~ Thirty-Three ~
Battles
THE STORM RAGED FOR over three days. Sometimes the snow would stop, but the wind would howl, slamming piles of white crystals against the sides of the house until the drifts towered over everyone’s heads. Sometimes it was so quiet outside that William swore he could hear the fluffy flakes drifting down and landing on each other.
Sometimes, the storm was inside.
The first day felt almost like a reprieve from the pressures they’d been facing. All was calm; nobody even had to go out and tend to the animals because so many guards were camped in every barn and building on Tobias’ property. No birds could travel in the weather, either.
On what was probably his fiftieth trip back and forth between Max’s room and James’, Quinn stepped in front of him in the hallway, grabbing hold of his elbow. “They’re both asleep,” she said.
He nodded.
“Thomas is with Max. He knows when to get you.”
“But James…” he whispered.
She laid her hand on his chest, and for a moment it calmed the frantic beating there. “Is there anything you can do for him right now that you haven’t done already?”
He didn’t answer; he knew she wasn’t expecting him to.
“Love, you barely slept all night. You need some rest.”
“Look who’s talking.” He ran his thumb over the shadows on her cheekbones.
Laying her hand over his, she pressed her soft cheek against his palm and then turned her lips in to plant a kiss in it. “I know. That’s why I’ve fed Samuel and given him to Mia; I’ve talked to Thomas about keeping an eye on Max and to Kian about looking in regularly on Dorian and James. Everyone who should be is under orders to wake us if we’re needed for anything, but right this moment, we aren’t.”
“Quinn, I can’t. What if…?”
“Come on.” She closed her hand around his and pulled him toward their bedroom. He didn’t manage to finish his protest before she got the door closed behind them.
Once he was alone with her, his objections didn’t seem so important. He looked down into her deep gray eyes, and she nodded.
“See? It will be okay.”
The fire had been stoked high enough that the room was warm, despite the howling outside the shuttered window. The bed was turned down and the pillows fluffed; the blankets looked soft and inviting.
He took a deep breath, letting the tension slip away. The all-consuming urge to do something, to fix everything, to help everyone didn’t fade completely, but it subsided, the way it only ever did when he was with her.
She must have felt it; she wrapped her arms around his waist and relaxed into him.
He ran one finger along the soft line of her chin, turning up her face and bringing his lips down to hers, suddenly very aware that the two of them hadn’t been alone together like this for a long time.
It wasn’t long enough – could never be enough, but for a little while he allowed himself to get lost in her, to slip away and not be anything but hers – the king to her queen.
And then they slept, wrapped in each other’s arms, buried in the blankets and their love.
The only interruption came late in the afternoon when Mia knocked so softly she didn’t even wake Quinn.
“Everyone is fine,” she whispered as she handed Samuel to William. “Thomas said if you don’t trust him to handle a few doses of meds by this point, he’ll disown you, and that if he needs to ask a guard to stand outside the door to keep you in here, he will.”
Although he could have come up with any number of them, he decided not to offer a retort. Instead he smiled. “Tell him I’m lucky to have him, Mia – and you as well. Thank you.”
When Mia was gone, he carried his cooing son over to the bed.
“Oh no. I thought we were quiet,” he said when he saw Quinn’s open eyes.
“You were.” She sat up, propping herself against the pillows. “He wasn’t.” She reached for the baby.
William sat down on the bed and snuggled over to her before setting Samuel in her arms and kissing her hair. The tiniest noise Samuel made when he was awake could rouse her – it was like she had an extra sense that alerted her. He loved it though, loved everything about cuddling like this with his beautiful little family, rubbing his thumb over his baby’s chubby, silky foot while he nursed, his wife resting her head against his shoulder.
It was these moments in the midst of chaos around them that reminded him what they were all fighting so hard for.
* * *
By lunchtime on the second day, though, he was he was grateful he’d been able to get any rest at all.
James, who had been doing better the day before – awake and responsive, at least – spiked a fever shortly after breakfast. Nothing William did could make it come down, and James stopped waking for more than a few minutes at a time.
He’d known from the beginning that Max was in serious trouble with his arm. He spent the morning performing another surgery, trying everything he knew – and even experimenting with things he’d never tried before – to fix it.
But after lunch he had to have the worst kind of conversation with Max he could imagine.
“Almost the worst,” Max corrected when he used those words.
William raised an eyebrow.
“Actually…” Max looked around the room, at Thomas and Linnea and Quinn and Samuel who were gathered near the bed. “I can think of many worse conversations than this one. It’s just an arm, right?”
“It won’t grow back, you know,” Thomas said.
“Neither, apparently, will your sense of humor, little brother.”
Thomas looked at William. “Did you give him the good drugs already?”
William couldn’t bring himself to smile. “Not good enough. I’m sorry,” he said.
“For what, William? Not letting my arm rot off and take me with it? I suppose I could beg you to change your mind, but it seems counter-productive.”
“Nothing about this has anything to do with my mind, Max.”
“I’ve no doubt. I know you’re waiting for me to fight you on this, Will, but… well, it would be a lot easier for me to be angry at you if I didn’t know that you’d rather rip off your own arm and give it to me than do this.”
“Well, I don’t know if I’d go that far.”
Max smiled. At least the pain medication – which Max and his men had mercifully brought plenty of – was working. “Either way, the only thing I can feel about you being here is grateful. If this had happened anywhere else, I know I’d likely be losing more than my arm. The person I’m angry with about it is dead, and I won’t be, so I’ve got my revenge, right?”
“Let’s not forget about all the lives you saved by bringing those soldiers here and being in the right place at the right time,” Quinn said. “Who knows how many more villages Callum’s men would have attacked if you hadn’t stopped them.”
“Speaking of Callum – did you find out anything else from those guards we captured?”
She nodded. “Now’s not the time for you to worry about it, but just know that you really are a hero, okay? Heal quickly, though, because I’ll need your help deciding how to handle some of what we learned.”
“So, see, I’ll be a one-armed war hero. I’ll be the most eligible bachelor in Eirentheos.”
Thomas lightly punched Max’s good arm. “Yeah, now that I’ve moved to Philotheum, you might actually have a chance with the ladies.”
“You’re not going to let him anywhere near the saw, are you?” Max asked William.
“No. I was thinking Linnea.”
Max chuckled. “You be careful. She punches harder than Thomas.”
Although he knew that not all of Max’s optimism was real, that Max was mostly being an amazing brother while trying to keep his own spirits up, the encouragement did help William get through the surgery.
Thomas assisted him, as he’d done more than a few times before, but his usual running bant
er was absent, traded for meticulously following William’s every direction and occasionally leaning down to whisper reassurances into Max’s ear.
“He can hear me,” Thomas insisted once, when William looked over at him.
“Well, I sincerely hope he can’t, but I know he feels your support, T.”
Quinn was waiting for him when he finally emerged.
So was Mia – though she ducked immediately into the room with towels and a steaming bucket of bleach-smelling water.
He laid his forehead on Quinn’s shoulder.
She wrapped her arms around his waist without even checking to see if he was covered in blood. “Thomas said it went well.”
“Better than I thought I could do. He’s going to be fine – all things considered, anyway.”
Quinn’s news wasn’t nearly as good. Sometime in the middle of Max’s surgery, James had taken a decided turn for the worse. The other healer had tried what he knew – even some traditional things William wouldn’t have used, but at this point, every effort was worth making.
In the still-dark morning hours of the third day of the storm, with everyone in the house awake and gathered together, James lost his final battle.
~ Thirty-Four ~
Allies
ALTHOUGH THE NEWEST STORM had dumped more snow on them than the previous one, this time there were so many people around to help that they dug out much more quickly.
Not as fast as some, though. On the second day after the snow stopped, Zander was outside when he heard shouts. He stopped clearing the ice over the well in the pump house and ran into the yard. By the time he got there, several guards were working to pull open the gate to let Nathaniel and Tobias in.
Curious as he often was, his interest was not enough to make him want to be in the house when they heard the news. Quinn and William hadn’t even sent a message to Stephen until this morning.
He was freezing, even more so when he finally got the water running again and it sprayed his clothes, but he still stayed out and shoveled snow. It took an icy wind blowing snow up under his frozen cape before he finally trudged through the back door.
“The water’s been working in the kitchen for a long time,” Kian said when he opened the door for him.
Zander busied himself shaking the snow out of his cloak and boots and setting them up to try. “That was the idea.”
He was expecting that everyone would be buried deep in meeting together in the front room and that he could slip by to go sit in front of a fire somewhere, but when he walked by, the door was open.
“Zander!” Linnea called.
He closed his eyes and sighed, but he went into the room, surprised to discover that only Quinn, Linnea, and Thomas were inside.
“Nathaniel and William went to see Max. William wants him to check Max’s arm.” Quinn must have read the confusion in his expression.
“Oh. And Tobias?”
“Talking with Dorian, I think,” Linnea said.
Thomas took one look at him and walked over to the fireplace to lay another log on the grate, and that was when Zander realized he’d done it again – avoided the one thing that would have made him feel better. He went and sat down on the tall brick hearth. “So how is Nathaniel?”
Quinn looked over at him. “His stay in Valderwood gained us the support of their head councilman and most of their militia. They’re willing to help us secure three other villages in the river valley as well as provide our troops with supplies.”
“Wow.” Zander rubbed his hands together, trying to warm them faster. Thomas handed him a steaming mug of tea. “Thanks.”
“Sure.” Thomas perched on the brick seat next to him.
“So…” He took a careful sip of the hot drink. “If Nathaniel and Tobias can travel through the mess out there then so can others.”
“Yes,” Quinn agreed.
For a moment, he stared into his tea, mulling over the right way to phrase his next thoughts, but then decided it was time to stop hesitating over things. Max had lost an arm, James and Ben had lost their lives – the least Zander could do was lose his shell. It wasn’t doing him any good, anyway. “We have to get ahead of them, Quinn. You’ve been reacting defensively to them forever. They’re always a step ahead of you. We have to make the first moves for a change.”
“Do you have any ideas for accomplishing that?” she asked. “I don’t think we’d be successful storming the castle like they did.”
“No. Not yet, anyway. I think that should be the ultimate goal. But right now they’re probably expecting that.”
“Expecting what?”
They all turned to see Marcus standing in the doorway.
“Sorry,” he said. “You were just having the conversation with the door open.”
“Come in,” Quinn said. She explained what they’d been talking about as Marcus closed the door and came in to sit down in an armchair.
Between the fire and the hot tea, Zander was finally thawing out, so he stood and walked over to sit on the couch across from Quinn and Linnea. Thomas joined him.
“I agree with you, Zander,” Marcus said. “They’re probably expecting us to storm the castle. I actually got the impression from one of the prisoners we captured that they’re surprised we haven’t already.”
“We had to have surprised Tolliver and Ivan just by not being in the castle when they attacked,” Thomas said. “Their whole original plan would have depended on that.”
Zander nodded. “But taking all this time to act on anything has disrupted any advantage we might have had on that angle – not that we’ve had the manpower to act. Now that we have the soldiers from Eirentheos and the support of the Valderwood militia, though, I think we need to move as quickly as we can. Luckily, the weather has to have impacted them as much as it has us.” He looked at Marcus. “Did any of the prisoners give you any hints of what Callum’s goal was in attacking that village?”
“You mean, besides destroying a village because people in it were supporting Quinn?”
Zander bit his lip, thinking. “They were also looking to draft more soldiers. Was there something special about that village – was it a stronghold of the Friends of Philip or anything?”
“No. It was just a village. I’ve spoken extensively to the men who came from there. I can’t figure out why it was targeted.”
“Then it probably wasn’t.”
Quinn stood and started pacing between the maps. He recognized her rigid posture – she’d figured out the same thing he had.
“So what village is next?” she asked after several minutes. “If they’re going to destroy my whole kingdom, piece by piece, where do they start?”
Marcus was on his feet in the next instant, poring over the large map spread on a table. “Hopefully the loss of Callum and his men was enough to at least buy us some time,” he said.
Zander pressed his fingers against his temples. “I think that, right there, is what we have to stop doing. We have to stop just responding to them.”
Marcus turned and raised an eyebrow. “I agree.”
“But… You do?”
“I do, Zander. I’ve been thinking about it, trying to decide how to approach this. We need to figure out how to get ahead of them, but also establish Quinn as a strong ruler.”
“Exactly. So what do you think we should do?”
“Well, I have some ideas, Zander, but I would love to hear yours. If you were in charge, what would you suggest?”
Zander stared at him for several seconds, still unsure, but Marcus looked sincere – truly interested in what he had to say. So he took a deep breath. “I think we should make our own moves first. Look what just happened when we – when Quinn and Nathaniel – made the first move with Valderwood. They didn’t wait until the village was in danger, they didn’t go in an emergency, they went in and made allies.”
“Making allies wasn’t my purpose.” Quinn was staring at the map, but Zander knew her thoughts were somewhere else. “I sent Tobias and
Nathaniel there to help, that’s all.”
“You don’t think the people in any other villages in your kingdom need help, Quinn?” He knew the answer. They’d had this conversation over the past days. He knew she didn’t want battles and war – and suddenly he saw a way she might be able to regain her kingdom by doing exactly what she would have wanted to do in the first place.
“So you think I should just go help them?”
“Yeah. I mean, I don’t think every situation will look like Valderwood, and I think sometimes you’re going to flat out have to ask for their support and for volunteer soldiers – but I think you should be the opposite of Tolliver. You don’t need a castle to be their queen. The prophecy wasn’t a building. They don’t need you to be in the capital city, they just need their true heir. All you have to do is be her.”
* * *
Zander didn’t know how long they stayed in the room planning and strategizing their first moves. He only knew that it had been long enough that he should have been exhausted and hungry, but he wasn’t. He was energized. Here, finally, was something he felt like he could do – a problem that he could solve.
Nathaniel and William both joined them, and the discussion was lively, overshadowing the grief they’d all been dealing with for the past couple of days.
Eventually, sometime late in the afternoon, they were interrupted by Mia, who had clearly been trying to keep Samuel happy for just a little too long, and they all decided to break until after dinner.
Zander wasn’t ready to stop; he was so engrossed in making notes and studying maps that he didn’t notice for a long time that he wasn’t alone in the room. When he glanced toward the window and caught a motion out of the corner of his eye, his heart nearly stopped.
“Sorry,” Linnea said.
“It’s okay. It’s my fault for not paying attention to the world around me.” He didn’t ask the stupid question this time. The skin under her eyes was puffy and pink – but all of them looked like that right now, probably himself included, though he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a mirror. “What are you doing, anyway?”
Leaves of Revolution Page 26