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My godfather’s teeth are gritted. “You know better. You’ve seen better. Marcel—”
“Toss him into the sea!” the king shouts to guards at the door. They both take tentative steps forward, but when my godfather shoots them both dark looks over his shoulder, they hesitate. My godfather holds real power, the sort even kings and those who fight for them have to respect.
My godfather’s eyes darken. “Is that your voice, or the poison the Elders spill in your ear?”
“I have my own mind,” the king shouts over the clash of the storm outside. “And right now, I’m tempted to punish you, same as the boy, for your defiance.”
“When your wife is well, she will hate you.”
King Marcel brings his face close to Van Asten, nearly nose to nose. “Tell me more of what my wife thinks and feels, Antoine. See how you fare.”
My godfather remains silent, but still, he clings tightly to the babe. It’s then that I realize Lonan has approached from behind. He hovers over me, watching the scene and staring down at the baby in my godfather’s arms.
He’s so small, skin still wrinkled and plum-colored, eyes still closed. But that shock of dark hair . . . I know who this is.
The two men stare each other down, and I’m sure blades are about to be drawn, when my godfather whispers, “Mark him.”
“What?” replies the king.
“Mark him. Take a knife and mark him as the second. Let the second be first and the first be second.”
It is at that moment that the woman, straining in the bed, props herself on her elbows and screams. There is a sound like a rush of bodily fluid, and the woman collapses back on the pillows. The nurse’s movements are frantic, disciplined, between the woman’s knees.
“What is it?” the king demands. “A son? Is he well?”
In these moments of life and death, titles do not matter. The nurse does a poor job of hiding her annoyance at the king and focuses only on her patient.
With a cloth, she wipes frantically at something. There is no crying, and that fact alone sours my stomach. I glance at Lonan’s face beside me, but he’s wearing a carefully constructed mask. The nurse lifts a small body aloft, slinging it across her arm like one who has practiced this many times. She swats the baby across the backside with such force that I cringe. She doesn’t hold back, determination in her eyes. The mother lifts her head, saying nothing, but staring with fear so strong I can’t watch her. My chest is taut as a bowstring as I watch the baby, his small purple face pinched and unbreathing.
And then a cry. Collective relief fills the room. A moment later, the nurse is extending him to place him on his mother’s breast. But the king reaches for him, wrapping the boy in his arms instead. Something breaks in the mother’s eyes as her fingers barely skim the top of the baby’s head before he’s with his father.
The king lets the blood and afterbirth stain his clothes as he holds the small prince, paying no attention to the woman—the queen—and the nurse, who is severing the cord and still cleaning mess from the child’s face while he rests in royal arms.
This baby, I note, does not have the same lightning-like black markings down his chest.
“Mark him,” my godfather insists.
The king hesitates for another moment. “He cannot grow up in the palace.”
Van Asten’s face is still, but there is barely restrained rage behind his eyes. “Then I will do it. I will take him.”
The king sneers. “First my wife, then my son. Your greed knows no bounds.” The king’s face hardens. “Take the baby. Keep him in your territory.”
“Fine,” Van Asten says, turning to look back at the child in his arms. He moves his thumb strangely, flicking it across the surface of a ring he wears on his right hand. I know this ring. He wears it to this day. When he moves his finger across it, a blade flips open from its surface.
He moves the blade toward the screaming child and then hesitates. Slipping the ring off and handing it to the king, he says, “He is yours. Let your only act as a father be this.”
The king clenches his jaw, glances between the blade and the baby, and shakes his head.
My godfather glowers. “Coward.”
He lifts the blade.
The king catches my godfather’s wrist before it connects with the child’s flesh. Their eyes meet. And then the king presses the blade down, connecting not with his face, the way Van Asten had intended. He scrapes the point across the baby’s neck, down to his upper chest. Their fists are held in tension, the king pressing down and my godfather pulling back. Any deeper, and the child’s throat would be skewered.
The baby’s screeching pierces the stormy cabin, nearly unbearable to listen to. But he is alive.
Van Asten shoves the king away, arm curling around the baby. The king’s guards’ hands go to their blades. The king lifts a hand to still them.
