“I’m fine. Put me down,” I said, but for a second, Gallagher’s grip on me only tightened.
“You heard the lady.” Lenore hurried past us toward the table, carrying a ratty broom and our chipped dustpan. “Put her down. And add paper plates to the grocery list.”
Gallagher set me down, and I headed straight for the bedroom on unsteady legs. I sank onto the end of the bed and sucked in a deep breath. And held it.
“Delilah?” The door closed, and I looked up to see that Gallagher had followed me into the room. “What’s wrong?”
“Seriously? Didn’t you hear her?” My pulse was a steady roar from deep within my own head. “I’m going to die in childbirth.”
He scowled. “That’s...not what I heard.”
“A babe birthed in blood. The gift of life and the gift of death, with a heartbeat between them? Or something like that. What else could she mean? What else is there that you can’t protect me from?”
He sank onto the bed next to me, again careful to leave space between us. “Delilah, we could spend from now until eternity trying to interpret poor Rommily’s second sight and never once get it right. Don’t let fear obscure reason.”
“Well, then, what do you think she meant?”
“I don’t know.” His shrug jostled the entire bed. “I doubt even she truly knows. But she also said something about the reflection of a man in the mirror, and I have no plans to avoid the looking glass.”
The looking glass.
I couldn’t resist a smile. Every now and then, it was easy to remember that Gallagher was much older than he looked. Though at that moment, with dark circles forming beneath his eyes, he was starting to look closer to his true age, whatever that was. “You should sleep. You’re out hunting most nights—” With no success, based on the still-faded red of his cap. “And you owe it to the baby and to me to keep yourself healthy...” But the suggestion died on my tongue when his gaze flicked away from mine in an obvious effort to hide his thoughts. “What?”
“Delilah, I haven’t been hunting. I mean, Ihavebeen. But not just to soak my hat.”
A chill crawled up my spine. “What does that mean?”
“I’ve been looking forhim. To fulfill my promise to you.”
“Him? Who...?” I asked, and Gallagher’s gaze trailed down to my stomach again. But I wasn’t seeing the concern or affection of a father-to-be.
The look on his face was pure rage.
Oh.The thin man. The customer from the Spectacle who’d paired me and Gallagher and demanded that we “perform” for his amusement—a callous, monstrous demand that had stolen a choice from us, forever altered our relationship and given us a child.
“Hewillpay for what he did,” Gallagher insisted. “I gave you my word. And even if I hadn’t...my hands itch to spill the life from his veins. I want to hear him scream until he chokes on his own blood. I want to see terror in his eyes when he recognizes me and understands exactly why his last moments will be excruciating, and as prolonged as I can make them. Delilah, I want to craft a rattle for our child from his vertebrae.”
“Well, that’s...colorful.” I frowned at him. “Is that really something redcaps do? Make toys from the bones of your victims?”
“From the bones of our enemies, anyway. A bone rattle is a very appropriate gift for the child of a warrior.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
“How close are you to finding him?”
“Not very.” His causal tone belied the frustration lurking behind his dark eyes as they stared down at me. “I don’t have a name to go on, and everyone I might have been able to question either died at the Spectacle or escaped and is on the run. It’s been a vexing, exhausting hunt, to say the least.”
No doubt made even more so by the fact that most devices that carry a signal or transmit data glitch out in the hands of a redcap. Gallagher had literally never used a computer and had never utilized a cell phone beyond its actual telephone function.
“Why haven’t you asked for help? Or even told me what you were doing?”
“This isn’t your burden.”
I exhaled, struggling for patience. “That’s not what I asked you.”
Gallagher stood. “I knew talking about him would make you uncomfortable. I was afraid it might make you remember more than you want to.”
In fact, I remembered very little of our child’s conception, by choice. Gallagher had only participated to keep me from being paired with someone else. On an intellectual level, I was grateful for the choice he’d made. But I didn’t get one.
