was especially trying to; really he was so glad to see the little boy in front of him that he wasn’t in any hurry to wake back to a different reality.
“How is Quinn?” Owen asked.
“You haven’t been visiting her in her dreams yourself?”
“Not lately. It makes me miss her too much if I do it all the time, and I think it makes it harder for her, too.”
“But you don’t think it’s hard for me, to see you but not be able to touch you?”
Owen took three steps forward, closing the space between them and setting his warm little hand on Zander’s face. “I think it’s already harder for you, Zander. You don’t own the choice the way she does. You’re already still half here and half there.”
He closed his eyes. “Just because she chose doesn’t mean she doesn’t miss you.”
“I know. But it does mean she can let go of here enough to get both her arms around her life there – her family there. And being whole is always easier than being ripped in two, even if some of the pieces are held together with tape.”
“How can I not be ripped in two when my family doesn’t even know what happened to me? They must think… What did your mother tell them?”
“She didn’t know what to tell them, Zander. She tried, but there wasn’t a good answer. At first they thought you must have gotten on a plane and gone to where Quinn was, and they demanded to know where she was – they still kind of think that, but the police won’t help them because you’re eighteen, and there’s no evidence anything bad happened. They were a little freaked out about the money, though.”
“Do they think I’m dead?”
“I told them you’re not. That you’re okay, and that you love them, and that they’ll hear from you sometime. I don’t know if they believed me, but even your dad stopped being angry, eventually. He cried. Is there a message you want me to give them?”
“My dad cried?”
“Yes. He loves you Zander. He thought it was his fault for pushing you too hard, that you maybe ran away because you didn’t want to go into business with him, but I told him that wasn’t true.”
“Do you still see my parents?”
“No. We moved to Georgia now. But I can call them.”
He sighed. “You don’t need to do that, but if you talk to them, tell them that I love them.”
“I will.”
“Do you… still have the magnet that opens the gate?”
“No. Alvin helped me smash it and then he took the pieces with him. It’s broken.”
“So what do I do, Owen?”
“Live, Zander. You tape the pieces together and live. And then if we ever do find another gate, you’ll at least be able to make a choice as a whole person. Maybe you’ll even know what you want.”
“How do you know so much, Owen?” He reached over to tousle the boy’s hair; it felt silky soft and oh-so-real.
“I don’t know more than anyone else, I just see different things sometimes. I see you.”
“I love you, you know.”
“I know. I love you, too. Will you give Quinn a hug for me? And Samuel, and William – and everyone?”
“Sure.”
* * *
“Seriously, Addie? Right now? You had to wait until your mother was in the bath?” Zander looked down at the baby girl nestled against his chest.
She looked back at him with her blue eyes and drooled.
He sighed. “I know, I know. It’s better now than once you’re in your dress for the party.” Linnea would be happy to avoid a repeat of what had happened two days ago at the twins’ Naming Ceremony.
Reaching inside the cloth wrap tied around him, he extricated the infant and set her on his bed next to a diaper bag.
Though that diaper bag had sat on the side of his bed for days now, it was filled with fresh diapers. Even with the entire Rose family here this week for her to look after, Mia managed to keep up with even those small things.
“Mia is magic,” he told Adeline. “But I’m not sure why she thinks diapers belong in my room.”
The baby gurgled.
“Oh be quiet,” he said, negating his words by kissing her toes. “You might look like your father, but you have your mother’s mouth already.”
She pursed her tiny lips together for a second before poking her tongue out between them.
“That’s the thanks I get for giving you a clean diaper?” He scooped her back into his arms. “Should we go and find your dress since you’re already out of your pajamas now?”
His question was interrupted by a tapping on his open door, and he looked up to see Stephen standing there.
“Is my granddaughter giving you a hard time?”
Zander shrugged and grinned. “Isn’t that what girls are supposed to do?”
Stephen laughed, stepping into the room and holding out his arms. “Give her to me. Charlotte has the dress for her. We’ll finish getting her ready. Where’s Ben?”
“Thomas took Ben and I took this one so Linnea could have a bath and a little time to herself to get ready.”
“That was kind of you,” Stephen said as he lifted the baby into his arms. “Thank you for taking such good care of her.”
Something in Stephen’s voice made Zander think he wasn’t referring to Adeline. He decided to ignore that, though, and shrugged. “It’s not a problem. I don’t need as much time to get ready as Linnea does.”
Stephen apparently decided to let hi
m get away with it. He looked around the room. “How are you settling back in?”
Zander couldn’t help chortling as he glanced around at the mess. They were all temporarily living in a mostly-unused guest wing of the castle while their old rooms underwent massive repairs from the damage of fire and battle. Zander’s room had long been used for storage.
Although the area with his bed and a dresser and two small tables had been cleared for him to use, even Mia hadn’t been able to make much headway with the old crates and trunks and furniture piled in the rest. Especially when she’d been dealing with three infants even before Stephen's family arrived less than a week after the battle with Tolliver.
There hadn’t been much time for him to tackle the job, either. There had been the Naming Ceremony for the twins already, and today they were celebrating the rededication of Quinn as queen of Philotheum.
Mostly, though, he’d been helping with the repair work on the main living wing, and also just enjoying spending time with Stephen and Charlotte and their family.
It had taken him a full week after their arrival to understand why being with them felt so different now. For the first time since his arrival in this world, the kingdoms were at peace. There was no danger, no major medical emergencies, no looking over their shoulders at every noise.
In the absence of all these things – or maybe because he’d gone through those things with them and made it out on the other side – he realized he really did like these people, and even this place, burned-down walls, cold well water and all.
“I’m doing okay…” He paused, suddenly terrified to say the next part, although it had been on his mind for a while now. “I’m not sure I’ll stick with the whole guard thing forever.”
The terror was all for nothing. Stephen shrugged. “I don’t think I ever thought you would. There are a lot of other ways I could see you finding your place here in Philotheum, now that you’ve gotten your footing. But I’ll forever be grateful for your service to both kingdoms during the war.”
“Do you think Quinn will be upset?”
“Not even a little. You’d still be Sir Zander, you know. With any luck she’ll need more advisors for building her kingdom than battling with it.”
“Advise her on what, exactly?”
“I don’t know. You’ve had some excellent ideas lately during the renovations we’ve made to the castle, for example, though I think I’ve already used my quota for pushing you in a certain direction. You’re a smart, resourceful, good young man. You’ve earned the right to make those choices for yourself. Maybe your friend over there has more ideas for you.”
“What?” Zander turned to look where Stephen was pointing, and he had to laugh. Larya was perched on the wide sill outside his window, beak against the glass, though she didn’t start tapping until Zander was looking at her. “She’s spoiled.”
“She deserves it… Speaking of ladies who deserve to be spoiled, though, I’m going to take this darling baby and get her ready for the party. I’ll see you there?”
“Yes.”
After Stephen left he climbed up on the window seat and opened the window to feed the bird treats and talk to her.
She was a good listener; he often found himself chatting with her as if she could give him real advice. Sometimes she came in, and he could sit down on the wooden seat with her in front of him. Today, though, she seemed to be enjoying the unusually sunny day and declined the invite, so after a few minutes of kneeling on the hard surface, his knees started hurting.
“All right, if you’re not going to come in, you need to shoo,” he said, though he didn’t close the window and she didn’t leave.
One of his legs had fallen asleep, and he had trouble dragging it off the window seat; he ended up kicking the wall hard enough to make a sound that startled Larya, and she finally flew off.
He stood there, stomping his foot for a minute trying to restore the blood flow until something dawned on him.
The seat under the window would have to be hollow to make a sound that loud.
William might have been entirely over secret passages and compartments, but Zander wasn’t. He started running his fingers over the top and side of the built-in box.
Once he was looking, he found it quickly, a small, carved-out notch just big enough to put his finger against and pull.
The compartment clearly hadn’t been opened in a long time; it was challenging, but it slid open without too much effort.
The biggest problem was the dust; Zander coughed as a cloud of it hit him in the face.
It wasn’t as exciting as he might have hoped. The first thing he pulled out was a long cushion that once probably fit the window seat perfectly, but was now so disgusting that he had to stop himself from launching it out the window immediately. Of course, doing that would have likely covered him in dust.
The rest of the items in the cabinet weren’t much different from the junk that filled half his room already. He threw them on the piles of stuff to be sorted later – the cupboard might at least be nice storage for his things while he was staying in this room.
He’d cleared nearly everything from the space and was reaching in to do a final check when his fingers brushed against the crinkle of what felt like paper. He didn’t know why, but he held his breath as he carefully pulled it out.
It was paper, several sheets of it folded together, all of them with a tattered edge that suggested they’d been ripped out of a book or something.
He didn’t know how old they were, so he was extra gentle as he unfolded them, trying not to rip or crumble the sheets.
The writing on the first two sheets was strange. He could read the words, but none of them made any sense to him; it was possibly a ledger book from some kind of goods trading.
The next paper, though, had a drawing – a remarkably detailed drawing of a grove of trees by a river, one of the low mountains of this world rising in the background. Above the drawing were numbers written out in a format he recognized – they were map coordinates, although not a complete set.
The rest of the papers made little sense to him either – he’d have to show them to William or Thomas later, maybe they’d have an idea.
He was just setting the papers down on the top of one of the storage crates on the other side of his room when he was interrupted by the sound of someone clearing her throat.
“Oh, hey, Linnea,” he said, looking toward the door.
“Um, where’s my daughter?”
“Oh… uh…” He affected a panicked expression and pretended to look all over the room. “She was just here.”
“Zander!”
“Okay, sorry. Your father came and took her. She’s fine.”
“That’s not funny.”
Oops. “I know. I’m sorry. I hoped you knew by now that I would never put her at any kind of risk, though.”
“Speaking as someone who’s been kidnapped from my own home…” She wasn’t joking. He’d crossed a line.
His whole body felt like it was folding in on itself. “Linnea…” He walked over to her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think about it.”
She shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m so sensitive lately.”
“Don’t do that. Seriously. It was a stupid thing for me to say to a new mom who has a legitimate reason to worry. But in the future, just know that if you trust me to watch your child, and you come in here and I’m not dead on the floor – the baby is safe, okay?”
She nodded. “Thank you for watching her for me.” Her voice was too small, betraying that she still felt bad for her reaction.
“Come here, Nay.” He held out his arms to her and she obliged, whether because she really wanted to or because it would be easier to hide her emotions he didn’t know, but he held her tight and let her pull herself back together. “I’ll think before I speak next time, okay?”
Her head moved up and down against his shoulder. “It feels stupid that you have to,” she mumbled.
&nbs
p; “Some of the things you’ve been through change the ordinary definition of stupid, sweetheart. It’s not like I never require patience from anyone.” He wasn’t as touchy about kidnappings as she was, but there had been meetings about executing war prisoners he’d had to step out of. And some of his dreams…
She reached for his hand and squeezed it.
He didn’t mean to kiss her forehead; it just happened, like a reflex he had no control over.
There was no time to regret it, though. In the next instant she turned her face up to his and put her arms around his neck, pulling him down toward her until their lips touched.
It wasn’t like fireworks – sparks that might brilliantly illuminate the sky for a moment, but then fizzle into darkness, needing a new flame to ignite them every time. This was like the tide – strong, powerful, and inevitable washing over them both; eroding some part of who he had been and exposing something new underneath.
A long time – possibly days – passed before either of them could finally pull away.
“Wow,” he breathed.
~ Forty-Six ~
Celebration
THOMAS SNEAKED UP BEHIND Mia and cleared his throat. She jumped, nearly dropping Sarah, and turned around to give him a death glare – and a nice left hook to his shoulder.
“Hey!” he said. “I’m not the one who’s working when Quinn specifically gave you the rest of the day off.”
“Who’s working?” She kissed Sarah on the nose. “I’m just enjoying a party with one of my favorite people. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
It was beautiful. The massive ballroom in the center of the castle was the one space Tolliver had managed to restore. Although Quinn had made a few choice comments about the obvious order of his priorities, she’d decided not to turn her nose up at the opportunity to use the room – with some quick alterations and new decorations, of course.
Thomas wasn’t terribly interested in the beauty of the castle right now, though. “If you’d let her go play, I know someone else who wouldn’t mind a few of your kisses.”
“And who is that?” Mia teased, but she planted another kiss on the toddler’s head and then set her down.
Leaves of Revolution Page 34
