“You have nothing to apologize for.” I take a step back, to quietly leave them to privately deal with … whatever this is. But Grey meets my eyes and gives a small shake of his head.
Wait, he mouths.
I give him a small nod. When Lia Mara rises, she tucks herself against his side. There are dark stains at the edge of her chemise. But the family disappears into the bedroom, leaving me with the fire. The room feels heavy and melancholy, but I can’t reconcile that with the rest of the palace, which seems tense, but not overwhelmingly so. Something has happenedhere. Between them.
It’s not long before Grey reappears, closing the door gently behind him. When he comes to face me before the hearth, I say, “I feel as though I am intruding.”
“You’re not. I asked you to wait.” He pauses, his eyes searching mine. I’m not sure what he finds there, but he says nothing.
There’s so much tension in his frame that for a quick moment, I wonder if Jake got to him first, if Grey is going to confront me about Jax and Briarlock right this instant.
But … that doesn’t match the heady emotion of whatever is going on in this room. Something fractures in his gaze, and Grey has to rub at his eyes. He’s frozen in place, not even breathing.
I’m frozen, too. I’ve never seen him like this. If he were anyone else, I’d touch his arm, or say his name, or … just simplyacknowledgethe strain I can feel in the air. But as Rhen said, Grey never yields. Not to his brother, not to the magesmith who once cursed him, not to the threat of war. Not even to pain. He once hiked five miles through the woods when he had an arrow wound through his leg and a dozen lash marks across his back. I was all but crying from the agony of it, but Grey never broke.
While I stand there deliberating, he lets out that breath slowly. His hands lower, and his eyes are clear, his breathing steady. In control again, which should be reassuring, but I just lived through the last thirty seconds, so it’s not.
He rubs a hand over the back of his neck and looks away. “We lost the baby.”
It’s my turn to stop breathing. Four simple words spoken so plainly shouldn’t have the impact of a thousand arrows. I thought all this emotion was about something happening to Sinna.
I don’t have the right words. I don’t even know if the right wordsexist. But I can’t stand here in the face of so much pain and do nothing. I step forward and wrap my arms around him.
He’s startled for a moment, which isn’t surprising, as Grey isn’t usually one for affection, and our relationship has been tense for weeks. But then he hugs me back, and he doesn’t let go.
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly.
He says nothing, but I can feel the weight of his sorrow. If he’s crying, he’s doing it silently, but he also hasn’t pulled away. I wait, and I breathe, and I wonder why fate is so cruel as to bring two men to tears in my presence today.
After a moment or an eternity, Grey pulls back and straightens. His eyes gleam in the firelight. He looks as raw as Lia Mara. I wonder how long ago it happened. He looks like he hasn’t slept in days.
“Dice and whiskey?” I say. It’s a common expression among the soldiers when someone has suffered a loss. Usually it’s followed by a lot more drinking than gaming.
Grey shakes his head. His throat jerks as he swallows.
“Cards?”
He hesitates. “Yes.”
We sit. I deal.
Grey picks up his cards, but he doesn’t look at them. Instead, he slides them between his fingers and stares into the fire. “It was three days ago,” he says, and his voice is as low as I’ve ever heard it. “Sinna had slipped away from the nanny. You know how she is. Loves to sneak, loves the chase.”
I nod.
“But an hour went by,” he continues. “Then two. Three. No one could find her. I tried magic, I tried … everything. She wasn’t in the palace. Lia Mara was …” His voice catches. “She was distraught. The baby began to come. There was so much blood. Noah couldn’t stop it. The midwife couldn’t stop it. Sinna was missing, and Lia Mara was fighting them to go looking for her daughter, and I just—”
He stops speaking for a long moment, and then he shakes himself and looks at me. “I couldn’t do anything. For either one.” He rubs at his eyes again. “I tried to use magic on Lia Mara. To stop the labor—but itwas too far. Too early. Maybe I made it worse.” He grimaces. “I saved her, but the baby … the baby was already …”
I put a hand on his wrist. “You didn’t make it worse.”
But as I say the words, I don’t know for sure. I remember Lia Mara sitting at breakfast.You don’t know what it would do to the baby.
“I might have.” His eyes meet mine, and I see the guilt and worry there.
“Youdidn’t,” I say again, and there’s a part of me that’s trying to convince myself. Grey only ever wants to use his magic for good, but there are times when emotion gets the best of him and his power can flare without focus. It happened when I was fifteen and we were chained to the wall of Rhen’s castle. It happened during the Uprising, when hundreds of people surged into the palace.
I don’t move my hand. “Where did you find Sinna?”
