Mother of All

by Jenna Glass

  Corlin grimaced. “Why did it have to be Justal?” he muttered, and Alys was surprised into a laugh.

  “I take it Cadet Justal is not one of your favorite people?”

  “You could say that,” Corlin said with a shake of his head. Then his grimace turned into a grin. “But if I’m to get a medal for saving Justal, then my friend, Rafetyn, must get a medal for saving me.” He told her the story of his unlikely friend, whose arrow had saved his life. “The rest of the cadets will positively choke if he and I both get medals.”

  Unable to stop herself, Alys reached out and stroked Corlin’s hair, earning herself an exasperated look. But he didn’t pull away, instead tolerating the touch.

  “When you’re all better,” she said, “you can come back to Women’s Well. I’m sure Cadet Smithson’s family will understand and agree that you have redeemed yourself.”

  But Corlin shook his head. “Saving Justal does not undo what I did to Smithson,” he insisted. “My exile will mean nothing if it is over in less than a year. I will remain in the Citadel of Aaltah at least until the first year is up.” He frowned thoughtfully. “Well, likely till my first two years are up. You have not met Cadet Rafetyn, but he has had a hard time at the Citadel, and the medal might make things worse rather than better. I owe him my life, and I cannot abandon him to the bullies.”

  “I would happily offer him a place in Women’s Well,” Alys said, for there was little she would not do to thank the boy who had saved her son’s life.

  Corlin smiled. “Convincing his father to let him take it might be a project. Maybe we can talk to Uncle Tynthanal and Lord Aldnor and see if they can persuade him. Then after I’ve served my year, and if I can bring Rafetyn with me, we can talk about the conditions of my return.”

  Alys clenched her teeth to keep from remonstrating, for it was clear from the challenging look in his eyes that Corlin was still determined that he would accept the flogging that he would have suffered had he been any other cadet. She had told him in no uncertain terms that she had no intention of allowing that to happen, but her little boy had turned into a stubborn young man. She vowed to have a word with Lord Aldnor before she left for Women’s Well. Surely he would agree that Corlin should be spared any further punishment for his past transgressions, and he had a better chance of talking Corlin into forgiving himself than she did.

  “I love you so much,” she murmured hoarsely, and the tears threatened to return.

  “I love you, too, Mama,” Corlin said.

  And the dam burst. Never before had she allowed herself to lose control in front of her son, but nothing could have stopped these sobs. Not even the lingering pain in her chest.

  Corlin held her hand throughout.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Kailee felt a flutter of nerves when Tynthanal returned to the royal suite after yet another gruelingly long day dealing with the aftermath of war. The atmosphere throughout the city of Aalwell was one of great hope and excitement, but that did not make the prince regent’s job any less demanding. They still had months of economic hardship to overcome, and even the city’s joy and relief were tempered with the pain of loss. That the entirety of the fighting had occurred over the course of one long day meant the losses were far, far fewer than they had anticipated, but there were still many grieving friends and family.

  “You weren’t waiting up for me, were you?” Tynthanal asked. “I’m sure I could have broken away sooner if I’d known.”

  “I know.” She licked her lips nervously, for in truth she’d made her decision three days ago and was just now finding the courage to tell him.

  He crossed the room toward her, taking a seat on the sofa beside her. “What is it?” he asked, his concern evident in his voice. Although they did not sleep together, he was well aware of the nightmares that had plagued her since she’d killed Draios. She did not think he fully understood the wound she had put on her own soul when she’d swung that sword, but he was at least aware it existed and was careful not to poke at it.

  For half a second, she almost talked herself out of it, but she knew in her heart what she had to do.

  “Alysoon is leaving for Women’s Well tomorrow,” she said, though of course Tynthanal was well aware. “And I will be going with her.”

  She heard the sharp intake of Tynthanal’s breath and wondered if he would argue with her. Even knowing that he would not suddenly fall to his knees and profess his love for her, there was a part of her that wanted him to remonstrate. She was going to break her own heart by leaving, and she hoped she would take at least a tiny chip out of his.

  She heard him swallow, but his voice came out steady. “May I ask why?”

  She squeezed her hands together in her lap and reminded herself that she knew him pretty well by now. He believed in letting her make her own decisions, and he had long felt guilty about all she had lost by coming to Aaltah with him. Even if he desperately wanted her to stay, he was unlikely to say so if he knew she wanted to leave.

  “You don’t need me anymore,” she said simply, and it was at least a portion of the truth. “The Well is repaired and the war is won, with you having led the people of Aaltah to safety. Those who opposed you before might not now love you, but they will be much more kindly disposed toward you and much less likely to voice any dissent they might feel. You can handle the scandal of a divorce.”

  “Divorce?” he gasped, as if the thought had never occurred to him.

  “You can divorce me safely now,” she said. “My father might be angry—even if I can convince him it was my own idea, he will likely blame you—but I’m sure Queen Ellinsoltah will not withdraw her support over it.” She smiled. “Not that you are much in need of her support anymore.”

  He shifted uncomfortably. “I…I don’t want to divorce you.”

  Again she smiled, sadly this time. “But you don’t want to be married to me, either. And I—” Her voice hiccuped to a stop, but she forced herself onward. “I don’t want to be married to someone who loves another. I deserve better.”

  It was only partially a lie. If she felt one iota of hope that he would ever grow to love her, she doubted she would have found the courage to split with him. But he had never once given that hope any soil in which to grow, and if she remained in Aaltah as his wife, she feared she would quickly become embittered and miserable.

  “If we divorce,” she continued, “and I move on to Women’s Well, then I might one day find a husband whom I can make happy and be made happy by in return. And you…Well, I suspect your newfound popularity will be such that you might even be able to marry a former abbess without doing any great damage to your political standing.”

  She could almost feel the hope that surged through Tynthanal’s body and was quickly squashed.

  “Chanlix has no desire to return to Aaltah,” he said. “And I cannot in good conscience ask her to leave her position as lady chancellor to come here and be my scandalous wife.” He coughed suddenly and looked away, but Kailee was not offended.

  “You won’t know for sure unless you ask her,” Kailee pointed out.

  He shook his head. “I know Chanlix. And I know what living as a respectable woman in Women’s Well has done for her. She will not give that up just to be with me.”

  Kailee opened her mouth to argue, then thought better of it. It was not her job to find him a replacement wife. She suspected Chanlix loved him more than he realized and that, like Kailee, she would sacrifice a great deal to be with him. But he would have to find that out on his own.

  “Will you give me the divorce?” she asked bluntly.

  He was silent for a long time before he answered. “If that’s what you truly want, then yes.”

  “Thank you,” she said as her heart shattered and she fought not to cry.

  * * *

  —

  It had been a full week since littl
e Princess Elwynne had come to stay at the royal palace, and still Ellin found herself having to stop by the nursery every time she returned to her apartments, as if the little girl might have somehow vanished during the course of the day. She tiptoed to the door and nudged it open, peering into the darkened room.

  Elwynne was fast asleep at this late hour, but Ellin was not surprised to find Zarsha sitting in a chair beside the bed. He smiled at her and shrugged, then tucked the covers more snugly under his niece’s chin and tiptoed out of the room. It seemed that knowing she was not his daughter had not diminished his love for her even a little bit, and Ellin could clearly see what a good and doting father he would be.

  In silence, they walked together down the hall to the parlor that adjoined both of their bedrooms, although Ellin was considering turning Zarsha’s bedroom into a bedroom for Elwynne when she got too old to need her governess sleeping in the adjacent room. It wasn’t like Zarsha ever slept in it.

  One day, she and Zarsha would admit to the child’s true parentage, but if they admitted that Waldmir was her father, she would by Nandel law be considered property of the Crown and forced to return. Neither of them could stomach the idea of Elwynne as property, and the only legitimate way to keep her was to maintain the fiction they had created. Zarsha was trying to locate her mother, but that had turned out to be more difficult than expected, for Brontyn had left Grunir and no one seemed to know where she’d gone.

  “How is she doing?” she asked Zarsha once they’d closed the parlor door behind them.

  Zarsha beamed like a proud papa. “She’s got a quick little mind,” he told her. “She’ll be speaking fluent Continental by the end of the month. And she seems a little more comfortable with the changes in her life each day.”

  Ellin bit her lip, knowing that it was a lot for anyone to take, much less a five-year-old child. Even at her tender age, Elwynne had already thoroughly learned the lesson that girls were inferior beings, just as she had learned the lesson that any form of comfort or adornment was decadent and wrong. Unlearning those lessons—while also learning a new language and being surrounded by people she barely knew—was understandably hard on her.

  “Not so comfortable that she could sleep without her ‘papa’ sitting by her side,” Ellin said, feeling a stir of guilt that she quickly dismissed. There was no question that Elwynne would have a better childhood here, and that would have been true even if there had been no upheaval in Nandel. Most of Waldmir’s adult heirs had perished with him. Zarsha had been struck from the succession when he’d married Ellin, but his younger brother, Granzin, had not been among the troops that had marched on Rhozinolm. He was now called the Sovereign Prince of Nandel, but there were several of Waldmir’s younger nephews who might dispute the claim when they grew old enough. It would be a long time before Nandel would be truly stable once more, and Ellin knew Zarsha was very worried about what it meant that Leethan had foreseen Elwynne on the throne, for it did not bode well for his brother.

  Zarsha poured himself a measure of brandy, holding the decanter up and raising an eyebrow at her.

  “No, thank you,” she said, though perhaps the brandy might have soothed her nerves. Not that she had any legitimate cause to be nervous. There was no question that Zarsha would be thrilled with her news.

  Zarsha took a sip of his brandy. “She did well tonight,” he said with a nod. “I think she would have fallen asleep if I’d left, but I didn’t have the heart to do it yet. I didn’t want to give her the chance to start missing everything and everyone she’s lost.”

  Ellin nodded. Elwynne had taken the news of Prince Waldmir’s death hard, for though he had never treated her well, he was the only father she’d ever known, and she’d loved him with a child’s devotion. It hadn’t helped that Leethan and Jaizal had elected to move to Women’s Well, where they could live without the shadow of their decades spent in the Abbey of Nandel haunting them. Elwynne had not known either woman for all that long, but their journey through the Nandel mountains had forged a tight bond that had left all three of them in tears when they parted.

  “I dread the day we have to tell her the truth about her governess,” Ellin said with a grimace. Elwynne had been told the comforting lie that Laurel had turned back, and though both Ellin and Zarsha hated to perpetuate the lie, they agreed that it was best for now.

  Zarsha groaned his agreement, and she could see that the thought had triggered a bout of melancholy. Although they didn’t talk about it much, she knew Zarsha was struggling as much as she was with the atrocity they had committed in sending Leethan to Waldmir. Only the two of them and Leethan knew what had actually occurred in that camp—almost everyone else assumed the Kai spell had been triggered by some enemy combatant who had somehow sneaked into the heavily patrolled and guarded camp, although she knew there were rumors in Nandel that the attack had come from within. There were those who looked at Zarsha’s brother sitting on the throne and wondered if that had been his plan all along.

  Zarsha clucked his tongue at her. “I can see you trying to climb into that rabbit hole,” he scolded. “We made the best decision we could under the circumstances, for the good not just of Rhozinolm but for all of Seven Wells.”

  She shook her head. “And it was all for naught, as the war was over before our army even decamped.”

  “We couldn’t have known that. I won’t deny that it…weighs on me. But though I am not a man of faith, I am trying my best to believe that we did the bidding of Leethan’s Mother of All, and that She has the best interests of Seven Wells at heart.”

  Ellin sighed softly and refrained from pointing out that Draios had been under the delusion that he was somehow doing the Creator’s will by attacking Aaltah and supporting Delnamal. Faith could be comforting to those who possessed it, but it could also be supremely dangerous and could be twisted to justify just about anything. The look on Zarsha’s face said he suffered the same doubts.

  “Are you climbing into that rabbit hole with me?” she asked with a little smile.

  “Where you go, I follow, My Queen,” he said, and though there was the customary twinkle in his eye, the spark was not as bright as it used to be.

  Fortunately, Ellin knew exactly how to fix it, at least temporarily. Her own smile brightened, and her heart fluttered pleasantly with excitement.

  “Then it is my job to lead you to a more pleasant place,” she said. “I stopped by the Abbey today, ostensibly to meet with Mother Zarend.” She was determined that she would continue her quest to transform the Abbey into a place of refuge rather than a prison, and since she had already overcome the council’s initial resistance to her setting foot there, she had taken it upon herself to arrange regular meetings with Mother Zarend. It was early days still, but she thought that because of her visits, there was already a slight lessening of the stigma associated with the Abbey.

  Zarsha cocked his head to one side. “Oh? Are you and the abbess concocting some new plan to nudge the Abbey toward greater respectability?”

  “I said that was ostensibly why I was there. We do already have several ideas to play with, but today I had a different reason altogether for my visit. One that I did not want to tell anyone about until I knew the result.” She beamed at him, and Zarsha suddenly sat bolt upright, his mouth dropping open as he stared at her breathlessly.

  “Does that mean what I think it means?” he asked.

  Ellin put her hand to her belly, hardly daring to believe what the abbess had told her. Only a few short months ago, she’d been convinced that she was not yet ready to have children, and until her suspiciously late monthly, she still would have said she was not ready. But the magic of the Blessing acted on the truth in her heart, not the one her conscious mind presented, and when the test had come up positive, she had felt nothing but joy.

  “If you think it means you’re going to be a father for real this time, then yes.”

 
; Zarsha’s eyes grew suspiciously shiny, and her smile somehow grew even wider, till she felt it was about to split her face in two.

  “And I believe it is time I begin what I’m sure will be a challenging effort to convince my council to change the laws of succession,” she added on a fierce swell of determination. “Even if this child is a girl, I fully intend her to succeed me to the throne.”

  She had more she planned to say, but Zarsha leapt to his feet and lifted her easily into his arms, laughing and squeezing her tight.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Alys welcomed Kailee into her private parlor in the royal palace with a hug. It was clear to anyone who’d known her before that the poor girl was still haunted by the events at the Well of Aaltah. Alys had hoped that returning to Women’s Well would lift the weight from Kailee’s shoulders—and maybe it still would someday, given time—but so far it had not.

  “Am I early?” Kailee asked when Alys reluctantly released her. It seemed she herself was in need of a hug, though she hadn’t realized it until she had embraced her soon-to-be-ex sister-in-law. Tynthanal had insisted that the official divorce decree wait until Kailee was safely in Women’s Well, out of the reach of Aaltah’s Abbey. Although Alys did not believe the people of Aaltah would wish to force Kailee into the Abbey after her heroism, she had agreed there was no point in taking the risk.

  “Just a little,” Alys said. “Lady Leethan will be joining us soon, I’m sure.”

  Kailee’s shoulders heaved with a sigh, and her lower lip looked like she’d been chewing it raw. By mutual agreement, neither of them had told anyone about the sacrificial Kai that clung to them still after the events at the Well. However, they were both certain that Lady Leethan’s choice to come to Women’s Well had less to do with a burning desire to live there and much more to do with those Kai motes.