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Chase was here instead of by Sharah’s side? Fuck. What had happened now? Before we even thought of food, Camille and I turned toward the living room. There, we saw Chase pacing.
“What’s going on, dude? How are Sharah and the baby?” I slipped over to his side and gave him a quick hug, but it was obvious how tense he was—his back was stiff and he looked pissed out of his mind.
“I need your help! I can’t stop them, can I? They said I have no choice—and that she has no choice. Like fucking hell!” He was babbling.
Camille held up her hand. “Slow down and tell us what happened. Start at the beginning, and first things first: are Sharah and the baby all right?”
He stood there, clenching and unclenching his fists. “Sharah is all right—it was a hard labor, but she’s okay. And our daughter is fine.” He paused, and the look that crossed his face was priceless. But the next minute, it was replaced by a black cloud. “But that fucking Trenyth—I’d like to wring his neck.”
“What the hell happened?” And then, I knew—or at least I suspected. “She’s . . . they want her to return to Elqaneve, don’t they?”
“Like hell she’s going to. After what went down there yesterday?” He seemed to lose steam and dropped onto the sofa, hands on his knees as he stared ahead with a bleak look. “Trenyth came to the hospital this morning. He said she must return. She’s the only living heir and she has to take the throne.”
“Sharah is going to become Queen of Kelvashan? What about the baby? And you?” I had thought this might happen.
“They won’t let me come with her. And . . . they won’t let her bring the baby. They said that she’ll have to leave her with me, here. Because the Elfin Queen cannot have a half-breed child at the Court.” His voice was thick with rage and I thought he was about to burst a blood vessel. “Even though she’s a newborn, they’re intent on separating our family.”>Camille was already at the table, tucked into a silk robe, and she cradled a cup of tea between her hands. A plate of cookies in front of her remained untouched, but she had a hamburger on her plate, and it looked like Morio had gotten her to eat a few bites.
The kitchen felt eerily devoid of life. Without Iris around, and without Smoky, Trillian, and Roz, the noise level was at a bearable level and everything felt too calm.
Hanna put a burger in front of me, and a big glass of milk. “Get your sister to eat,” she said. “She needs her dinner.”
I toyed with my food, not that hungry either. But we both needed to get something in us, so I motioned to Camille. “She’s right.” As I lifted my hamburger to my lips, I paused and looked at Menolly. “Do you know everything? Well . . . you can’t know what we went through, but you know Queen Asteria is dead?”
Menolly nodded. “Yeah, I know she’s gone.” After a moment, she continued. “Nerissa is down at the station with Chase. Sharah went into labor as she came out of the Ionyc Sea. Smoky did the best he could but it’s not the same as going through a portal. It really hit her hard.”
“Is the baby okay?” I sat up, alarmed.
“We don’t know, but the fetal heartbeat is strong. I last talked to them about twenty minutes ago and she’s dilated six centimeters so it’s going to be a while yet. She’s narrow-
hipped and Mallen said that may be an issue, but so far, so good. Nerissa is keeping Chase occupied.”
Relieved that at least one thing was going right, I nodded. “After everything we’ve experienced, I have to say I was scared to even ask.”
“I can’t imagine what it was like where you were.” Menolly played with a bottle of blood, taking care to wipe her mouth as she drank her dinner. She was fastidious, and often complained about vampires with messy habits.
Camille let out a sharp breath. “We’re all at the ‘can’t imagine’ stage, I think. We saw things last night that I never want to see again, but I have the horrible feeling that we haven’t seen the last. If that’s what war is like, then we have to fucking make sure they don’t break through the portals.” After a moment, she looked at me. “Shade’s heard, but the others . . .” She looked at Menolly. “You may know some of what went down, but unless you were there, you really can’t imagine.”
So, once again, we told our story. I was tired of telling it, the images were too fresh in my mind. And I could see, by Camille’s expression, they were haunting her as well.
Menolly’s jaw dropped as we told her about the storm, and what it had been like. Vanzir’s face remained expressionless but he leaned forward, pushing his beer out of the way. Lately, he’d gotten into drinking microbrews, and while the alcohol didn’t affect him, he liked the taste.
“I’m going to tell you girls something and I want you to listen.” His eyes whirled, kaleidoscopes in the dim light of the kitchen. “War is war. War happens and has always happened, and will always happen. As long as there are men, as long as there are demons, as long as there are gods and dragons and the Fae, as long as there is greed and anger, hatred and desire, lust and passion, there will be war.”
He stood, hooking his thumbs in the rope belt holding up his low-cut jeans. “Only one thing that is a certainty: even in the most insane of times, you have to go on living your lives. You have to carry on your daily activities as much as you can, because if you don’t, the enemy wins. If you lose track of what makes your life important, then you give them the chance to fuck you over, upside down and sideways. You forfeit and they screw you.”
We stared at the dream-chaser demon. Vanzir had been soul-bound to us under a geas with a death threat, but that had been broken during an emergency that had set into motion a horrible chain of events, culminating in giving Hyto, Smoky’s psycho father, the chance to capture Camille and torture her. He’d chosen to remain with us, though, in the battle against the demons.
Camille was the first to speak. “He makes a good point. I guess that’s what we do, then. We can’t sit around here worrying. I can’t sit here 24/7 wondering if Smoky and Trillian will come out of this okay. Or if Telazhar will capture the Keraastar Knights. Until Trenyth contacts us again, we have to go on with life.”
I ducked my head. Vanzir was right, and so was Camille. Straightening my shoulders, I swallowed the desire to curl up in a ball and hide. “Then that’s what we’ll do. Menolly has a bar to rebuild. And we have to find out what happened to Violet, as well as mopping up whatever mess is going on over at the Farantino Building.” I paused, then opened my mouth. “It’s just . . . everything seems so mundane, so minute compared to what we just came through.”
Camille stared at her plate and listlessly picked up her hamburger. “Hanna’s right. We need food. You know, when Hyto kidnapped me, after everything that happened there, I wondered how I would ever go back to normal. I mean, I still have nightmares where he’s . . .”
A pause, then she continued. “Anyway, at first I wasn’t sure what to do, how to act. But by picking up the threads of my routine, by doing the things that life demands of us every day, I began to find my way back to myself. And I realized that there is no going back to normal. You create a new normal for yourself. It’s like coming off a path to a much bigger one, where there are more factors. But you learn how to navigate this one just like you learned how to navigate the one you were on.”
Menolly picked up her thread of thought. “True. We were at loose ends when we first found out about Shadow Wing. It felt like we were on a rock slide, going down fast. But we adapted. And now, we will adapt again. Hell, you think I didn’t have to face some of the most grueling adaptation of my life when Dredge turned me? When the OIA took me in and taught me how to regain control over myself? There was no shred of my old life left, I thought. But I was wrong—you two were there, and Father, even though I knew how he felt about vampires. But he was a link to the old world, and I used the three of you to merge the two paths so that I didn’t feel like an alien.”
Hanna bustled over. “You are all correct. I had to do this too—when Hyto captured me. I had to learn how to adapt to try to keep me and my son alive.” Her face fell; it was obvious she was thinking about Kjell. He’d been about fifteen when Hanna had been forced to kill him. Even though there had been no real choice, the fact that she’d poisoned her son to keep him from a worse fate still hung heavy on her conscience.
