Mischa shook her head. “That is not a reply to my question. Must you always be so bossy and evasive? You are forever a one-woman army. Do you not think we can help you—”
“Do not argue!” cried Helena, her face wet. “Listen to Edie, Mischa. We are alive because of her. You know this.”
Mischa, ignoring Helena, did not take her eyes from me. “You are a foolish woman, Edie. I know you are about something we would not want you doing.I know you.Just come with us.”
“The way you tell me you care is so moving, Mischa.”
“Well. Youarefoolish.”
We glowered at each other and then nodded, a half-smile for each other on our lips. I knew that between Quinn’s intelligence, Mischa’s stubbornness and Helena’s care, they and the unborn babe had a chance.
I left them to their escape.
97. Husband
I pushed past hundreds of keep residents and infantrymen. Something, perhaps not my goddess, but something was pulling me towards her temple. Were these the fates she had mentioned to me, the forces that even she did not understand? Was it they that drove me towards death? And if they were, why did I let myself go?
The antechamber of Mother Earth’s temple was empty, all the desks abandoned, papers and ledgers strewn haphazardly, so unlike the orderliness Cian liked us to keep, almost as if someone had been looking for something amongst our work areas.
I pushed open one of the large temple doors and sat in the very last pew. I looked down at my hands folded in my lap, the left on top, my eyes tracing the lines of the ranunculus petals. “Help,” I said.
If you do not run now, girl, this very moment, you die today.
“I cannot run. I cannot abandon him, knowing he goes to his end and I live on. And something in my breast is compelling me to stay.”
The old woman’s grating broke in my ears, like a sob. She tried to speak but the sound of a crack came through to me instead, a tree branch snapping off in a storm, a deer’s leg bone crumbling down a stony valley, two rocks scraping against each other. She paused and then was able to say,I will be with you in the end. I will not abandon you. If this be your choice.
I closed my eyes. “If I stay, others will live. That’s what it is. How do I know this?”
She did not answer but the scraping of stone continued, her way of weeping.
“Talk to me,” I prayed. “I want to hear you, Mother of mine.”
A sigh full of scraping and then,I have loved you, girl. More than any lover ever could. I am you. I am the magic and the marrow in your bones, the blood in your veins. We are one and will be forevermore. This is the end. There is hardship ahead.
“But you are here.”
I be here.
And then I felt it, something every child wants, a mother’s embrace, two strong arms all around me. Her warmth filled me and I pressed my hands over my heart.
Then, at the far end of the temple, behind the altar, the large carving of Mother Earth’s wooden face, one side human, the other foliage and creature, split open and from out of Cian’s office, stepped Ormond Thrush, my first husband.
Run, girl. Please. Run, came my goddess in my ears.
I spotted him before he spotted me and I stood abruptly. This movement was a poor choice as it drew attention to me.
Down the center aisle that separated the stone pews, he stared at me, several house lengths between us but close enough to identify me. “Good morning, Edie Thrush,” he said, a grin on his face. He still looked handsome, his dark hair without gray. His clothing was simple but well made, a sword strapped to one hip and a dagger to the other. He stepped down from the altar, saying, “Or I should say, good morning, wife.”
Girl, said Mother Earth.
“Although, Cian tells me you call another husband now,” said Thrush, his steps unhurried, a hand in the pocket of his breeches. He pulled out a small item and it sparkled pink and red in the sunlight that streamed through the narrow windows. “You left this. Stupid, if you do not mind my saying so. You could have pawned this but you left it. Now that told me that perhaps, once you were done being a rebellious, adulterous woman, you might return to being my wife.”
That word, that precious word that Alric had so recently claimed as his word for me, sounded like a curse on Thrush’s tongue.
“And now,” he said, putting the ring back in his pocket, “you have gone and married another.”
I stepped out of the pew, into the aisle and then took a step backwards to the double temple doors, right hand on the head of my sagaris. “What are you doing here?” I asked, my voice sounding like it came from someone else.
