Page 74 of Revealing Fate

“Oh shit,” she whispered, voice hitching. Imogen covered her mouth with a trembling hand.

Karrick opened his arms, and she stepped into them, burying her face in his threadbare shirt.

“It’s too much, Karrick,” she croaked. “I had just lost you, and then they took her from me, and I can’t do this. I can’t watch you…and another…” Her voice devolved, cracking, and an ugly half-sob worked its way free.

Karrick rubbed her back with broad, firm strokes. “Who did they take? Your mother?”

Imogen lifted her head and stared at him with wide, terrified eyes. “No,” she gasped. “Gods, you didn’t know. I know you didn’t know, and I couldn’t tell you.” Her face twisted, aghast. “I wanted to tell you, I swear I did, Karrick, but I couldn’t do it. Gods damn it, I couldn’t do it.”

Karrick studied her face, trying to make sense of her convoluted confession.

“She was so beautiful, Karrick,” Imogen whispered. “She was so perfect.”

His hand stilled on her back. “Who?”

Tears flooded Imogen’s eyes, spilling over like a burst dam. “There was a baby, Karrick.” She could barely get the words out. They lodged, viscous and painful, in her throat. “We…had a baby.”

A terrible moment of silence stretched.

Stark disbelief, unbridled rage, and an eviscerating anguish warred over Karrick’s features. His chest swelled with a strangled moan, and he clutched Imogen to him hard enough to force the air from her lungs.

They stood there, bound together in mutual agony, for an eternity. Imogen sobbed great, desperate, wretched sobs that soaked Karrick’s shirt with tears and snot. He shook from the effort of tempering his own emotion, but he never let her go. Not once did he let her go.

Sometime later, they disentangled themselves. Imogen splashed water from his shallow basin onto her face and held a cool towel to her swollen eyes. She’d needed that. Gods, how she’d needed to let that out.

When she faced him again, Karrick was shrugging out of his snot-smeared shirt. He tossed it into a corner and donned a fresh one.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Don’t be,” he said. “I’ve had far worse things stain my clothes.”

They sat on the edge of his cot. Imogen picked at a loose thread in her vestments. Karrick ran a hand over his shorn head.

“I wanted to tell you,” Imogen began.

Karrick silenced her. His single hand dwarfed both of hers. “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t even think of apologizing. I’m sorry, Gen. I’m so fucking sorry you had to go through that alone.” His hand tightened. “I should have been there for you. For both of you.”

Imogen leaned into him. He accepted her weight.

“Will you—” He hesitated. Imogen felt him work a swallow down the thick column of his throat. “Will you tell me what she was like?”

Something painful and long-buried spread behind Imogen’s ribs. “I don’t really know. They took her before I could hold her. But she was already gone. She didn’t even cry.” A memory Imogen had spent countless nights forcing away resurfaced as easily as if it had happened only hours before. She glimpsed a tiny limp body covered in blood and whitish film. Only a brief flash of features, and then Vulgren’s assistant wrapped a towel over the pallid, brown form. “She had a head full of fine, dark hair. Her fingers were long and slender like mine, but she looked like you.”

Karrick’s face was bleak. “Where…” He tried again. “Where is she now?”

“I don’t know,” Imogen managed, fresh tears welling. “There’s a small park on the western side of town, away from the busier parts of the city. It has a hill with a twisted little orchid tree. I placed stones at the base of the tree for her. It blooms in the spring with huge purple and white flowers, and when they fall, the entire hillside is dusted in color.” She wiped her face with a sleeve. “That’s what I call her. My little Orchid.”

Karrick didn’t, or couldn’t, reply. He put an arm around her shoulders, hugged her into his side, and kissed her hair hard. They sat like that without speaking long enough for Imogen to lose track of time.

“I am going to kill him,” Karrick whispered, eventually. “Before my time is done, I will rid Ilistaar of the stain that is Vulgren. With the gods to bear witness, I will paint these wretched halls with his blood. I swear to you. I swear it to her.”

They were the most beautiful words anyone had ever spoken to her.

Chapter 29

BEULAH

KAL DIDN’T NEED TO SHIFT for his acute senses to identify the visitors. They made no effort to conceal themselves. Beulah Porter stepped lightly through the forest’s underbrush, surprisingly silent considering her bulk. Her youngest son, Penn, trudged morosely behind her, lanky shoulders slumped forward, head low.