Pah charges through dressed in more blood than leather, the doors thumping back into place behind him as he stops, looking down his nose at me.
His upper lip twitches in the way it used to before he’d lash me with flame for my incompetence. Like he’s perched on a precipice, about to lift his foot … shove it forward …
He fills his chest, and I brace—
A shrill cry blasts from Mah’s suite, causing a breath to catch in the back of my throat.
A door eases open, and Mah’s chief handmaiden emerges with the screaming youngling bundled in a green swaddle.
“Your daughter, Sire.” Shera’s voice wobbles, her brown eyes lacking the warmth of joy. They’re glazed, like a blink will shed tears down both cheeks. “She finally filled her little lungs.”
Shera moves slowly forward until she’s in the space between us, gently urging the squirming young into Pah’s personal space.
Pah barely moves, albeit to lift his hands and accept the baby, dropping his gaze to her.
My sister.
She continues to fuss, the shrill sound pitching something within me as a maid rushes from the suite with a basket of bloody sheets, moving down the hall. Shera bustles back through the doors, and I glimpse Mah’s bare feet.
More bloody sheets.
Maids hovering about with their heads hung.
I’m not sure why it feels like the world’s holding breath. Why I’m holding breath, too.
Pah continues staring down his nose at my squirming, screaming sister, his pupils blown.
Again, my instincts prickle.
I set my instrument against the wall and push up, something innate telling me to move forward until I’m standing right before him—eye to eye. As though someone has their hands gently pressed upon my back, urging me on.
“Keep her out of my sight,” he mutters with such cutting coldness I’m surprised the words don’t leave a very real, very messy wound.
He shoves the babe against my chest.
My hands come up, gripping her. Not that I really know how to hold a baby, but I try, fumbling until she’s tucked safely against me.
Pah charges off without a single look back over his shoulder, and though his words are long since spoken, they echo in my mind like he’s before me still. Speaking them over and over.
Keep her out of my sight.
I wait for Pah to disappear around the corner before I move toward the doors. The guards don’t rush to open them for me, instead passing a glance between each other.
“She needs her mah,” I rasp, and the youngling begins to fuss again, releasing a shrill, wobbly scream that saws at my fraying patience. Because she’s not the only one who needs her.
So do I.
“Now.”
The word powers free with such force the floor shakes.
Both guards bang their chests, fumbling to pull the doors open.
Every drawn face in the room turns in our direction, most of the folk dressed in more blood than Pah was. Despite my sister’s healthy cries, not one of them wears a smile, a starched feeling in the air. Like I’m buried in a hole akin to the ones Pah stuffed me in when I was young, waiting for the walls to crumble.
I jut my chin, a quiet request for one of the younger maids to move aside.
With a swift glance at her elder, she abides, revealing Mah on the large circular pallet with her head tipped toward the windows, her auburn curls spilled across the pillow.
