Chapter 31
Hannalinde
She surfaced in stages, the darkness thinning into gray and the gray thinning into light. At each stage, something hurt.
A low, dragging ache in her hips radiated outward. She swallowed and her throat rebelled, dry as chalk. Her belly clenched like the pains of labor.
The baby.
She opened her eyes.
She was in her bedroom at Rose House. Golden evening light played over the bed like amber fingers, which meant she’d slept through an entire day.
The linens had been changed. Someone had placed a vase of roses on the side table, their fragrance threading through the pungent scents of herbs and lye soap and blood that lingered in the air.
Carlijn snored in the chair beside the bed, her mouth slightly open. At the foot of the bed, Betje sat watching. “There you are,” she said, rising to her feet.
Hanna smiled wanly. “Here I am.”
“How are you feeling?”
A thrum of dread in her mind stopped Hanna’s reply.
It filled the back of her skull like a gray fog. The space that had been empty during labor was full again. Overflowing. He was near.
The reprieve had been temporary. She’d been a fool to hope otherwise. The bond’s silence during labor had been a mercy of the body under duress, and now it was back. He was back.
Her hands began to shake.
“My baby,” she said, panicking internally. “Where is the baby?”
“Here she is.” Betje lifted a woven basket lined with one of the nursery blankets Hanna had embroidered with her prized blue silk and set it on the bed beside her hip. Inside, wrapped in soft swaddling clothes, a small face slept, pink lips pursed like a rosebud.
She reached into the cradle. Her hands shook, but the shaking stopped the moment her fingers smoothed the infant’s downy hair. How could she have doubted her ability to love this perfect, blameless being?
She lifted the child to her chest. The infant stirred, rooting insistently against her shift. Hanna pulled aside the fabric to allow her access, and she greedily latched on.
“She’s strong,” Betje said affectionately, watching them. “She’s been fed goat’s milk while you were under, but she obviously prefers you.”
“She lived,” Hannalinde whispered, staring down at her child’s face.
“You nearly didn’t,” Betje said wryly. “You lost more blood than I thought possible. Aalis and I had our hands full. It was lucky Rikard arrived when he did.”
Rikard. He came. Her heart and hope surged.
“Did he meet her?”
Betje nodded. Before she could ask where he was, Carlijn woke with a start, saw Hannalinde nursing the baby, and burst into tears.
“Don’t cry,” Hannalinde said, her own eyes burning. “You’ll set me off and I’ll lose the latch.”
“You absolute terror.” Carlijn was laughing and crying simultaneously, her face a ruin of joy and exhaustion. “I thought you were dead. I was holding your hand and it was cold, and I thought—”
Hanna interrupted her, hating to see her distress. “Well, obviously, I’m not.”
“Good, because now I can be mad at you.” Carlijn made a face and scrubbed away her tears with her sleeve. “You scared me so much. All of us. I thought Rikard was going to expire himself when he saw you.”
“Where is he?” Hannalinde blurted out, unable to wait any longer.
The silence that followed was a fraction too long. Carlijn’s eyes flicked to Betje and back to Hanna. “He’s home,” she finally said. “He’s roosting elsewhere in the house. He came back during the night.”
“Did something happen? Why isn’t he here?”
Another silence. Carlijn picked at the arm of the chair. “He…wasn’t sure you’d want him in here.”
The words made no sense. He wasn’t sure she’d want him here?
He wasn’t sure she’d want him here.
She sat up. The motion was too fast, pulling at something deep in her abdomen and sending a swell of dizziness through her. Betje made a sharp sound of disapproval, but Hannalinde would not be stopped. She held the baby to her chest, fury building in her chest like steam in a kettle.
“Go and give him a message, please,” she said. “If he’s roosting somewhere in this house believing I don’t want him in this room, you will go and correct that belief right now. I always want him near me. Tell him I have things to say to my husband as soon as he wakes from daysleep.”
Carlijn hurried out, leaving the door to the bedroom open so her footsteps rang on the stairs. The baby’s sucking slowed and Hanna’s lids grew heavy. Betje came over to fuss with the pillows, tucking one behind her back and one under her arm to support the baby.
“There. Rest now, and Aalis will come by this evening to check on you.”
Eased, Hanna drifted off.
She woke again after dusk to a floorboard creak near the bed. Heavy footsteps moved toward her, and Rikard appeared in her field of view, almost like he was flying above her.
He looked wrecked. This wasn’t the dry, bitter Nadir who deflected everything with a quip and a scowl.
This Rikard was stripped bare, his eyes hollowed with exhaustion, his wings loose and dragging.
He looked defeated as he sank down beside her and rested his head on her thighs, one curved horn digging into the bedlinens.
“You’re awake.” His voice broke on the second word. She stroked his hair with her free hand. He stiffened, resisting the comforting gesture. “Hannalinde, there’s something I need to tell you.”
“Yes, you need to pick a name for our daughter.”
A whine escaped him, like she’d stuck a knife in his ribs. She reached for his hand and pulled it to the baby’s head, pressing his palm against the dark wisps of hair, and his fingers trembled under hers.
“There is something I need to tell you,” he said again, and his voice was steadier now but no less wrecked. What terrible truth was he holding back? “Before we name her. Before you say anything else.”
The throbbing bond at the base of her skull intensified. He was close, so close. He was coming for her. She should be cowering in fear, but she felt oddly calm. Rikard was here now. He’d protect her and their child.
“Then tell me, quick,” she said, and held his hand and waited.
Rikard
On the floor at her feet, his wings spread behind him on the scrubbed floorboards, he felt like a criminal before judgment, knowing he did not deserve her mercy.
“I broke my vow to you.” He remained in her lap, reveling in these last moments while her touch was still tender. “I would ask for your forgiveness, but I do not deserve it, nor am I remorseful. I would do it again.”
Her nervous tension vibrated through the bond.
“Which vow did you break?” Her voice was quieter now, less assured.
“The one you set before everything else.” He raised his head to see her reaction.
Her face was pale in the lamplight, but red circles burned high on her cheeks.
“I bit you, Hanna. Last night, while you were unconscious. You were hemorrhaging, and they couldn’t stop the bleeding.
Aalis told me the venom in a mating bite might close the wound, and without it, you would die. ”
He reached up to her neck, caressing the healed bite. Her fingers followed his, tracing the crescents, and he flooded their connection with his love for her.
She sucked in a breath, realization dawning on her face. “The bond I feel. It’s not him.”
He nodded slowly. “It’s me.”
He braced for their connection to harden with a cold, bright edge of betrayal. All day while he was frozen, he’d rehearsed this moment, building and rebuilding the mind walls that would hold him upright when she told him to leave.
But instead of her fury, he felt only her disbelief. “But I thought that was impossible when I already had another bond?”
“You lost enough blood during the birth to sever it.” He didn’t tell her the rest, that her attacker was dead by his hands.
That truth could come later, when she was stronger.
Tonight was for this truth only: they were now true mates.
“When I bit you, the new bond took because the old one was already gone.”
“We’re mated,” she said wonderingly.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, feeling unsteady and realizing she could probably feel his unsteadiness.
It was its own kind of nakedness. “If you cannot forgive me, I’ll move back to the Tower and make arrangements to see the child as much or as little as you prefer.
You will keep Rose House. I won’t contact you through the bond or use it to find you or force you to feel anything.
You have suffered enough through your old mate bond. I won’t do that to you again.”
“Rikard, I—”
“I need you to understand why I did it.” He pressed forward, the words spilling out before she sent him away.
“Aalis said you had only minutes. The child was in the cradle, crying, and I could not—” His voice cracked.
He cleared his throat and tried again. “I could not leave her motherless. I could not stand in that room and watch my wife bleed out on the sheets because I was too honorable to break a promise. I love you, and I couldn’t lose you like that. ”
Hanna’s eyes squeezed shut, and her shoulders shook as a tear leaked down her cheek. He didn’t dare seek her through the bond and find out what she was feeling, hearing his words.
“Life without you is like the gardens were when the house was abandoned,” he barreled on, his heart flayed open and defiant.
“Thorns without roses. I have lived in that garden, Hannalinde. I can’t do it again.
I know I offered to stay in the Tower, but please don’t send me away.
You are my wife. My mate. My love. I wanted to give you a mating bite anyway.
Even before, when you were in no danger of dying.
I wanted to, and I would have, and I’m not sorry I did it! ”
Shame suffused him at the outburst. He couldn’t look at her face until she tugged his horn, asking him to.
His eyes were blurred with tears, so he couldn’t make out her expression.
He read the bond instead, feeling he deserved whatever it contained: revulsion or pity or anger. Perhaps she even hated him.
But instead, it was full of kind warmth, like a lit hearth. She toyed with a lock of his hair. “I am not sorry you did, either. I’m very glad to have my life. I am very glad to have you.”
Fallen gods, she was not going to reject him. His gratitude crashed into hers inside their mental tether, winding around each other. She didn’t have to say it: she was as glad to be his mate as he was to be hers. It was what she wanted.
“Get off the floor,” she said, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth. “We have a baby to name.”
He rose and joined her in bed. As soon as he settled, she lifted the child from her breast and placed the baby in his arms.
The weight was nothing, no heavier than a loaf of bread. A few pounds of warmth and damp linen. The universe compressed into a bundle the length of his forearm, exhaling sweet milky breath against his chest.
“Your heir as promised.” Hannalinde smiled indulgently, watching him hold the hatchling close.
“My daughter,” he said, the bond singing between them. “We’ll call her Rosalore.”