Chapter 42 #2
Pulling my lute into my lap, I begin plucking the tune of Mah’s favorite song, singing as loud as I can.
Though my voice keeps cracking on the cheerful notes not at all aligned with this heavy feeling in my chest, I keep going, hoping she can hear.
That the song brings her some sense of comfort as she battles to bring my newest sibling into the world.
A keening wail makes my heart skip a beat. Makes my fingers fumble over the next few chords.
The guards stationed on either side of Mah’s ornate doors look at each other. The first time they’ve broken from their stoic regard since her screaming began.
My instincts prickle.
The same guards were stationed here when the twins were born, and they didn’t move a muscle. Not once.
I push the thought away, playing deeper.
Singing louder.
Her screams whittle.
I stop, listen. Wait to hear the sharp wails of new life, but only silence comes.
Jógo releases an aching screech so loud it makes my inner ears throb, and a coldness seeps through me.
Something’s not right …
The doors shove wide.
Pah charges through dressed in more blood than leather, the doors thumping back into place behind him as he stops, looking down his nose at me.
His upper lip twitches in the way it used to before he’d lash me with flame for my incompetence. Like he’s perched on a precipice, about to lift his foot … shove it forward …
He fills his chest, and I brace—
A shrill cry blasts from Mah’s suite, causing a breath to catch in the back of my throat.
A door eases open, and Mah’s chief handmaiden emerges with the screaming youngling bundled in a green swaddle.
“Your daughter, Sire.” Shera’s voice wobbles, her brown eyes lacking the warmth of joy. They’re glazed, like a blink will shed tears down both cheeks. “She finally filled her little lungs.”
Shera moves slowly forward until she’s in the space between us, gently urging the squirming young into Pah’s personal space.
Pah barely moves, albeit to lift his hands and accept the baby, dropping his gaze to her.
My sister.
She continues to fuss, the shrill sound pitching something within me as a maid rushes from the suite with a basket of bloody sheets, moving down the hall. Shera bustles back through the doors, and I glimpse Mah’s bare feet.
More bloody sheets.
Maids hovering about with their heads hung.
I’m not sure why it feels like the world’s holding breath. Why I’m holding breath, too.
Pah continues staring down his nose at my squirming, screaming sister, his pupils blown.
Again, my instincts prickle.
I set my instrument against the wall and push up, something innate telling me to move forward until I’m standing right before him—eye to eye. As though someone has their hands gently pressed upon my back, urging me on.
“Keep her out of my sight,” he mutters with such cutting coldness I’m surprised the words don’t leave a very real, very messy wound.
He shoves the babe against my chest.
My hands come up, gripping her. Not that I really know how to hold a baby, but I try, fumbling until she’s tucked safely against me.
Pah charges off without a single look back over his shoulder, and though his words are long since spoken, they echo in my mind like he’s before me still. Speaking them over and over.
Keep her out of my sight.
I wait for Pah to disappear around the corner before I move toward the doors. The guards don’t rush to open them for me, instead passing a glance between each other.
“She needs her mah,” I rasp, and the youngling begins to fuss again, releasing a shrill, wobbly scream that saws at my fraying patience. Because she’s not the only one who needs her.
So do I.
“Now.”
The word powers free with such force the floor shakes.
Both guards bang their chests, fumbling to pull the doors open.
Every drawn face in the room turns in our direction, most of the folk dressed in more blood than Pah was.
Despite my sister’s healthy cries, not one of them wears a smile, a starched feeling in the air.
Like I’m buried in a hole akin to the ones Pah stuffed me in when I was young, waiting for the walls to crumble.
I jut my chin, a quiet request for one of the younger maids to move aside.
With a swift glance at her elder, she abides, revealing Mah on the large circular pallet with her head tipped toward the windows, her auburn curls spilled across the pillow.
My cheeks heat at the sight of her bloody shift clinging to the lower half of her body. Nowhere near enough modesty.
Despite it, I step closer.
The birthing maids dip their heads as they shuffle aside for me to move around the pallet, though I stop cold at the sight of Mah’s wide, bloodshot eyes. Flat.
Empty.
I look around the room, waiting for someone to explain. To tell me there’s a reason she’s acting like this. The pain relief? Exhaustion?
Something.
My sister continues to scream while I stare, waiting for a blink. For Mah to shift her beautiful green eyes and look at me, gift me one of her sunshine smiles, then open her arms to accept her daughter.
But she doesn’t. Nor does her chest rise and fall.
Nor does she say goodbye.
I look down at my sister’s screwed-up face and realize I’m the lucky one. I know the warm shape of Mah’s love, her lullberry scent, the sweet softness of her voice. But she doesn’t … and—
She never will.
A pained sound breaks past my trembling lips as I use the pad of my thumb and smooth the sad creases from between my sister’s brows, suppressing the choking ache in my throat.
The sting flaring across the backs of my eyes.
I force myself to smile and lower onto the pallet beside my beautiful mah, nudging so close I feel her fading warmth along my side.
“Your daughter,” I whisper, easing her against Mah’s too-still chest. Gently, I shift her arms so they’re tucked around my sister, cradling her with the support of my hands.
The youngling stops screaming, while internally, I clamor.
“She’s so beautiful,” I choke out, pressing a kiss between Mah’s brows as the splitting ache in my heart threatens to spread outward and rip across my features.
Crumble me.
I recompose myself, pulling back. “She looks so much like you.” I pass Mah a smile I wish she could see. “But her voice is a bit pitchy. Maybe it’ll improve …”
I imagine her smiling back. Telling me she was hoping for a daughter, but that she never thought she’d be gifted one to offer the name of her long-passed mah.
Veya.
I imagine the smile fading as she looks up at me with wide, very serious eyes and asks me to love this youngling with my whole heart.
“Always,” I whisper, then take Mah’s hand and curl it against Veya’s cheek, offering her fading warmth. Knowing this will be the first and only time she feels it—
With a snarl, I dash Borg away. “Enough.”
“Why do you always cut me off there?” He sighs, heaving back like a petulant child. “I was sooo enjoying myself.”
“That makes one of us,” I growl, reaching down to grab the bottle I must’ve kicked over while Borg was feasting. I tip the remnants into my mouth, choke it back.
“That’s no way to speak to a friend,” he drawls, twirling into a foggy knot of satiated glee. “Though I shouldn’t be surprised, given your lack of desire to beautify my jar. Maybe we discern the word differently.”
“Answers. Now.”
“Your patience is equally lacking,” he drones like the slow glug of a leaky spigot.
I growl.
He tuts, does another full twirl, then says, “There’s a nest in Bhoggith that contains a sterile egg, roosted on by a broody pink Moltenmaw who lost her mate. The orange buck chose to rest in the sky directly above her.”
“I’ve heard of it. Her nest is near the center, yes?”
“Correct. She’s also roosting on one of your beloved moonshards.”
Fuck.
“And Elluin?” I snip as he begins to seep back into his jar.
“Went willingly.” The words gouge. “Quiet, but willingly. Unshackled and unrestrained.”
Then he’s gone, leaving me alone with the hungry silence and the aching echo of his words.
I toss the empty bottle across the seater and press the heels of my hands into my eyes until it feels as though they’re about to pop, every muscle in my body pumped, threatening to burst. My heart—
The worst of them all.
I try to slow my pulse. To ease the agitated current thumping through my veins. The distant sound of Siharna’s moans makes that impossible, as does the fresh knowledge that Elluin went willingly.
No coercion. No bindings. Yet Raeve claims she still loved me.
Perhaps I’m clawing at the past like a dragon trying to sharpen its talons on rock too soft to make a difference, but Borg’s answer does nothing to settle me. In fact, it does the opposite.
“Kaan?”
My heart skips a beat at the sound of Raeve’s voice.
I look to see her standing at the base of the stairs, my breath faltering.
One of my black tunics swims on her smaller form, the hem falling midway down her bare thighs, hair loose and hanging about her in messy waves. I take in her face—brows pinched, worry churning in her crisp eyes, luminous in the low light.
Alive.
So beautifully alive.
“Can’t sleep?”
A beat slips by before she shakes her head, gaze lifting to the window beyond me when another scream batters us. Her grip on the banister tightens, leading me to wonder if this is affecting her, too. If it’s dredging anything up.
She pulls a breath, seems to hesitate, then says, “Are you okay?”
No.
“Can’t sleep, either.” I reach over to cork Borg’s jar, then push him into my pocket. “Mah died birthing Veya,” I clarify, more words burning for release.
… And you died birthing Kyzari.
Her eyes soften as she looks out the window, back to me. “I’m so sorry, Kaan …”
There’s a smoothness to her voice I’ve never heard before. Tender, almost.
So lovely it hurts.
“Would you like company?”
The question is such a welcome boot to the chest that some of the tightness loosens. As though a deep-seated part of me believes everything is going to be okay now that she’s here, with me.
“Yes, Moonbeam.” I clear the rasp from my throat. “I’d like that very much.”