Then I heard the cry.
“Please, I just got her to sleep.”
I turned slowly, not sure I wanted to see. How had I missed the rocking chair before the fire? Maybe I had not wanted to see it. It wasn’t Kyna there in the spindly creation, slowly rocking back and forth. The man, Merrick, held a bundle of blankets across his lap. A chubby little leg dangled out, kicked free of the covers.
I had not spent much time around babies in my life or death. But the child looked about the right size for her age. He had saidher.
I did not move any closer, hovering near the bed in the corner. But it was a small cottage, and my gifts from the Dark God ensured that I noted every bit of sensory information as it pressed in.
My pointed nails dug into my palms as I curled my hands into tight fists.
“Where is Kyna?” She must have told him about me, for him to be sitting there so calmly when a stranger burst through the door. But to not react at all… I should not have waited so long. The ice in my chest became a weight so heavy I struggled to stay upright.
“Gone,” Merrick said softly, his eyes fixed on the child in his lap.
“Gone where?” Even though I knew. Kyna would never have left her child. A daughter, her thick hair already the same shade as her mother’s and my sister’s and my own.
Ice formed in my palms, crystallized in my veins.
“She did so well,” Merrick said. His legs stopped moving. The rocking motion of the chair slowed. “Carried her all the way to term. There was no midwife, but she delivered her just fine. She nursed her. Got up and walked around.”
I did not dare to hope. But I also could not fully believe what I saw before my eyes. The chair stopped moving.
“But she never really recovered, not fully. She grew weaker and weaker. Until one night she just slipped away.” Tears tracked down his cheeks. He leaned down and pressed a kiss to the head of dark hair. “Now it is just the two of us.”
Hope—I’d been foolish to ever have it. Hope was for those more fortunate and deserving than I. I’d spent a lifetime helping Kyna, readying her for the journey across the water to safety. Even now, I stood there knowing that if Maura found out, I would be punished brutally for my insubordination. My two allegiances, coven and family, always in conflict. But I’d been so close to getting Kyna away to safety, to finally resolving the terrible tug on my resources and my hea?—
“It was supposed to be the two ofus,” I bit out.
This was his fault.
He’d convinced Kyna to stay. He’d gotten her with child. This poor, useless fisherman had ruined everything.
“You were the reason she stayed. She should have been safe. She had enough money to buy passage across the Southern Fate. If it weren’t for you, she would still be alive,” I raged. My power wrestled free, ice coating the floor. The cloying heat tried to melt it, but my anger was a visceral thing, feral and untamable.
But Merrick did not react. He sat in perfect stillness, staring down at the sleeping child in his lap.
That made me angrier still. Ice climbed the walls. “You have nothing to say for yourself? No defense? You know you are to blame!”
“A spell for the child,” he said softly. “That is all I ask.”
So, he did know everything.
A spell for the child—for Kyna’s child, for Rylynn’s last living descendant in Velora. But I could not find the words.
The ice on the floor and walls cracked, thrashing against the spell I’d cast years ago to keep the moisture out of the cottage. My power surged, trying to find escape, then turning back in on me. I was going to combust. I had to get out.
I could not give her a spell. I could not save Kyna. I had failed.
If I stayed a moment longer in that sweltering hell, I would doom us all.
I crashed through the door, ice crackling in my wake. I did not make the conscious decision to climb the bluff rather than descend toward the water. But what did it matter? Kyna was dead.
It was not Merrick’s fault. It was mine. I should have gotten the coin together sooner, gotten her across the water to safety before she was old enough to learn about men and love. She should have borne her child in safety, in a land of life and beauty.
She did not deserve to die. None of them had.
It was all my fault.
