Chapter 72
Seventy-Two
Sorcha
It was late one night and I couldn’t sleep. The air felt too humid and too still. My head was throbbing. My left eye had greyed out then started flickering. And my belly? Felt wrong. Hollow but not yet flat again. I hated it. And it was distracting.
“Neal, the air here is wrong,” I muttered, rolling over and trying to cuddle in closer.
“Love, just sleep,” he mumbled. “You won’t notice the air if you sleep.”
“My head hurts,” I added, pressing my face into his arm, “and my eye is acting strange again. And I miss having a baby in my belly instead of just . . . whatever all this is.”
That got his attention. Neal pushed himself upright and fumbled for the candle.
“No lamp!” I exclaimed. “Head. Eye. Remember? No lamp.”
Neal leaned back and complied.
“I miss her too,” he said gently.
“And she wasn’t growing inside your body,” I said. “You couldn’t feel her move every time you drank something cold or laid on your left side or climbed on a horse.”
He took my hand.
“Neal, I feel like part of me died too.”
“I think that’s to be expected,” he replied, leaning back and pulling me in to curl against his chest. “She knew how much we loved her. I promise she did.”
“I threw up almost every day for over a year for her,” I said. “I fled my country.”
“She knew,” Neal repeated.
“She knew,” I agreed.
I felt Neal’s hand start to stroke up and down my back.
“Neal, I want to go home,” I finally blurted out.
His hand stopped.
“We can’t, love. You nearly bled out. The trip takes months. Your body’s not ready.”
“Why is it so far?” I felt my own voice crack. “Why do my baby and my parents have to be buried on different continents?”
“Remember back on the ship when we talked about how life can be profoundly unfair?” Neal said.
I nodded against him.
“I think that’s what we’re experiencing now,” Neal said. “We did everything right. We fought to protect the Court. We fought to protect our baby. And the world just decided that didn’t matter.”
“Like Job,” I murmured.
“Exactly like Job,” Neal agreed. “Provided of course the devil had chosen to use weird cults summoning demons to orchestrate his downfall.”
I froze. Orchestrated downfall.
“How did Alexi get there so fast,” I murmured.
“Get where?” Neal asked. But I was already moving, climbing out of bed, pacing back and forth in front of our window in the moonlight.
“Our wedding,” I said. “You said the trip from Santa Fe to Europe takes months. And you’re right.
It was what? Three months for you? Five for us, because of all the hiccups along the way and the whole stagecoach issue.
But Alexi? Alexi showed up at our wedding less than a month after my father died. How?”
“I think I’m following.” Neal was sitting up straight now, watching intently.
“And Iksura got word I was pregnant far too fast,” I continued. “She’s beaten us to every destination. It’s like she had some way to circumvent every known transportation or communication method.”
“You’re not saying . . .” Neal trailed off.
It was treason.
We both knew that even thinking what I was about to say was treason.
But if it was true, then that didn’t matter.
“I think she’s using the portals. I think the angelic messengers that the cultist told us about in Edinburgh are from her,” I said.
“I think she was bent on taking over the Outer Court and was willing to do anything to make it happen. I think she may have even staged the attack that killed my father.”
The accusation hung like a physical presence in the room.
“I think she took it upon herself to orchestrate our downfall,” I finally said.
“We have to tell Ansel,” Neal replied suddenly.
“Go wake him,” I said. “Have Cavan make tea. We need to discuss this. Immediately.”
“It’s plausible,” Ansel said, “but we can’t go after the Inner Court without proof. A lot of proof.”
We were all gathered around the dining table in the dimly lit cottage. Cavan had stoked up the fire and was distributing steaming mugs full of coffee and tea.
“And if we wanted to pursue that?” I asked.
“It’d take decades,” Ansel replied. “Dedicated assets doing research. And probably an inside man. Iksura plays clean. Always has. Never confesses.”
“So then what do we do now?” I asked.
“You want my vote?” Ansel replied. “We focus on the cults. Whether Iksura’s using the portals or not we know that there are hundreds if not thousands of humans across the globe deliberately summoning demons for blood sacrifice.
And we know that number is growing. That’s our problem.
If we eliminate the cults we reduce the frequency of the portals.
We reduce the frequency of the portals we have officially done our job.
And once that’s finished? Then I can send people to start poking around for implicating evidence about Iksura. ”