by Brenna Lyons
“Will King Edward support that choice?” Mora affected contemplation, though Matthew didn’t believe the line of thinking was new to her. She’d planned this. She’d foreseen his refusal and was raising the stakes at every pass.
“He can’t force me to dismiss Sira. He can’t force me to marry you.” He could highly suggest Matthew secure his heir, however he had to, but he couldn’t force that either. “He can’t even name the child Hein, if I don’t claim him as such.”
“All true,” she conceded. “But he doesn’t have to be happy about the situation. He doesn’t have to give his blessing to you killing your true heir.”
His heart stuttered at that. “What are you talking about?”
“If you won’t claim your heir, it is a hardship for me to carry it.” She paused, letting her logic sink into his rebelling mind. “How am I supposed to support it? How am I supposed to make a coveted position with a bastard son in tow and a body ruined by bringing it forth?”
The very idea of terminating a pregnancy for such a reason went against the core of the Goddess’s teachings. Termination was for cases where the health and well-being of the mother were in jeopardy. It was for cases of real hardship—emotional or physical.
The fact that Mora was using the babe as a bargaining bit proved she had no emotional ties to be called a hardship. Her family could easily support the child, male or female, so there was no physical hardship to be argued.
Yet she intended to terminate a viable child in this petty game, invoking the very laws she’d called into play by using the aphrodisiac at the Bride Ball to her best advantage.
Part of him argued that Matthew should let her do it. The child wasn’t one either of them had set out to create. It was an emotional hardship for himself and Sira, even if it wasn’t for Mora. It wouldn’t know love from Mora, even if Matthew came to care for it, and—Goddess as witness—Mora would use such an attachment against him, in the end.
Another part recoiled at the idea of it. Long-ago lessons imparted by his own dirt-noble mother demanded he try to save the innocent child, used as a lead piece in the game. It was morally bankrupt to terminate a child he was more than capable of supporting, that he had created, however that was accomplished.
This was something of a test of his faith and fiber. Matthew had taken responsibility for the harm he’d done Sira in his drugged state. Did he have less of a responsibility to right the wrongs he’d done Mora? Granted, the blame didn’t rest solely on himself, and Mora bore more than a small share of it personally, but he was likely the only one who would take responsibility, among the many guilty.
He loathed her. Matthew had never made a secret of that fact, but did that excuse him? Was a wrong done an adversary or an enemy less a wrong?
No. Responsibility for one meant responsibility for all.
“Hein Matthew?” she prompted him.
“I will claim him.”
Her smile spread into a sickeningly-smug version.
“But not as heir,” he qualified.
It vanished as quickly, and a frightening calm took its place. “I’m listening.”
“I’ll take you as mistress in name. You’ll have freedom to discreetly take lovers, no duties to me, money and a small estate to raise the child on.” An estate somewhere Sira need never see her. And Mora will be forbidden to set foot in this house.
“But I won’t have a coveted position.”
“Someone’s name means more to you than security and freedom?” He would never understand women.
No. That’s not true. I understand Sira well enough. But Sira wasn’t like other women. She had a moral center that fell more in line with his than the line he’d seen in other women.
“I’ll be your wife and my son your heir, or you will be living a lie, a lie I will not condone.”
“It won’t be a lie. I choose which heirs to claim. You forget your place, Mora.” He owed her nothing, certainly not as much as he was offering her for a bastard he’d been drugged into planting.
She laughed harshly, a sneer twisting her face into a mask that more closely matched her inner non-beauty. “You’ll claim a second son on a dirt-noble line, instead of a first son on the daughter of a favored lord? What an intriguing choice, Hein Matthew.”
“It remains my choice.”
“And if Sirana carries a daughter? If she never presents you with a son?”
“Then your son would be Hein, by default...unless Alana presents Benjamin with two heirs, in which case, even I wouldn’t be, let alone my heirs.”
“And where is the security in that?” she taunted.
“It’s all the security I’m offering. Take it or not.” He would never turn Sira out or make her a mistress for Mora.
And even if he wished to give either Mora or Sira more security than that, it was the truth of his existence as the son of the king on a mistress, when an heir existed on his contracted queen; he was only in line for the throne, until there were two heirs of the direct line.
Mora rose, sighing deeply. “Unacceptable. You have a week to reconsider. I offer security—the guarantee of an heir. If you insist on Sirana Firloch as your wife, you will do it without that guarantee.”
“Then I will.” He tried to make it sound inconsequential, but his moral center screamed at the choice he was making. Matthew was openly inviting Mora to terminate his child.
No. The choice is hers. I’ve offered an alternative. This is her greed. I will not dismiss Sira for this blackmail.
The slam of the door behind Mora sent a chill down his spine.
* * * *
“You accept it?” Sira managed, though she felt she might choke on the words.
“I have no more palatable choice.” It was stated clearly and simply, as if he had no question that he was doing the right thing.
“What if the choice proves unpalatable?”
Matthew’s hands closed on her shoulders. “Less palatable than Mora? How could it be?”
Was he shortsighted or dense? “What if I don’t carry your heir? What if the Goddess decrees this our only child together?”
“Then Alana’s son is the only heir to the throne. It won’t be the first time in history that there was only one. It is the rule, rather than the exception.”
“And you would make the choice with no idea whether I carry a son or daughter?” He couldn’t; his station in life demanded heirs, if he could produce them. If Mora’s tests were to be believed, and Matthew said they were sealed appropriately, he was more than capable of producing heirs. The question remained... Was Sira capable of providing them?
“Enough, Sira,” he ordered. “I’ve rendered the decision. You are my wife. Do you want to be something less than that?”
She shook her head, her heart aching that he’d question it.
“Then it’s settled.” He dipped his head down and laid a gentle kiss against her lips, pausing there, his words misting into her mouth. “You are my wife, Sira. Nothing else matters. Please, believe me. Nothing else but that.”
With that, he was striding out the door and down the corridor.
Sira stood for a long moment, watching his retreating back.
On one level, she couldn’t dispute that the choice was his own. On another, it was a choice he should go into fully-informed.
A blood test had failed to establish the sex of the babe she carried. An amniot draw would do so, without fail...and with little risk, all told, especially this early in pregnancy.
If Matthew knew she carried a son, he could be secure in the choice he’d made. If he knew she carried a daughter...
Would he reconsider? It was his choice, even if it was one she didn’t care for. He was Hein, son of a king. His position held duties and obligations she could only dream of.
If Matthew chose to follow this path, Mora would vilify him in it. The best possible defense was an heir he wanted to claim on the way.
It was up to Sira to safeguard him, if he wouldn’t safeguard himself.
Chapter Ten
“Sira?” The smile on Matthew’s face dimmed at the empty rooms. He retraced his steps through the household, calling for her. When he’d reached his office again, he stopped to consider it.
“Prentice,” he bellowed.
The old man came trotting out, appearing from nowhere. If only Sira would appear so neatly, but something told Matthew she wouldn’t.
“Yes, Hein?”
“Where is my wife?”
His brow furrowed. “She left with Pierce this morning,” he reported.
Ah...a day in town. “Where to?” He’d like to join her.
“I’m afraid I don’t know,” he admitted. “Lady Sirana called for a driver. I assumed she’d wanted to stretch the legs.”
Matthew forced back a full-blown panic. What was she doing, a day after Mora’s announcement? Had he dismissed her concerns too quickly? Should he have taken more time? Put her more at ease?
Sira, what are you doing?
“Hein Matthew?”
“I want to know the minute she returns. Not a moment of delay, Prentice.”
“Of course.”
“And...send a guard to her parents. Maybe...” He hoped to the Goddess he was right. “Maybe she just wanted to see her family.” Maybe she needs reassurance I can’t offer.
* * * *
Matthew stopped in mid-step, looking out the window at the approaching vehicle. It was Pierce, hopefully returning with Sira. He forced a calming breath and headed for the entryway, waving off Prentice.
All day. She’d been gone for more than eight hours. He was torn between the urge to shout at her and the urge to hold her tight and never let her leave his sight again.
The door opened when he was halfway across the floor to it. Matthew came to a stop, his heart pounding at the sight of her.
Sira wandered in, a sheet of parchment clutched in her hand. Her attention was far away, and her step slow and solemn.
He stared at the parchment, the metallic taste of fear in his mouth. She didn’t. Scattered prayers, asking that she hadn’t terminated a daughter...or blindly terminated tumbled in his mind, mixing, overpowering each other.
She came to him, offering the parchment without comment and without meeting his gaze. His hands shaking, Matthew took it. Opening it took more fortitude than he possessed.
“It’s a boy,” she whispered. “Either way, you’ll have your heir.”
Matthew gathered her to his chest, his heart easing that she hadn’t taken the choice from him. “What did you do?”
“An amniot draw. It’s all I would have done, either way. I wanted... I needed to know you’d made an informed choice. Your father would have demanded that.”
She was likely right about that, but his heart skittered at the thought of an amniot draw. “But the risk—”
“A small one. Much less than you abandoning your chance at an heir.”
He held her tighter. “I wouldn’t have cared. I told you I wouldn’t have.”
“Today,” she conceded. “You’re young, Matthew. It would have mattered more, when you were old.”
“To my father, perhaps...if Benjamin hasn’t given him adequate heirs by then. Not to me.”
For a long moment, she was silent. “You mean to let her terminate, then?”
He sighed, letting his eyes drift shut. “The only way I have to stop it is too high a cost. She’s made her choice.”
“But we all have to live with it.”
And her faith would insist Sira stop this, if she could. The teachings he’d been raised with weren’t dissimilar in that, but there had to be a line he wouldn’t cross, and Mora had crossed it. The Goddess had given Matthew a second chance with Sira, and Mora wouldn’t interfere with that.
But Sira deserved an answer. “Then we will. It isn’t our choice, Sira. Would you rather have me give in to her demands, outrageous and unpalatable as they are?”
She was silent long enough to make his stomach shimmy.
“No. I wouldn’t rather see you blackmailed into a wife you loathe.” She paused. “And I wouldn’t want to lose you to her or anyone else.”
“I agree. Then let me call the stakes in full, and let the blame lay on Mora, where it rightfully belongs.”
She nodded and held tight to him.
That was what Matthew needed...what he’d needed from the moment he’d laid his sights on her, Sira in his arms, his personal sea angel.
Chapter Eleven
Knowing the blow was coming didn’t lessen the effect when it fell.
At least Matthew had the foresight to have all missives to his wife redirected to himself. As he expected, Mora tried to take a final twist of the knife by having the notice of termination sent to Sira.
He sat with the notice in hand, relieved and heartsick by turns.
The howling emotional side of him wanted to burn the parchment. The rational side sent him to his cabinet to file it with the other two.
A son reduced to three bits of parchment.
Wheatstand was wrong. Mora’s poison hadn’t left him a week after the Bride Ball. It was with him still, making the life he was building with Sira sick beneath its pall.
I won’t let it! That’s what she wants, the only possible victory Mora has left to her.
In the next coherent moment, he was halfway up the staircase, intent on his wife and heir.
Matthew strode to her, seeking Sira’s lips. Whatever question she meant to ask disappeared into his mouth.
There wasn’t a second question. Sira gave her passion as avidly as she took of Matthew’s. It was pure, untainted, the single blessing they’d managed to wrest from the maw of poison and lies and no-win choices.
Hands delved beneath clothing, touching, peeling away the unwanted layers onto the floor of the sitting room. Mouths sampled. Bodies joined in a fierce, uncompromising firestorm of need.
In the moments after, Sira lay over him on the sofa. Matthew stroked at her hair, reveling at the sweat drying in the cool room air. He smiled that they hadn’t made it to the bed...hadn’t even closed the corridor door before surrendering to the heat between them.
There was a stillness in the air, not just of sound and movement but also of the soul.
“I was wrong,” Sira murmured against his throat.
“Wrong?” Where had that come from? What did it mean? Matthew couldn’t seem to follow her logic in his pleasantly-muddled state.
“When I believed I’d never feel what I felt the night of the Bride Ball again...I was so wrong.”
His heart pounded in a dizzying cadence. Horrified apologies died at his lips.
“I think I loved you, even then, Matthew.”
Probably not. “Maybe so. I don’t know what I felt for you that night, but it held to my mind and drove me mad to see you again. I dreamed of you, fantasized of you, craved you.”
She nodded, strangely silent. Matthew opened his mouth to question her, but Sira beat him to the tape.
“She’s done it?”
He nodded.
“And you feel what about it?” There was something hesitant about that, something guarded.
Matthew tried to order that into words; she deserved an honest answer, but what that answer was escaped him. “So much that conflicts, I can’t find a place to begin. But it’s done...and it was never real between Mora and myself.” He combed his fingers through her hair. “This is real, and I won’t let her destroy it.”
Her head came up, and she stared at him, her expression moving from unreadable to joyous.
“What are you thinking?” he asked, stunned by the effect her smile had on him.
“That there is a perfectly serviceable bed in the next room we should be using.”
“Our bed,” he agreed. “I’ve never shared that bed with another...and I never will.”
About the Author
Brenna Lyons wears many hats, sometimes all on the same day: president of EPIC, author of more than 80 published works, columnist
, special needs teacher, wife, mother... In addition, she’s a member in good standing of ERWA, MWW, RWU, WPM, IWOFA, and Broad Universe.
In her first seven years published in novel-length, Brenna has finaled for eleven EPPIES, three PEARLS (taking Honorable Mention second to NY Times Bestseller Angela Knight), two CAPAS, a Dream Realm Award and has taken Spintetingler’s Book of the Year for 2007.
Brenna has been termed “one of the most deviant erotic minds in the publishing world...not for the weak.” (Rachelle for Fallen Angels Reviews) She writes milieu-heavy dark fiction, mainly science fiction, fantasy and horror (in 21 established worlds plus stand-alones), poetry, articles and essays. She teaches classes in everything from POV studies to advanced editing, networking to marketing. Brenna loves talking to readers and can be reached via her site at http://www.brennalyons.com.