The scene shifted another time, showing what was obviously a torture chamber. Men and women screamed as masked figures worked with hot irons.
“Or perhaps I will give you to the priests of the Masked Goddess, to earn repentance for your crimes.”
“You wouldn’t,” Kate said.
Siobhan reached out, grabbing her so fast that Kate barely had time to think before the other woman was forcing her head down under the water of the fountain. She cried out, but that just meant that she had no time to take a breath as she plunged into it. The cold of the water surrounded her, and though Kate fought, it felt as though her strength had abandoned her in those moments.
“You don’t know what I would do, and what I wouldn’t,” Siobhan said, her voice seeming to come from a long way away. “You think that I think about the world as you do. You think that I will stop short, or be kind, or ignore your insults. I could send you to do any of the things I wanted, and you would still be mine. Mine to do with as I wished.”
Kate saw things in the water then. She saw screaming figures wracked with agony. She saw a space filled with pain and violence, terror and helplessness. She recognized some of them, because she’d killed them, or their ghosts, at least. She’d seen their images as they’d chased her through the forest. They were warriors who had been sworn to Siobhan.
“They betrayed me,” Siobhan said, “and they paid for their betrayal. You will keep your word to me, or I will make you into something more useful. Do as I want, or you will join them, and serve me as they do.”
She released Kate then, and Kate came up, spluttering as she fought for air. The fountain was gone now, and they were standing in the yard of the smithy once more. Siobhan was a little way from her now, standing as if nothing had happened.
“I want to be your friend, Kate,” she said. “You wouldn’t want me for an enemy. But I will do what I must.”
“What you must?” Kate shot back. “You think that you have to threaten me, or have people killed?”
Siobhan spread her hands. “As I said, it is the curse of the powerful. You have potential to be very useful in what is to come, and I will make the most of that.”
“I won’t do it,” Kate said. “I won’t kill some girl for no reason.”
Kate lashed out then, not physically, but with her powers. She drew her strength together and threw it like a stone at the walls that sat around Siobhan’s mind. It bounced off, the power flickering away.
“You don’t have the power to fight me,” Siobhan said, “and you don’t get to make that choice. Let me make this simpler for you.”
She gestured, and the fountain appeared again, the waters shifting. This time, when the image settled, she didn’t have to ask who she was looking at.
“Sophia?” Kate said. “Leave her alone, Siobhan, I’m warning you—”
Siobhan grabbed her again, forcing her to look at that image with the awful strength she seemed to possess here.
“Someone is going to die,” Siobhan said. “You can choose who, simply by choosing whether you kill Gertrude Illiard. You can kill her, or your sister can die. It is your choice.”
Kate stared at her. She knew that it wasn’t a choice, not really. Not when it came to her sister. “All right,” she said. “I’ll do it. I’ll do what you want.”
She turned, heading for Ashton. She didn’t go to say goodbye to Will, Thomas, or Winifred, partly because she didn’t want to risk bringing Siobhan that close to them, and partly because she was sure that they would somehow see what it was she had to do next, and they would be ashamed of her for it.
Kate was ashamed. She hated the thought of what she was about to do, and the fact that she had so little choice in it. She just had to hope that it was all a test, and that Siobhan would stop her in time.
“I have to do this,” she said to herself as she walked. “I have to.”
Yes, Siobhan’s voice whispered to her, you do.
CHAPTER TWO
Sophia walked back toward the camp she’d made with the others, not knowing what to do, what to think, even what to feel. She had to concentrate on every step in the dark, but the truth was that she couldn’t concentrate, not after everything she’d just found out. She stumbled over roots, holding onto trees for support as she tried to make sense of the news. She felt leaves tangle in her long red hair, bark brushing stripes of moss against her dress.
Sienne’s presence steadied her. The forest cat pushed against her legs, guiding the way back to the spot where the wagon stood, the circle of light from the campfire seeming like the only point of safety in a world that suddenly had no foundations. Cora and Emeline were there, the former indentured servant at the palace and the waif with a talent for touching minds looking at Sophia as if she’d turned into a ghost.
Right then, Sophia wasn’t sure she hadn’t. She felt insubstantial; unreal, as though the least breath of air might blow her in a dozen different directions, never to fit back together again. Sophia knew the trip back through the trees would have left her looking like a wild thing. She sat against one of the wheels of the wagon, staring blankly ahead while Sienne curled up against her, almost the way a domestic cat would have rather than the large predator she was.
“What is it?” Emeline asked. Did something happen? she added mentally.
Cora went to her too, reaching out to touch Sophia’s shoulder. “Is something wrong?”
“I…” Sophia laughed, even though laughing was anything but the appropriate response to what she was feeling. “I think I’m pregnant.”
Somewhere in the middle of saying it, the laughter turned into tears, and once they started, Sophia couldn’t stop them. They just poured from her, and even she couldn’t tell whether they were tears of happiness or despair, tension at the thought of everything that might be coming for her or something else entirely.
The others moved in to hold her, wrapping their arms around Sophia while the world blurred through the haze of it all.
“It will be all right,” Cora said. “We’ll make it all work.”
Sophia couldn’t see how any of it could work right then.
“Sebastian is the father?” Emeline asked.
Sophia nodded. How could she think that there had been anyone else? Then she realized… Emeline was thinking of Rupert, asking if his attempt at rape had gone further than they thought.
“Sebastian…” Sophia managed. “He’s the only one I’ve ever slept with. It’s his child.”
Their child. Or it would be, in time.
“What are you going to do?” Cora asked.
That was the question to which Sophia didn’t have an answer. It was the question that threatened to overwhelm her once again, and that seemed to bring tears just in trying to contemplate it. She couldn’t imagine what came next. She couldn’t begin to try to figure out how things would work.
Even so, she did her best to think about it. In an ideal world, she and Sebastian would have been married by now, and she would have found out that she was pregnant surrounded by people who would help her, in a warm, safe home where Sophia could bring a child up well.
Instead, she was out in the cold and the wet, learning the news with only Cora and Emeline to tell about it, without even her sister to help her.
Kate? she sent out into the dark. Can you hear me?
There was no answer. Perhaps it was the distance that did it, or perhaps Kate was too busy to answer. Perhaps any one of a dozen other things applied, because the truth was that Sophia didn’t know enough about the talent she and her sister had to know for sure what could limit it. All she knew was that the darkness swallowed her words as surely as if she had simply yelled them.
“Maybe Sebastian will come for you,” Cora said.
Emeline looked at her with incredulity. “Do you really think that will happen? That a prince will come after some girl he’s gotten pregnant? That he will even care?”
“Sebastian isn’t like most of them in the palace,” Sophia said. “H
e’s kind. He’s a good man. He—”
“He made you leave,” Emeline pointed out.
Sophia couldn’t argue with that. Sebastian didn’t really have a choice when he’d found out about the ways she’d lied to him, but he could have tried to find a way around the objections his family would have raised, or he could have come after her.
It was good to think that he might be trying to follow her, but how likely was it really? How realistic was it to hope that he might set off across the country after someone who had deceived him about everything, even down to who she was? Did she think that this was some song, where the gallant prince set off over hill and vale in an effort to find his lady love? It wasn’t how things worked. History was full of royal bastards, so what would one more matter?
“You’re right,” she said. “I can’t count on him following. His family wouldn’t allow it, even if he was going to do it. But I have to hope, because without Sebastian… I don’t think I can do this without him.”
“There are people who raise children alone,” Emeline said.
There were, but could Sophia be one of them? She knew that she could never, ever give a child away to an orphanage after all that she’d been through in the House of the Unclaimed. Yet how could she hope to raise a child when she couldn’t even find a place for herself to be safe?
Perhaps there were answers ahead for that part of things as well. The grand house wasn’t visible now in the dark, but Sophia knew it was out there, pulling her on with the promise of its secrets. It was the place where her parents had lived, and the place whose corridors still haunted her dreams with half-remembered flames.
She was going there to try to find the truth about who she was and where she fit into the world. Maybe those answers would give her enough stability to be able to raise her child. Maybe they would give her a place where things would be all right. Maybe she could even call for Kate, telling her sister that she’d found a place for all of them.
“You… have options,” Cora said, the hesitation in her voice hinting at what those options might be even before Sophia looked at her thoughts.
“You want me to get rid of my child?” Sophia said. Just the thought of it… she wasn’t sure that she could. How could she?
“I want you to do whatever you think is best,” Cora said. She reached into a pouch on her belt, next to the ones that held makeup. “This is rakkas powder. Any indentured woman soon learns about it, because she can’t say no to her master, and her master’s wife doesn’t want children who aren’t hers.”
There was a layer of pain and bitterness there that a part of Sophia wanted to understand. Instinctively, she reached out for Cora’s thoughts, finding pain, humiliation, a nobleman who had stumbled into the wrong room at a party.
There are some things even we shouldn’t intrude on, Emeline sent across to her. Her expression betrayed no hint of what she felt, but Sophia could feel the disapproval there. If Cora wants to tell us, she will tell us.
Sophia knew she was right, but even so, it felt wrong that she couldn’t be there for her friend the way Cora had been there for her with Prince Rupert.
You’re right, she sent back, I’m sorry.
Just don’t let Cora know that you were prying. With something like this, you know how personal it can be.
Sophia knew, because when it came to Rupert’s attempt to force her to be his mistress, it was something she didn’t want to talk about, or think about, or have to deal with again in any way.
When it came to the pregnancy, though, it was a different thing. That was about her and Sebastian, and that was something big, complicated, and potentially wonderful. It was just that it was also a potential disaster, for her and everyone around her.
“You put it in water,” Cora said, explaining the powder, “then drink it. In the morning, you won’t be pregnant anymore.”
She made it sound so simple as she passed it to Sophia. Even so, Sophia hesitated to take the powder from her. She reached out, and just touching it felt like a betrayal of something between her and Sebastian. She took it from Cora anyway, feeling the weight of the pouch in her hand, staring at it as if that would somehow give her the answers she needed.
“You don’t have to,” Emeline said. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe this prince of yours will come. Or maybe you’ll find another way.”
“Maybe,” Sophia said. She didn’t know what to think right then. The idea that she would have a child with Sebastian might be a wonderful thing under other circumstances, might fill her with the joyous prospect of raising a family, settling down, being safe. Here, though, it felt like a challenge that was at least as great as anything they’d faced on the way north. She wasn’t sure it was a challenge she could meet.
Where could she raise a child? It wasn’t as though she had anywhere to live. She didn’t even have a tent of her own at the moment, just the partial shelter of the wagon to keep off the fine drizzle that fell in the darkness and dampened Sophia’s hair. They’d even stolen the wagon, so they had to feel a little guilty every time they ate or drank because of how they’d acquired it. Could Sophia spend her whole life stealing? Could she do it while she raised her child?
Maybe she would make it to the grand home in the heart of Monthys, and which lay just ahead. What then? It would be ruins, unfit for any human habitation, let alone a safe place in which to bring up a child. Either that, or there would be people already there, and it would take everything Sophia had just to prove who she was to them.
Even after that, then what? Did she think people would just accept a girl with the mask of the goddess tattooed on her calf to show that she was one of the Unclaimed? Did she think people would take her in, give her a space in which to raise her child, or help her in any way? It wasn’t what people did with the likes of her.
Could she bring a child into a world like that? Was it right to bring something so helpless as a child into a world that had such cruelty in it? It wasn’t as though Sophia knew anything about being a mother, or had anything useful to teach her offspring. Everything she’d learned as a child had been about the cruelty that came from disobedience, or the violence that it was only right for something as wicked as an orphan to expect.
“We don’t have to make any decisions now,” Emeline said. “This can wait until tomorrow.”
Cora shook her head. “The longer you wait, the harder it will be. It’s better if—”
“Stop,” Sophia said, cutting the potential argument short. “No more talking. I know you’re both trying to help, but this isn’t something you can decide for me. It’s not even something I’m sure I can decide, but I’m going to have to, and I have to do it alone.”
This was the kind of thing she wished she could talk about with Kate, but there was still no answer when she called into the night with her thoughts. In any case, the truth was that Kate was probably better at problems that involved enemies to fight, or pursuers to escape. This was the kind of thing she hadn’t had to face, any more than Sophia had.
Sophia went to the far side of the cart, taking Cora’s powder with her. She didn’t tell them what she was going to do next, because right then, she wasn’t even sure that she knew herself. Sienne got up to follow her, but Sophia pushed the forest cat away with a flicker of thought.
She’d never felt as alone as she did in that moment.
CHAPTER THREE
The last time Angelica had gone to the Dowager’s rooms, it had been because she had been summoned. She had been worried enough then. Now, marching in of her own accord, she was terrified, and Angelica hated that. She hated the sense of powerlessness that followed her, even though she was one of the greatest nobles of the kingdom. She could do as she wished with servants, with so-called friends, with half the nobles of the kingdom, but the Dowager could still have her killed.
It was worse that Angelica had given her that power. She’d done it the moment she tried to drug Sebastian. This wasn’t a kingdom where the monarch could just snap her fingers an
d order a death, but with her… there wasn’t a jury of noble peers who would call what she’d done anything other than treason, if the Dowager chose to bring it to that.
So she forced herself to pause as she reached the doors to the Dowager’s rooms, composing herself. The guards there said nothing, merely waited for Angelica to make her case to go inside. If she’d had more time, Angelica would have sent a servant to request this audience. If she’d had more confidence in her power here, she would have rebuked the men for not showing her the proper deference.
“I need to see her majesty,” Angelica said.
“We were not informed that our queen would be seeing anyone,” one of the guards said. There was no apology for it, none of the courtesy that Angelica was due. Silently, Angelica resolved to see the man pay for that in time. Perhaps if she could find a way to repost him to the war?
“I didn’t know it would be necessary until a little while ago,” Angelica said. “Ask her if she will see me, please. It’s about her son.”
The guard nodded at that, and set off inside. The mention of Sebastian was enough to motivate him even if Angelica’s position couldn’t. Perhaps he just knew what the Dowager had already made clear to Angelica: that when it came to her sons, there was little she wouldn’t do.
It was what gave Angelica hope that this might work, but it was also what made this dangerous. The Dowager might turn and stop Sebastian from leaving, but she might just as easily have Angelica killed for failing to seduce him as well as she’d been told. Keep him happy, the old bat had told her, don’t let him think about another woman. It had been obvious enough what she’d meant.
The guard reappeared quickly enough, holding the door open for Angelica to step through. He didn’t bow as he should have, or even announce her with her full title.