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“Urban?” she asked, instantly moving closer. “You don’t look so well. Are you okay?”
I shook my head and brushed her hand away when she reached out to check my brow for a fever. “I’m fine,” I mumbled, only to glare at Soren when he rumbled out a laugh over something he’d just said to Caulder.
Something about my inability to handle the sound of childbirth.
“And you seem awfully nonchalant about the fact that your wife is suffering right now,” I growled, unable to control my glare or the venom in my tone.
Soren glanced at me, his surprise tangible. Then he narrowed his eyes and shrugged. “Probably because I’ve been through this before. My first wife supplied me with three before dying on the birthing bed.” He shrugged again as if her death were no big deal. “Pushed out too many strapping boys, I suppose.”
I wanted to punch him. Right in the face. But I also thought I might pass out. The idea of Vienne in distress because her babe was too big and strapping to birth filled my limbs with panic.
If Soren had killed his first wife by putting a too-large baby in her, then why the hell did no one seem concerned at all about the fact that he might be doing the very same thing to his second?
I flashed my teeth at him and actually took a step in his direction, but a piercing pain lit through my mark and then to my stomach, sending me to my knees. My vision went black as the deluge of agony made me grunt and gnash my teeth.
I reached out blindly, vertigo swamping me. My hand found the wall, keeping me barely upright and on my knees. But by God, it felt as if my brain was trying to rip itself out of my skull, right through my temple.
“Urban?” Nicolette’s voice came from what sounded like far away but was probably only right beside me, because a second later, soft, worried fingers clutched my arm. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
I couldn’t answer, too trapped in the torture to comprehend speech. Clutching my head as waves spiked through me in unrelenting gusts, I could only hold on through the worst of it.
“My God. Brentley, his skin’s ice cold, and he’s white as a ghost. Should we fetch a healer?”
“Bjorn?” Brentley’s concerned voice filled my other ear. “Can you talk, mate? What’s going on?”
I shook my head. “No,” I gasped. “No.” I looked at him, barely seeing his face through a thick fog. “I think… I think… She’s dying.”
Brentley merely squinted. “What?” He shook his head. “Who? Who’s dying?” His eyes widened with alarm. “Allera?”
“Oh my God, Brentley. Look.” Nicolette’s face filled with horror as she pointed at me. “His love mark. It’s fading.”
“What?” Dread consumed me as I gaped at Nicolette, watching the horror on her face.
Beside her, Brentley gasped as he gaped at my ma
rk before he stumbled a step backward away from me as if I were infected. “My God. What’s happening to you?”
“It’s fading? It’s really fading?” I asked. “No! No…” I clawed at the mark, worried they were right. If my mark was fading, then Vienne was dying.
And then, just like that, it was gone. The pain disappeared as if it’d never been there, and I shook my head as if trying to capture phantom traces of it.
Through the doorway of the bedroom, the sound of a baby’s wail lit the hallway. But Vienne…Vienne was no longer screaming out her birthing pains. Any sense I’d ever felt from her was gone.
Everyone exchanged startled glances, before Soren gave a proud smile.
“Well there we go,” he announced, “I’ve a fourth to add to my brood,” only for Queen Yasmin to scream her sister’s name with a terror that turned my bones to jelly.
My stomach dropped. “No,” I whispered, stumbling to my feet.
It couldn’t be true.
The door to her room burst open, and a wild-looking Allera appeared in the entrance, her hair ragged and tears streaming freely down her face. When she caught my eye, her entire frame wilted.
“Urban,” she sobbed. “I’m so sorry.”
“No,” I said a little more loudly this time, before I bellowed, “NO!”
I surged into the room, streaking past my sister.
