by Callie Bates
“Alistar,” I say.
He bends lower, his breath hot against my skin. It takes all my power not to melt against him. But if I let him undress me, he’ll know; he’s no fool. And he doesn’t deserve to find out that way.
I clear my throat. “Alistar.”
He lifts his mouth from my body with a sigh. “Milady?”
I feel myself wince; he calls me milady when he’s particularly teasing, or particularly exasperated. This time, it’s clearly the latter; he’s breathing quickly. And even though I’ve rehearsed this speech dozens—no, hundreds—of times in the dark hours before sleep, now that it comes down to it, I don’t know how to say it. I don’t know how to excuse my own cowardice in keeping this secret from him for so long. For making the choice to keep this child without ever consulting him.
For telling the Butcher I would marry someone else.
Best just to get it over with. “Do you remember the day of the dying year? Well, the night of it…”
He chuckles low in his throat. “I certainly do.”
“Well…” My hands are sweating where they grip his, and he’s still leaning into me, warmly, invitingly. I fumble onward. “That night, I—I didn’t take precautions.” What had I been thinking? It was as if I wanted this child so badly I’d convinced myself that I didn’t have to be careful, though I had been a hundred times before.
He straightens abruptly, and I risk a glance at his face. His mouth is slack.
“Are you saying…” He glances around, a frantic movement, to be certain we’re alone. We are, yet he lowers his voice all the same. “You’re with child?”
I give a small nod.
“That’s—! Soph—!” He seizes me in his arms, planting kisses all over my face, and I smile in spite of myself. But then, just as quickly, he sets me back, dropping his hands. “But that was months ago.”
I wince. “Almost five. Yes. Look, I’m sorry. I—I didn’t know what to do. It’s not like I expected it to quicken. Or Finn to die. Or that we would actually win against the Eyrlais and I would become queen—”
He’s retreating from me, though he hasn’t moved back. He seems to grow taller. “How long have you known?”
I’m too ashamed to admit I figured it out six weeks in. “I should have told you. I’ve been trying to figure out what to do.” Tears swell in my eyes. “I don’t know how much longer I can hide it.”
“You shouldn’t hide it!” he bursts out. “A child conceived on the day of the dying year is a lucky child.”
“A child who can see spirits.”
He nods. “Blessed.”
“Or uncanny. Can you imagine the Ereni thinking it’s lucky? Much less blessed?”
“We should get married,” he says decisively. “Then you wouldn’t have to hide it. That is…if you want me.”
Tears blur my eyes. I’m choking on the words I spoke to the Butcher. Because of course I want Alistar. I’ve wanted him for years—and I’ve had him, since Ruadan said that a dalliance was acceptable and even healthy for a young person. “And better Alistar Connell,” I once heard him say to Teofila, “than some young buck without a good family.” I’ve let him into my heart and my confidence, I’ve held him closer than anyone else.
And now I can’t have him.
“I…” The words stick in my throat. I owe him the truth, yet I can’t make myself speak it. “You know the ministers won’t allow it.”
“You’re the queen. You tell the ministers what you’re going to do.”
“You know that’s not how this works!” I snap. “You know what a precarious position I’m in—we’re all in! With El dead—and the people rioting, and—and—” I have to hunt for breath. “You know the Tinani haven’t just withdrawn for no reason. They’re waiting for something, and the emperor of Paladis is just gathering his breath before he sends a fleet—”
“Those are all reasons to marry,” he argues. “To present a united front. To show we won’t be bullied by anyone.”
The tears are falling down my cheeks now. I catch in a sob. “I can’t, Alistar. I can’t.”
His mouth closes. He doesn’t move to comfort me, and it makes me cry harder. We’ve never fought before—disagreed, of course, because we’re both strong-minded people. But I’ve never wounded Alistar so much that he won’t even put his hand out to me.
“You could have gotten rid of the child before this,” he says flatly. “So I’m thinking it’s me you don’t want. You’re willing to risk ridicule for birthing a bastard, but you’re not willing to have a Connell of Lanlachlan as your husband.”
My ears are ringing. I hear myself say, “I always told you this was a dalliance. I told you it couldn’t be anything more.”
“No, Sophy,” he says. “You didn’t.”
He steps away, but pauses and turns back to face me. “For the record, I would gladly marry you. Not because I want to be king—that’s the last thing in the world I want—but because I—I care for you.” His voice cracks, as if the word shatters him. “And I would love to care for our child.”
Tears choke my eyes, my throat. Somehow, I manage to say, “I told the Butcher I would marry an Ereni lord. Just now, before I came here. They don’t trust me, Alistar. I have to make them trust me. I have to make them love me.”
“I love you,” he says so softly it’s almost swallowed by the space between us.
I gulp down my tears. “I…”
But when I lift my head, it’s to see him walking out of the room. The door slams behind him.
* * *
—
ALISTAR TOLD ME he loved me. He told me he wanted to raise our child together, and I told him I’m marrying an Ereni lord. I want to peel off my skin in shame. I must be the most horrible, coldhearted person ever to have lived. How can I be a mother to this child, when I treat the father the way I have? It’s a good thing my mother isn’t alive to see me now. She’d be so ashamed.
I come to myself in a haze of tears. I don’t want to vanish. I can’t. I might be able to live with the scorn of the people, with the disapproval of the Butcher, the disappointment of Hugh and Teofila, even my own self-loathing, but there is one person I can’t disappoint. My mother. She gave her life so that I could someday become the queen of Eren and Caeris. It’s what she would have wanted, and I can’t back down now. Even if what I’ve done wouldn’t make her proud, she would understand why I did it. At least, I think so.
I look around. Some kindly maid—Fiona, I suppose—has left a pot of tea by my elbow. I’m crouched in the big wingback chair in front of the fire, with three crumpled handkerchiefs littering the carpet at my feet. Hours have passed since Alistar left. It must be the middle of the night. Darkness presses against the windowpanes, and I feel tears threaten again.
Maybe I should find Teofila—although I don’t know how on earth I’ll ever admit to the shameful way I’ve treated Alistar. Maybe it’s Alistar himself I should go after. But I can’t change course now. Shame has swallowed me whole.
I rise and change into my plainest dress. My movements are stiff. But there is a child growing within me, and for her I must swallow down the thickness of my grief.
I can’t marry Alistar, and I don’t want to marry Philippe. El is dead. The kingdom is in turmoil. And I haven’t even done the simplest, most important thing for my child.
If my mother were alive, she’d tell me to take courage. Are you ready to be brave?
I wrap a kerchief around my hair, like a maid, and bundle a thick, warm shawl around my shoulders, tying it across my breasts and stomach and behind my back. I’m suddenly weary down into the marrow of my bones. A single note hums through my head, through my body—a high, intense vibration. This time, it seems to come from me—an emanation of my own anxiety.
I go to the door. By some luck, Rhia herself is on duty, and Grenou’s guards
are scarce. “Just the two of us,” I tell her, my voice hoarse.
She looks at me as if to question where we’re going and why I’m dressed so plainly, but nods. She must be tired, or she’d argue. I walk ahead of her through the halls. Darkness has fallen, and the palace smells of food and wood fires.
We descend the stairs and enter the east wing. It smells of paint and the bright tang of fresh air, and in the great hall refugees are playing games with dice on the heavy, old-fashioned tables, while children doze in the corners. It’s not quite as late as I thought.
A man comes over to us. “Demetra?” I ask him.
He treats me to a skeptical look, but grows wary at the sight of Rhia. Turning to the children, he speaks briskly in a tongue I don’t know. Three children rise from among the others and come over, rubbing their eyes. The oldest is perhaps eight; she cradles her little sister in her arms. “Come,” she says in Ereni. They herd us out and upstairs, to a small chamber at the end of a long hallway. It must have been a study once, for Demetra is seated at an ancient, scarred desk, her back to us. The desk’s surface is covered in fresh herbs.
Demetra is slow to look around from them, even with the children pulling at her elbows. When she turns, she looks at me a second time before hurrying to her feet. “Your Majesty?”
“Please wait outside,” I tell Rhia.
“Go.” Demetra shoos the children after my guard captain, despite their protests. The door closes behind them.
I’m alone with Demetra in the old stone room, the weight of my secret between us. I draw in a breath.
“I need your help,” I say, simply. “But I must swear you to secrecy. I have a condition, you see, that no one must know about.”
Demetra’s eyes are red and tired. Her gaze flickers down to my stomach. “I see.”
My face grows hot. “You guessed?”
She actually laughs. “There’s only one reason why a woman would come find me in the middle of the night. So tell me, Your Majesty, how far along are you?”
“Almost five months,” I admit.
“And have you seen a midwife?”
I shake my head. It does seem foolish, in retrospect.
“No one at all?” she exclaims, then shakes her head. “I suppose you had no one you trusted. And who will I tell?”
I manage a smile. “Something like that.”
She clicks her tongue. “Let me examine you, then. Lie down.”
I obey. A warmth is building under my ribs—the comfort, the relief, I realize, of finally trusting Teofila and Demetra with the truth. Demetra gently squeezes my hand before touching my stomach. She presses her hands firmly on all sides, puts her ear against my abdomen to listen, and then, apparently satisfied, sits back. A single note radiates out from her, deep and golden and potent. It shivers through me until my body hums like a plucked string—and the child growing in my womb somehow begins to hum, too. A note like mine, but ever so slightly different, a faintly higher pitch. So subtle I almost can’t hear it.
I gasp a little, but Demetra takes no notice. My whole body seems to have transformed—humming, alive, in a way I have never felt before.
Demetra leans back over me. “You have a healthy child, as far as I can tell. Though no thanks to the strain its mother is under! You must be more careful to rest, and to eat well. Make sure you get enough sleep.”
I sit up, with her help, and she looks at me knowingly. “You already love this child.”
I cup my hands over my stomach. “More than anything.”
“But it is difficult for a queen to have a child without a king.” She smirks a little. “Even in Eren.”
“Especially in Eren,” I say darkly.
“Will you marry, then?”
I lift a shoulder. “Apparently I must.”
She looks at me. “Once you’re a mother, you’ll realize no one can make you do what you don’t want to do. Especially when it’s about your child.”
I smile a little at that. “Maybe I will still find another way.” I pause. “The note you sang—is that your magic?”
“Note?” she says, confused.
“The music you made while you were examining me.” I gesture, but she just stares blankly. I hum the sound myself. It vibrates through the dim room, echoing through my body once again, a comforting warmth.
“I did not make that sound,” she says firmly.
“But I heard it,” I insist. I can’t be going mad on top of everything else. “It sounded like magic.”
She frowns, but her gaze sharpens as she studies me. “Perhaps it is yours, my lady. Your magic.”
I’m staring at her, and at the same time, the floor seems to be dropping away. “But I don’t have magic. Elanna’s the one with magic. She’s the Caveadear.”
“Perhaps it’s only awakening in you now,” she says. Her head tilts. “A musician friend of mine used to say that everyone has a note they hum at. Perhaps your magic is hearing others’.”
“No.” I stand up. “I was very upset. I must have imagined it. Thank you for your time, Demetra. And for your secrecy.”
She seems bemused. “Of course, my lady. But if you—”
“I don’t think my ministers could survive a sorcerer ruling the country.” I smile at her, though I’m thinking how rapidly I could be deposed. “Please don’t give it a second thought. Good night, Demetra.”
But as I leave—warmer now, and oddly comforted—I find myself thinking of the women in those villages outside Laon. Women who had no magic before, at least to most eyes. Women whose magic is awakening, who never dreamed themselves sorcerers. I sent Juleane Brazeur to find them days ago now, and she never reported back to me on her activity there. I will have to ask her again, even though she’s angry with me. I wonder if they are the only ones whose magic has begun to awaken. If, perhaps, there are more of us than we can even guess, now that Elanna has woken the land. If the very fabric of the Ereni and Caerisian people is changing in our altered land.
I wonder.
* * *
—
THAT NIGHT AS I lie in bed, I prop myself up on pillows and put my hands on my stomach, feeling for the child silent within me. I hum first, using the melody I pick up, instinctively, from the baby. A spreading yellow song, tentative as a tree beginning to blossom in spring. Quietly, I begin to sing.
My body softens. I sense the breadth of my blood and bone, the weight of my lungs, the pattern of my heartbeat. And within my body, tucked into the gentle darkness of my womb, I sense the outline of the baby. The curl of its tucked-up legs, the bubble forming at its lips. Its delicate fingers.
No, not it. I breathe in, sensing more deeply. The child’s song unfolds within me, blossoming with possibility. Her.
A giddy smile bursts over my face, throwing me from the reverie. Can my intuition truly be correct—it’s a girl?
Every scrap of knowledge inside me whispers, Yes.
I hug my arms over my stomach, still smiling, even as worry gathers beneath my breastbone. Who am I, to bring a girlchild into this world? How can I even help her grow? How can I protect her?
All I know is that I will do my best. Every day I will struggle forward.
And if this is magic…I hum again, and the note hangs in the air, rippling, its color a delicate green. I have never seen sound before, but it seems something in me is changing, even if it isn’t magic, because I see it now, in my mind’s eye. I lift my hands and see that color clings to them—a faint, vaporous indigo blue. I look down at my body. The color covers me like a mist, from my feet to my shoulders. Only my stomach is different—there, the blue is touched by a soft, glowing yellow-gold. It seems the child has a color of her own.
I don’t know if this is sorcery. Surely if it were, I would have discovered it before now. I would have spent my life repressing it, like Elanna, or carefu
lly tending the secret of it, like Jahan. It would not be blossoming out of me now, from nowhere, at the age of twenty-one.
And yet…
The land has woken. Even now, deep under the palace, I can sense a powerful hum, the kind that sinks deeply into my bones. I’m almost certain it comes from the Hill of the Imperishable and the stones atop it—or perhaps all the way from the Spring Caves.
I close my eyes. Colors shift behind my lids. White. Blue. Palest gold. The colors have a pulse, a rhythm, and the rhythm contains a song.
I part my lips and let it ripple out, so softly. A lullaby for me and the baby. A song to cradle us both until tomorrow.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Sophy!”
I lift my head from the pillow. Fiona’s flinging back the curtains. I slept deeply, and I’m muzzy from dreams. “Did I oversleep?” I mumble.
“You need to get up. Now. The guards…” Her voice shakes, and I sit up at the warning sound of it, wincing as cold air invades my bed. “There’s been an incident with the sorcerers.”
“An incident?” I repeat.
“You need to go, quickly. Someone…” She bites her lip. “I think someone might be dead.”
Dead? I push myself out of the bed, reaching for the robe she hands me, shoving my feet into slippers. Now she’s said it, I hear something, a black cacophony like music on the edge of my hearing. I hurry into the sitting room and out the door, my hair falling loose and heavy down my back.
Rhia meets me in the corridor, her face sharp with worry. “There you are! Come on.”
She charges down the hall, and I hurry to catch up, my robe flapping behind me. “What’s happened?”
“One of the sorcerers tried to leave the east wing around three o’clock this morning. He wanted to enter the palace. The guards were alarmed. They thought he was going to attack someone.” She rolls her eyes, but hisses a breath through her teeth as she jostles her broken arm.
We’re practically running now, down the back stairs to the east wing. At the bottom landing, I jerk to a stop. The hallway ahead of me, which was perfectly intact last night, appears to have split in two. A massive black scar shears the length of the eastern wall, and stones have crashed inward, leaving a pile of rubble on the floor.