Page 75 of The Girl Beneath the Sea

At the altar, Reinhardt has not moved from his mark. The Archbishop is standing beside him. His mouth is wide open. Reinhardt looks at the American suits, and then at Aurelio, and then at the crane camera, and then at the American suits again.

Then he turns to the security detail at his shoulder and says something into the man’s ear.

It takes about a second.

The man puts his hand up to his mouth and speaks into his cuff. I see his lips move.

Reinhardt is already moving, off his mark, down the far side of the steps toward a small door in the wall under the tall window, fast, not running, with two gray suits already closing around him.

And the hands come off me.

All of them at once. The gun leaves my ribs. My arms are let go. The man who had my hair steps back and away without a word and I stand up straight, too fast, and the aisle tips, and I put my hand on a pew to hold it still.

Up the aisle, they have let go of Aurelio.

They just let go. The two men on his arms open their hands and step back. They turn and walk toward the front, toward the side door, at the same pace, without looking at him.

He stumbles because he was pulling against them and there is suddenly nothing to pull against.

He stands in the middle of the aisle in a white suit torn at the shoulder with his collar open, alone, then he turns and looks at me.

Behind him the small door under the window closes on the last gray suit.

I don’t remember deciding to move. I’m walking up the aisle and he is walking down it and then he is running again, and I catch him again, and this time nobody takes him away.

He is crying. Properly. Great ugly sobs into my shirt with his whole body shaking against me and his hands fisted in my jacket, and he is saying my name and he is saying, “You’re alive, you’re alive,” over and over. I can’t speak. I’ve got one hand on the back of his head and one on his back and my face in his hair.

I breathe in.

Vanilla and strawberry, warm, the exact scent that turned my life inside out.

But under that, there is something else.

Something new. It is sweeter, milky, almost. It is a note I have never smelled on him and have never smelled on anyone.

My body knows it before I do. Every hair on my arms stands up. Something in me goes very still and very quiet and I hear myself make a sound against his hair that isn’t a word.

He is pregnant.

He is pregnant.

“Aurelio,” I say. It comes out wrecked. “Aurelio, you’re—”

Something hits me from the side and the floor comes up.

I go down hard on the stone with a weight on my back and my cheek against the floor and my arm wrenched up behind me. Somebody’s knee is between my shoulder blades. Somebody else has my legs. A voice above me is saying, “Stay down, stay down, do not resist,” in flat American English, and a hand pats down my sides and my waistband and the small of my back.

“Roan Kessler,” the voice says. “You are under arrest.”

I am looking at Aurelio’s shoes.

“Don’t hurt him.” My prince’s voice is very clear. He has stopped crying. “Please don’t hurt him. He didn’t do anything. He came for me.”

“Your Highness, you need to step back.”

“He is my husband.”

Nothing happens. Whoever is on top of me does not move, but the cuffs go on. I hear them before I feel them, that ratchet sound, and then the cold of them around my wrists.