Chapter 68
Sixty-Eight
Neal
The midwife arrived before dawn. She was a brusque, older human woman whom Sorcha would have hated immediately.
But Sorcha was mostly unconscious, limp on the kitchen floor, blood pooling on the planks beneath her hips.
The trousers I’d hastily pulled over my nightshirt were soaked with it—sticky and dark.
The midwife took all of five minutes to look Sorcha over, declared it a retained afterbirth, and set to work without saying another word.
She didn’t even look at the baby, cradled in my arms where I sat beside Sorcha’s body.
I couldn’t make myself watch directly, keeping my gaze fixed on Sorcha’s face, but whatever the woman did hurt enough that Sorcha twitched like she was trying to get away, her breath stuttering.
“That’s the best I can do,” the old woman said after a time, wiping bloody hands on her apron and gathering her things. “She may pull through. She may not. You never know when there’s hemorrhage.”
“And the babe?” Da asked.
He hadn’t left my side for a minute—just brought water for me and a cushion for Sorcha’s head, a warmer blanket for the baby, then sat on one of our dining room benches and talked, low and quiet and calm, until the midwife arrived.
I would have thanked Da for speaking up if I could have found the words.
But I couldn’t form a coherent thought, much less speak a full sentence aloud.
I’d spent the last three hours there on the floor, legs stretched out, body angry from holding Sorcha through her labor.
I had our baby cradled in one arm and the other hand on Sorcha’s forehead.
I hadn’t managed a single word since she fainted, but internally?
I was begging them both to survive. The baby was tiny, and while she was mewling, couldn’t seem to get enough air for a proper cry.
She was so cold too, shivering from the moment she’d been born, with her pulse—visible through thin skin at her throat—fluttery and uneven.
“Babe that young won’t survive no matter what I do,” the old woman said, “so I’ll take my payment and go help cases that aren’t on their way to the grave.”
“We have to go,” Da said the moment the midwife left us, getting up and taking my shoulders.
“I’m not going to leave her, Da,” I insisted, unmoving.
“Neal. That babe is going to die. And if I know your wife? And I’ve known her longer than you have. The one thing she will not forgive is if you don’t get your daughter baptized. So choose a name. Come with me. Let Ansel clean Sorcha up and get her in bed while we’re gone. Alright, son?”
I glanced down at Sorcha, unconscious and bloody on the wood-plank floor. Then I bent and kissed her forehead.
“You hold on for me,” I said softly. “Don’t leave me like this, love. Not after everything.”
And then I steadied our daughter in my arms, let Da help me up, and followed him out into the mist of dawn.
The priest wasn’t even awake when we arrived at the church on the far coast of the island. The sun had just barely crept over the horizon as we walked. But Da banged on the door until someone answered, yelling about an emergency.
The priest stumbled down still in his bedclothes. He looked us over, eyes resting on the tiny bundle clutched up against my chest, and then immediately invited us in.
“What are you going to call her?” Da asked softly as the priest led us through the darkened church to the baptismal font.
“Lucy,” I replied. “Sorcha would want her named for a saint. Especially considering . . .”
I trailed off, tears catching in my throat.
This couldn’t be happening. I’d fought so hard for them. We’d done everything right. Gotten her somewhere safe and cold. Worked around Iksura’s maniacal refusal of Inner Court healers. Everything.
But the baby in my arms was dying.
And my wife might well be too.
“Lucy it is then,” Da said, winding an arm around my shoulders and pulling me close.
I didn’t cry. Not yet. Not here.
“Lucy Rose,” I added. “For Ma.”
“That’s my boy.” Da’s voice broke. “She’d be so proud of you doing this for your girls.”
I nodded, not trusting words, and looked down at Lucy, still stirring in my arms. Her eyes didn’t want to open. She still hadn’t cried. I knew we were on borrowed time already.
“We came ten thousand miles so you could be born somewhere safe. We loved you so much, for more than a year, before we even got to meet you,” I murmured. “Please don’t leave us.”
Halfway home, on the path along the seashore, I felt Lucy stop breathing. I told myself I’d be stoic, brave, get home to Sorcha in case she’d woken. But I couldn’t.
The moment I felt the tiny body go still in my arms my gait faltered, knees went stiff, and I found myself sitting on the damp turf looking back and forth between the sun cresting over the rooftops of town and the too-quiet bundle in my arms.
Da stopped and sat down beside me.
“You need me to carry her home for you?” he offered.
I just shook my head.
I didn’t want to put her down. I wasn’t ready to give her up yet.
“She wasn’t even supposed to be born yet, Da,” I said. “How is it that she already died?”
A long moment passed in silence.
“And, Da?” I finally looked up.
“What is it, boy?” he asked gently.
“How the hell am I supposed to tell Sorcha?”
“Did she make it to the church?” Ansel asked when we returned.
I nodded, unable to bring myself to speak.
“She passed on the way home,” Da supplied for me. “Is Sorcha alright?”
“I gave her a bath and put her to bed,” Ansel replied. “She didn’t stir. Still cold. Still bleeding. But she’s with us. Barely.”
“Word from Kadish?” Da asked.
Ansel shook his head. “It could be days still.”
And then Da held out his arms. “Go sit with your wife. I’ll take Lucy and have Cavan draw up plans for a funeral.”
I froze, my daughter’s already-cold body still tight against my chest.
“What if she doesn’t wake up before we have to bury the baby?” I fought to get the words out.
“I’ll take a footprint,” Da said. “I’ll have it cast for Sorcha to keep. Now go be with her. If you and baby are both gone when she wakes there’ll be no coming back from it. Alright, boy?”
“We wait as long as we can,” I instructed. “Keep her body in the cold. Give Sorcha a chance to wake up.”
“We’ve got forty-eight hours at best,” Ansel replied, “but we’ll tell the priest not until morning after next. Now go. Bathe. Eat. Then see if you can get Sorcha properly warm. She’s too cold and too still.”
I swallowed hard. Too cold. Too still. Like the tiny bundle in my arms.
I spent the next two days sitting at Sorcha’s bedside, too restless to climb in next to her, too anxious to move away.
I found myself fidgeting constantly. Brushing hair back from her face, trying to rub warmth back into her hands, pacing back and forth to the window where I could see the tiny coffin set out on the cobbled patio, ground still stained with Ansel’s and Sorcha’s blood.
Da brought me food and made me eat. Ansel pulled off my shoes and coat and shoved me into bed beside Sorcha each night, though I didn’t even close my eyes. I just lay a hand on Sorcha’s chest, stared at the rise and fall of her breathing, and silently begged her to wake before the funeral.
She didn’t.
Morning came. And then it came again. And suddenly Da was tugging my arms into my coat and promising that Cavan would sit with Sorcha while we went to the church.
“Sorcha, please wake up,” I begged before we left. “Please don’t make me lose both of you. Please don’t make me tell you she died once she’s already in the ground. Sorcha, please. We fought so hard for her. Please, love. You deserve to see her one more time.”
There was a knock on the door.
“Priest’s waiting,” Ansel said.
Kadish arrived in the afternoon, two days after Lucy’s funeral.
Sorcha still hadn’t roused.
And I hadn’t left our bedroom except under threat from Da.
I stood leaned against the doorframe as Cavan let Kadish in and the healer deposited his bags on our dining room table—like he had so many times before in far more bearable circumstances.
“You said there was an emergency?” Kadish asked blithely when he arrived at the cottage. “So where’s my glowing mother-to-be? I’ll fix it. Don’t fret.”
“Not the time, Kadish,” Ansel muttered from his place behind Sorcha’s desk. He’d spent every waking moment sending telegrams to the Outer Court libraries in Edinburgh and the Inner Court in Russia.
Alexi had somehow gotten word of what happened and two Inner Court Inquisitors were at our doorstep arresting Irene within the day, before Ansel had a chance to question her.
And since what she’d done was a magical crime, committed against another Elf no less, it was within Inner Court purview, and we had no real grounds to stop them. We hadn’t heard a word since.
Had Irene acted out of pure selfish hatred and revenge? Or was she attempting regicide with Iksura’s blessing?
No one was answering.
It was more than likely no one had even received the telegrams yet. But that did little to quell the impatience.
“I thought she was just vomiting again,” Kadish asked.
“She was,” Ansel replied. “Until one of our own decided to poison her.”
He pulled off his boot and sock, showing the new scar from the gunshot. “She used an Inner Court tincture to fix this right up for me.”
“When did you get shot?” Kadish interjected, stunned.
“Don’t ask,” Ansel replied as he tugged his boot back on. “So we let her try and help Sorcha too. She had a fever. Vomiting bloody bile. She wasn’t going to last until you got here.”
“And?” Kadish pressed.
“And she poisoned her,” Ansel said. “At least best we can tell. Sorcha started saying her chest hurt. Then her water broke. Babe was too young to survive. And Sorcha? Hemorrhaged after. Hasn’t regained consciousness since.”
He paused.
“That was four days ago.”
Kadish pulled off his gloves, all business now.
“She through there?” He glanced toward the doorway.
Ansel nodded.
“You have the bottles from what she took?” Kadish asked.
“I’ll fetch them,” Ansel said.
I sat back down in my usual place at Sorcha’s side, still obsessive in watching her breathing, begging her pulse would get stronger, her lungs more consistent, that maybe she’d flinch, shiver—that maybe she’d wake up.
“If I can figure out what it was then I can get her out of the coma,” Kadish replied.
“Best hope so,” Ansel said gravely, “or Iksura will have control of both Courts and there’ll be no more monster hunting for me and no more private clinic practice for you.”
A long moment passed in silence.
“And ghost stories will become death sentences,” I murmured.
It took Kadish only a few moments to identify the vials.
“Oleander and foxglove,” he said immediately, after sniffing the corks.
“Those are poisons,” I replied, eyes still locked on Sorcha’s pale, unmoving form spread out on the bed in front of me.
“They’re poisons I can treat,” Kadish replied. “Activated quartzite by mouth. A couple spells. Give her as much lavender as you can get in her body once she wakes.”
“You’re not leaving again,” I said bluntly. “You’re supervising this until she’s stable. A week minimum. Understood?”
“Understood,” Kadish replied. “Now let me get to work.”