hours. But just as steadily as it had progressed, all movements slowly came to cease. Artemi reached with her hand between her legs, and touched the fire of her son’s skin with her fingertips. He was still not born. She cried out in frustration, despair. “No.” She arched her back and writhed. “No!”
“You can do this,” Morghiad soothed. “I know it.” Leaning against a water-smoothed rock, he slung an arm beneath her legs and clasped her body against his. The new position worked perfectly, and soon she was delirious with ecstasy again as each slow, inch-by-inch movement came. He breathed with her, savouring the enjoyment he was able to share in and relishing the flames he loved so much.
This time, when her breathing lingered and the movements broke, it was he who
reached to check her progress. What he discovered worried him. Her work was not done yet. “Artemi?”
Nothing.
“Artemi?”
She only responded with a soft whimper.
“You have to stay awake. I cannot pull him out of you, do you understand?” There had been warnings about that on nearly every page of Onsa’s blasted book. Never pull a child from its birthing mother, it had read, do so and you risk infanticide. Never force her body to do this faster than it was meant to. Artemi was rapidly losing consciousness, and strength. Calm. He had to stay calm.
He splashed water across her face, and succeeded in making her blink against the light.
“Artemi. You are close now, very close. But you must fight for me.”
She nodded groggily, but struggled to move. Blazes, she felt so tired! Morghiad manoeuvred her so that she was lying flat on her back, on top of him, and divided her legs by prizing them apart with his own. As he began to rock her from side to side, she screamed and arched her back again. Her body did the rest with ecstasy, and he felt it. He felt the very moment that their son separated from her, taking her fires with him. And he felt the searing storm of their resurgence in her that turned the whole cave black. She’d drained the entire place of its energy in an instant, but she lived. His son lived, and his cry was a roar.
For all that Onsa had declared he was large for a newborn, Tallyn looked very small as he squirmed in his father’s hand.
Artemi rested her chin on Morghiad’s shoulder. “Have you noticed his eyes are green already?”
“I hope for his sake he inherits the rest of his looks from you.”
She pulled a face at her husband. He really had no idea how ridiculous he sounded at times. But she had handed her son something in the way of her colouring. He already had a
short crop of gold-flecked, reddish-brown hair on his small, kefruit-like head.
“It’s time to present him to the world,” Morghiad said with a proud grin. There was a great deal of pride coursing though his river of emotion, and love. He gave one of his striking smiles to her, and handed Tallyn’s wriggling form to her. Artemi cuddled him against the various sword straps that crossed her bosom, and watched as her husband started to shave. His back was wonderfully honed, well-muscled and smooth. A few, darkened scars crossed it like the glancing tracks of shooting stars, but most of them were very old now. The mark of the hawk on feathers was the most obvious thing about his back: dark and significant, impossible to remove. Artemi stood to examine it more closely, and reached out to touch the
sigil with her free hand.
Morghiad watched her silently in the mirror, with a solemn understanding that emanated from him. The leaping panther was easy enough to reveal, and its underlying Blaze forms were clear enough for her to memorise. She carefully placed her son on the dresser and moved his blanket down his back, exposing his shoulders. He gurgled happily when the forms touched him, and the sigil of the Jade’an family soon marked him. A nod of approval came from Morghiad as he watched her gather Tallyn back into her arms.
The new kahr quickly fell asleep while she held him, and Artemi curled up in the armchair to watch her husband finish shaving.
“The world’s deadliest assassin is holding my son,” he chuckled as he moved the
razor under his jaw.
Artemi looked to her various blades. It was so good to be wearing them again, to be able to see her feet again! “Deadly can be measured in different ways. And he is my son, too,” she retorted. Though she’d burn anyone who tried to take him from her!
Someone knocked at the door then, and Artemi set the baby down in the middle of the bed before answering it. There was no sense in being under-cautious. She padded quietly into the antechamber where the thickly furred form of Danner sat to attention, and opened the large white panels to be greeted by the entirety of her family, the elder and younger Silar, Caala, Koviere and Romarr. She spotted Selieni lurking behind them, but was so rapidly embraced by her father she had little time to
say anything.
“I see you have your waist back,” Silar said as he raised an eyebrow.
Her father was squeezing her so tightly that she barely had enough air to respond. “I’m... alright,” she gasped. If only he’d allow her some air!
Finally, and with a little urging, he let go. There were tears in his eyes. “There appears to be a wolfbehind you,” he said, lines creasing his forehead.
Artemi grinned. “Yes, his name’s Danner. He seems to have adopted my son as one ofhis pups.”
“Fires above, it is him,” Koviere chuckled. He went to ruffle the animal’s mane of fur.
Her brother was tapping his foot
impatiently. “Can I see my nephew now?”
“Yes. But he’s sleeping, so you have to be quiet.”
Her brother slung a tree-like arm around her shoulders and walked with her to the bedroom, where Morghiad was still splashing water over his face. He nodded casually as the numerous visitors piled in, but the wariness in him was obvious. His discomfort at seeing her father was painful even for her to endure, but nothing showed on his features.
Toryn regarded him with the usual look of disapproval, which only made Artemi want to bang their stupid, male heads together. Selieni didn’t behave much better, however, as she gawped open-mouthed at the shirtless king when she entered. But all eyes were shortly
drawn to the sleeping kahr on the bed.
“Well I’m glad to see some D’Avrohan hair on the lad,” her father chuckled, ruffling Talia’s deep-red locks.
Koviere boomed even when he whispered. “You used to pull exactly that face when you slept, my lord.”
Morghiad rolled his emerald eyes and pulled on a shirt.
“So,” Silar began, “There’s already two of me...” he nudged Artemi’s brother playfully. “...What did you decide to call the little caterpillar?”
“Tallyn. We owed him that much.”
Silar’sfeigned annoyance belied that he already knew what they’d decided on, and he struggled to hide his grins.
Conversely, Morghiad seemed to feel a touch of sadness about it. He still felt responsible for the Kusuru’s death, even though Artemi had explained to him on multiple occasions that it had been a result of Tal’s very well-informed decisions. Morghiad came to stand behind her and held her while they watched their son sleep.
Romarr smiled warmly. “Tallyn will be honoured when he finds out.” He reached down to pat Danner as the animal sniffed his feet.
Silar opened his mouth to speak again, “So how does it feel to be a father?”
Artemi almost balked at that. What was the man scheming at? He knew very well how Morghiad hated talking about feelings and emotions. Everyone who’d ever met him knew it! She shot Silar a glare for good measure.
Agonising thought processes worked in her husband’s mind, and worse, she could see the growing smirk on her own father’s face. She was almost tempted to speak for her king, but knew that would only have embarrassed him further.
“It is more terrifying than a 200,000strong Hirrahan army turning up at the city gates,” he said at last, “And more welcome than another hundred years of peace.”
; Artemi was quite satisfied to see the smug amusement drain from her father’s face, but equally surprised at the words. Was Morghiad really that afraid? She hadn’t felt a single breath of it from him since Tallyn’s arrival. Nothing but pride, relief and happiness. But he would never lie about such a thing, so why was he hiding it from her? And how? She
noticed that Silar was watching her closely. He had engineered this, had driven her towards that exact realisation. Damn him and his nearmind-reading abilities!
“Will you teach him to fight like you do?” Sidav asked.
Romarr scoffed loudly. “She will not.”
“The training is too... harsh. It is torture. No mother would put their own son through that,” Artemi said in cool tones. You had to learn that pain was nothing, that death was nothing. If Tallyn would grow to match his father’s level of skill, it would be as much as she could wish for.
“Grade?” Romarr enquired.
“Twelve,” Morghiad responded. “I don’t think they’re made in thirteens and fourteens.” He squeezed his wife with a grin.
Selieni whispered something into Romarr’s ear then, making him smirk, but his smile dropped when the wolfran out into the anteroom. Artemi could hear Danner growling from where she was, and not a moment passed before swords were drawn and feet moved bodies into the neighbouring room. The wolf was snarling at the double doors, ears back and body low.
“It’s not necessarily an enemy,” Morghiad said in a low voice. He frowned at Danner and opened the doors himself. His muscles were tense enough to meet any attack, but what stood in the hallway beyond was no threat to him. A slender man, wizened by recent weight loss and hard travelling, cowered before him.
“Carlin?”
The man looked up with his bright blue eyes and nodded slowly. A circle of guards surrounded him, but his daughter was nowhere to be seen.
“Come in,” Morghiad said with an appreciably soft voice.
Carlin moved from one group of prison keepers to another, his head bowed, and Morghiad shut the door behind him. It succeeded in making Danner’s growl even more vocal, and Artemi knew there would be no soothing him.
“My wolf can smell her on you, and she hasn’t treated him all that well in her past lives.”
Mirel’s father eyed the dog nervously, huddling deeper into his oversized cloak.
“You’ve come here because your daughter is missing, correct?” Silar said.
Carlin nodded. “She ran away. I did everything but... she just ran. She’s only nineyears-old. I need to find her... Please, I need your help. Help me make sure she turns out good.”
He was walking through the ice-blue hallway, listening to Tallyn babble in his unique, nonsensical language when it happened. The night before, his son had been fractious and difficult, wailing at every opportunity and apparently for no reason. Both he and Artemi had tried everything to get their son to sleep, but eventually they’d given up on finding an answer. And Artemi, like the true warrior she
was, managed to sit with the screaming child until he yelled himselfto sleep. Morghiad had found her at sunrise, curled up and unconscious beside Tallyn’s cot. He’d carried her back to bed, only to hear yet more wails following them. And then Artemi had awoken, and started crying herself, declaring she was a terrible mother and it was all her fault because she’d failed at breastfeeding. And how was he to manage this war of unhappiness that waged in his own rooms?
He’d been forced to reiterate to her yet again that she had done nothing wrong, and that Onsa had insisted she’d seen more determined women give up before Artemi had. Blazes, it had been partially his doing in any case! There was just something very disturbing about the sensation to him, and it had quite obviously
affected her too. And that only made Tallyn less willing to feed. Thank Achellon for wet nurses! But he’d shut the door against Tallyn’s cries, squeezed and hugged his wife until she smiled again, left her to sleep and then gone to take his son for a walk.
They’d stridden through airy corridors as the orange spring sun rose, marched through the fresh green of the gardens and watched the numerous boats that crawled through the air on their bridge of water. At last Tallyn had cheered up, and Morghiad was relieved to have a peaceful child in the crook of his arm again. And so they’d come to the ice-blue hallway, the one that ran upwards into the sky but felt entirely level as you walked its length. Its walls had glittered with crystalline intensity and its floors glimmered with their own light.
He had sensed his wife awaken, bathe and dress herself. He’d felt her move through the palace and speak to people she knew well. He’d known that she was attending to something she found dull-but-necessary when she seated herselfat a desk. And he’d known that she had eventually gotten up, left the room and headed directly for him. But then something... happened to her. She simply left his mind. In one moment he could feel every breath that came to her, every happiness that brought out her smiles, and in the next moment there was nothing. A cold, empty nothing.
The shock of it drew all strength from him, causing his legs to give way beneath him. He managed to keep hold of Tallyn, but only just. Morghiad closed his eyes and looked for her Blaze stream amongst the pulsing network
of blue energy. It was gone.
Not again, not again, not again, not again!
He was dimly aware that he was running now, his son clutched tightly against his chest. How could she be gone? There had been no pain, no warning, nothing. She had been fine – strong, healthy, as fierce a fighter as ever. She wasn’t dead. Perhaps he had imagined it, and in a moment he would wake up with her lying next to him. He pelted towards the last place he had sensed her. Tallyn was wailing again, but there was nothing he could do to stop it now. Tears of his own were welling at his eyes. He withdrew his sword, turned the final corner and immediately slowed his pace.
A crowd of soldiers in dark green
surrounded something on the ground. He knew it was her body, and he knew this was no dream.
The soldiers turned to him as Tallyn announced their presence. Their faces were stunned, expressionless and pale. A pool of fiery red hair lay at their feet. Morghiad dropped his sword, and set his son into one of the soldier’s arms. He did not move his gaze from her face, where her brown eyes were fixed-open and dark. Her skin was still hot, and echoes of her power still emanated from it. But she was certainly not in this body any longer. Morghiad struggled to organise his thoughts. There would be time for mourning her later. He had to find out who was responsible!
Morghiad glanced over her for any obvious sign of injury, but he could see nothing
at all. There were no tears in her clothing, no blood, no black drops of pinh. She was as perfect as ever. “Did anyone see anything?”
His question was met only by silence.
He stood this time. “Anyone?”
A squat sergeant with eyes too close together answered him finally, “My lord, she was just walking past... and she... dropped to the floor.”
“People don’t just collapse without cause!” Morghiad knelt down again to inspect her, this time turning her over to check her back. Her hair spilled across his hands when he moved her, feeling like ice cold silk and fizzling coals all at once. He gritted his teeth and looked. There was nothing, no injury, no signs of Blaze. As he returned her to her original position, he heard Silar’s voice cursing
profusely.
Morghiad met the general’s eyes as he rose. “You have failed her again.”
Silar’s eyes widened in surprise. “I didn’t... I...”
“You didn’t see it?”
Silar looked troubled, and dropped his eyes to the floor. “No,” he said quietly.
“Then leave this place.”
Silar blinked at him twice, looked as if he was about to say something before he turned and walked away.
Morghiad had suffered enough of their failures. “All of you, leave – now!” He retrieved her body from the floor and strode away from them, r
apidly making his way towards the only place he knew was safe. He took her to the cave below the city.
Perhaps he had expected her to reanimate as soon as he placed her into the glowing field of light, or somehow he’d hoped those fires would reignite inside her when he did it. But none of those things happened; she remained entirely motionless and staring. Morghiad slumped into the water with her, only yards from where she’d borne Tallyn, and held her against him while he wept.
Eventually he cried himselfto sleep, and drank in a thousand nightmares of dark creatures and needling pain. The light and Artemi’s body were still there when he awoke, but his mind had started to order itself once more. He buried his face in her damp hair while he thought.
Silar had failed to prevent her death the first time because he’d had insufficient clues to
it. He did not meet with Artemi after her brush with Hegard. Nor had Silar seen Acher and his henchman during that critical period between their discovery of her and her murder. But Silar’s anticipatory abilities had matured to such an extent that he’d missed nothing in the last few years. He’d correctly predicted the day Tallyn would take his first steps, he’d manoeuvred conversations to extract information even Morghiad wasn’t aware he was hiding, and he’d singlehandedly steered the country around what should have been an economic disaster. Silar knew the minds of men, but he could not know if it would rain in seven months’ time or if the air he breathed now would one day form part of a hurricane. When it came to forces free of dictation by people, Silar was no better-informed than
The Fireblade Array: 4-Book Bundle Page 99