With a fury that stunned Antonia, Alyx threw himself at his opponent in an attempt to drive his blade into Garrick’s chest but the vampire sidestepped the attack, slashing down with his own blade to rent Alyx’s coat from shoulder to hem. This time the tip of the dagger struck flesh and Alyx twisted, hissing with pain as he spun around. His lips were peeled back from his teeth, his chest heaving.
She knew one of them was about to die. Death was in the air so thickly she could almost smell it. Garrick had drawn first blood but Alyx didn’t seem to notice as he opened his mouth and roared.
It happened so fast none of them could have prevented it. The warriors tensed then started toward one another with hatred and lethal intent seething in their eyes. She was looking at Alyx and didn’t see her husband’s dagger descending as she flung herself between them, both arms straight out to catch them in the center of their chests to keep them apart. As Garrick’s dagger came down he suddenly became aware of her getting in the way and tried to deflect his aim.
“No!” Alyx yelled, trying to grab Antonia around the waist to jerk her to the side and away from the plummeting blade.
The momentum of the downward strike carried through despite Garrick’s effort to prevent it and the blade sliced deeply into his wife’s arm—striking bone on its descent—and blood poured from the wound.
Antonia cried out, staggering back with her free hand wrapped around her arm as blood gushed over her fingers. She looked up at Garrick who had frozen with the dagger pulled up to his shoulder as though he could take back the hit.
“Antonia!” Alyx cried out as he dropped his dagger and started to reach for her.
With Garrick immobile—his face pale and mouth twisted with shock—Antonia pushed at Alyx’s chest. “Go,” she said. “Alyx go.”
There was a commotion at the door and it was flung open to reveal Marc with two men standing behind him.
“Go!” she ordered. “Now!”
Alyx saw the men coming toward him and pivoted. He threw himself at the window and crashed through the glass, doing a somersault as he landed. The last she saw of him he was sprinting into the darkness.
Marc started after him but Garrick yelled at him to stop. “Let him go,” he said and when Marc didn’t seem to hear, he bellowed. “Let him go! Help me with her!”
Garrick grabbed his wife’s arm and clamped his fingers tightly at the wrist.
Antonia was rapidly losing blood from the long, deep cut that had sliced her arm from just above the wrist down the side and almost to the elbow. She was shaking uncontrollably as she stood there trying to pinch closed her gaping flesh along the forearm.
“Mother of the goddess!” Marc whispered as he hurried over.
“She needs stitches,” Garrick said in a vast understatement.
Marc whipped his head around to shout orders to the men who had entered behind him. “Clauson, there’s a med kit in my saddlebags. Get it! Volkes, I need that bottle of scotch you always have with you!”
The two men hurried out of the cabin as Garrick helped Antonia to sit down on the floor.
He was furious, she thought as she looked into his cold eyes. Not at Alyx but at her. His lips were thin slits, his breath escaping in long, loud bursts.
“What the fuck were you thinking?” he demanded.
“I didn’t want either of you to die,” she said.
“So you’d sacrifice yourself to keep me from killing him?” he threw at her through clenched teeth. “You love him that much?”
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Marc give his friend a strange look but she was rapidly losing consciousness. The loss of so much blood was draining her strength. Her arm was throbbing, stinging, burning all at the same time and it was agony that she was finding hard to endure.
“I ought to beat the shit out of you, wench,” he snarled at her. “And I may yet!”
“Rick,” Marc said softly.
“She put herself in the way!” Garrick stated. “To protect that prick! I could have killed her, Zoltán!”
“Aye, but you didn’t,” Marc said in a reasonable voice.
“She would have died for him!” Garrick shouted.
The last Antonia heard before she pitched headlong into darkness was Garrick’s vow to kill Alyxdair Clay if it was the last thing he ever did.
* * * * *
For a week Antonia lay in a fever-induced delirium. The nasty cut on her arm had become infected and as Garrick waited anxiously for his father to send a TAOS unit to Volakis, his wife lay on the cutting edge of death.
“This is why I begged His Grace to provide me with one of the units,” Healer Frye complained for the tenth time. The Tissue Artery Organ and Skeletal diagnostic machine—better known as a TAOS unit—could heal ninty-nine percent of the ailments and maladies that struck mankind. It could knit broken bones, stitch lacerations, cauterize wounds, and excise tumors as well as re-segment torn and severed arteries and veins. The Amhantarian technology was used throughout several galaxies as the primary diagnostic and healing instrument at the disposal of the healers. It could heal Antonia’s infection in a matter of minutes.
“It will be here by the end of the day,” Marc stated.
“Pray to Sibylline we have that much time,” the healer mumbled.
“She looks so pale,” Lady Maripose said as she blotted at her eyes with a lace-edged silk handkerchief.
“I am sick with worry for my girl,” the baron said as he caressed his daughter’s still hand.
Garrick ground his teeth, wishing he hadn’t allowed Antonia’s parents out of the dungeon to be at her side.
“Had I put her through the Changing, you would have had no need to worry,” Garrick told the baron.
“This is your fault to begin with!” the baron snapped. “Had you not been trying to kill Alyx…”
“Enough!” Garrick hissed. He was tired of hearing the same condemnation from the Blackthorn family. Even the younger daughter Ashlyn had accused him of trying to kill her sister because he was jealous of Antonia’s love for Clay. “Out! All of you! Get the hell out of my wife’s room!”
It wasn’t the first time he’d run them out and he suspected it wouldn’t be the last. He had grown to detest her family as much as he loved her. Their nasty, hateful looks were lost on him—as were their words of blame and denunciation—but he was getting sick of the sight of them. Their snide voices never failed to give him a blazing headache.
After one final withering look from Ashlyn, the Blackthorns exited the room and closed the door behind them.
“They’re worried, Rick,” Marc said softly.
“I don’t give a fuck,” Garrick snapped. He plowed a hand through his hair. “I’m sick of them accusing me of deliberately hurting her.”
He’d had very little sleep in the last week. He hadn’t been eating either, and the Sustenance was all that was keeping him going. He swilled it down like water but the sight of it never failed to hurt him for his mind would go back to the cabin and his wife’s spilled blood.
“It was an accident,” Marc said.
“Aye, but that doesn’t matter to them,” he said. “Or me.” Stuffing his hands into the pockets of his pants, he went to the window and stared at the rain sliding down the pane. In the intermittent Moonlight as the gray clouds passed over, the raindrops looked like seed pearls tumbling along the glass. “What news of Clay?”
“He’s gone to ground again,” Marc replied. “But we’ll discover his hidey-hole. It’s just a matter of time.”
Switching his gaze to the barbican where the dark silhouettes of two bodies swayed in the brisk wind from the last autumn storm, he pursed his lips. There swung two more reasons the inhabitants of Blackthorn so despised him. The men had been caught spying—one having been discovered rifling through Garrick’s desk.
He heard Antonia groan and turned his head to look at her. She had not regained consciousness since the cabin. Now and again she would groan as though caught in terrible agony but h
er eyelids never flickered. She lay as still as death, as pale as the sheets upon which she reclined. The transfusions the healer had given her hadn’t added one single flush of color to her cheeks. The only color she had was from the dark shadows under her eyes.
“She’s gonna be fine,” Marc stated. “You have to believe that.”
“Aye,” Garrick said and returned to staring out the window. “I’d like to be alone with her if you don’t mind.”
“Sure,” Marc agreed. He glanced at the healer who nodded. They left the room together.
For a long time Garrick stood where he was—rigid and tense, turned in on himself—then his shoulders slumped. He hung his head. He’d come to a decision he wished he didn’t have to make but if he was to ever know peace again, he had no choice in the matter.
Leaving the window, he walked over to his wife’s bed. She looked so small, so lost, so utterly defenseless. He might as well have been staring at her in her coffin for her chest barely rose and fell with each breath. He kept his hands in his pockets to avoid the temptation of touching her. He was afraid if he did, he’d change his mind.
“I loved you more than anything,” he said quietly. “But that wasn’t enough for you, wench. You would have given your life for him and you almost did. I can’t forgive that.”
He allowed his gaze to roam over her face one last time then he left her.
Chapter Ten
Thyme Belvoir screamed as loudly as she could but it didn’t help. Nothing did. The ungodly pain that was gripping her with fiery talons was tearing her apart. She dug her heels into the mattress and screamed again yet still the pain went on and on and on.
“This is why I never want to have children,” Ashlyn said. Her young face was pale as she stared at the servant straining to give birth.
“They say you forget the pain as soon as the baby is born,” Antonia told her. She blew a strand of loose hair from her sweaty face then ran her arm over the moisture gathered on her forehead.
“I seriously doubt I’d forget nineteen hours of excruciating agony,” Ashlyn stated.
Antonia reached for the wet cloth in a bowl beside the bed and wrung it out. She leaned over the moaning woman to blot the cold cloth over Thyme’s face, neck and upper chest.
It was sweltering inside the little thatched hut, the Sun beating down from a cloudless July inferno. It had been three months without rain and two months of unrelenting, crop destroying heat. Rivers were way down. Creeks were drying up. Dust flew through the air on hot gusts of winds.
And the war between Volakis and Modartha continued. The death toll had risen to over seventy thousand with no end in sight. Cities were being destroyed and the countryside ravaged by both sides. The rebel forces were taking a beating but were hanging on if only by a thread.
Garrick had been gone for months without a word. What news she had of him came from her father who took great delight in telling her how much the people of Volakis despised the tyrant to whom she was Joined.
“There is a million credit bounty on his head,” the baron said. “Sooner or later, someone will collect on it.”
She prayed not. Despite him having left her, Antonia loved Garrick just as deeply as she had before that night in the cabin when his love for her had died.
A hideous scream shook Antonia out of her reverie. With the healer seeing to injured fighters at the keep and the midwife two boroughs away delivering a set of triplets, there had been no one willing to go outside the walls of Castle Blackthorn to help a rebel soldier’s wife when she went into labor. Antonia had circumvented her parents to take on the chore. She knew the Modarthans would not harm the wife of the Crimson Lord and the rebels would not harm any of the Blackthorn family because of their close connection to Gen. Clay. She was as safe a half mile from the keep as she was within its walls.
“I can’t stand much more of this,” Ashlyn said, putting her hands over her ears. Both Antonia and the pregnant mother gave the young girl incredulous looks.
“I think it’s coming, milady!” Thyme stated.
“Goddess I hope so,” Ashlyn mumbled.
Antonia had assisted at three other births—all at the keep—so she had a good working knowledge of what was required of her. When Thyme held out her hand to be helped to a sitting position, she took it and supported the woman as she got out of bed. Thyme hiked up her soiled nightgown, squatted beside the bed, grabbed the edge of the mattress in one fist, slapped her palm to her thigh and started to push, her face screwed into a mask of pain.
“Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh!” Ashlyn whimpered. She backed away, turned around three times as though looking for a way out of the situation she’d been thrust into then squeezed her eyes shut.
Thyme held her hand up to Antonia. “Milady?”
Antonia took the woman’s hand and tried not to wince as Thyme gripped it hard. “Ash, what are you doing?” she queried.
“I can’t watch this,” Ashlyn said.
“You wanted to come along,” Antonia reminded her sister. “Make yourself useful and hand me the towels.”
Wedging an eye open as Thyme began to pant and heave, keen and heave, grunt and heave, the young girl reached out with trembling hands to pluck the towels from the table. She held her breath as she brought them over to her sister.
“For the love of the goddess, Ash,” Antonia scolded. She took one of the towels in her hands and held it at the ready. “This is a natural process most every woman will go through in her life. It is a beautiful thing.”
Ashlyn violently shook her head. “Not me. No way. I’m not ever going to get pregnant.”
“That’s what I said,” Thyme said with a grunt. She darted a glance at Antonia. “The getting’s good. It’s the getting out that’s the problem.”
Antonia smiled but the smile dissolved quickly as Thyme gave one more mighty push and shouted, “Here it comes!”
Quickly putting her hands between the woman’s legs, she caught the babe as it slipped from Thyme’s body and into Antonia’s hands.
“It’s a boy,” Antonia said with a grin.
“Praise be to the goddess!” Thyme exclaimed. After five girls she’d finally given her husband Zacharias the boy he had longed for.
“Get the knife, Ash,” Antonia told her sister but Ashlyn didn’t move. The young girl was staring wide-eyed at the babe. Antonia knew it was the sight of the cord dangling from Thyme’s body to the baby as well as the waxy white substance that coated the lad that had turned Ashlyn to stone.
“Never you mind, milady,” Thyme said, holding out her arms. “Just give ’im here.”
Antonia eased the babe into his mother’s care then got up to get the knife to cut the cord. She thrust it first into a pot of simmering water then poured alcohol over it, wondering why she suddenly had a strange, unwelcome feeling niggling in the back of her mind. Just as she hunkered down beside Thyme once more, the afterbirth slipped out with a wet, sloshy plop and pooled at her feet.
Ashlyn made a strange gurgling sound then her eyes rolled back in her head and she went down like a stone, out cold.
“Oh for the love of—” Antonia began.
“Milady, he ain’t breathing,” Thyme interrupted her.
That was what was bothering her, Antonia thought as she knelt there with the knife in her hand. The babe had yet to make a sound and one quick look at him revealed he was turning blue.
With a calmness she didn’t feel, she quickly cut the cord then reached for the babe. “Give him to me, Thyme,” she ordered.
The woman handed him over without hesitation. Antonia knew she thought her child was stillborn but Antonia thought all he needed was to have his airway cleared. That’s what she did, quickly using the little suction device Healer Frye had given her should it be necessary. Once the babe’s nose and mouth were clear, Antonia turned him to his side and gently patted his back.
“Milady…?” Thyme questioned, her voice breaking.
Bending over the babe, Antonia put her mouth over
his little nose and lips and blew into him a gentle breath. She gave him five light puffs of air and was beginning to lose heart. At that moment Baby Boy Belvoir let out an ear-piercing shriek that rivaled those his mother had made while she’d been in labor with him. His little trilling sound as his chin quivered was the most glorious thing either woman had ever heard.
“You saved his life, milady,” Thyme said. “You saved my boy.”
Antonia clamped off the cord, wrapped the baby in another clean towel then laid him gently on the bed. He was squalling to high heaven with his little red face scrunched up fiercely. She helped his mother to stand then into the bed, tucking more clean towels between Thyme’s legs.
“You saved my boy,” Thyme said, propping up against the headboard. “You saved him, milady. Thanks be to the goddess, you saved him.”
Antonia picked the child up and put him in his mother’s arms. “I bless Her for giving me the knowledge to be of help.” She smiled at the infant. “He’s a handsome lad,” she said.
“He is, ain’t he?” Thyme asked with pride. She kissed his little forehead, tears gathering in her eyes. “My husband is gonna be so proud.”
“What are you going to call him?” Antonia asked.
Thyme looked up at her. “With all due respect, milady, I’d like to name him Antony,” she said. “After you.”
“I would be honored,” Antonia said, emotion clogging her throat.
“Then Antony it is,” his mother stated. “And you’re a fine little Ant, aren’t you, son?”
After making sure Thyme had everything she needed. Antonia went over to her sister and squatted down. Gently she slapped Ashlyn’s cheeks until the girl’s eyelids fluttered open.
“Is it all over with?” Ashlyn asked.
“Aye, and time for you to go home. I don’t think you want to be here when I clean up the afterbirth and—”
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