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“Okay, that’s brilliant. And comforting.” She began to write. “She didn’t see me or sense me. I know that. Part of it may be she hasn’trecovered, not all the way. She got stronger during the spell, but that faded after. She’s in pain, and so angry and bitter. It’s not just for Odran now. She wants to pay me back.”
“You’ll disappoint her there.”
Breen glanced up and over, then smiled. “That’s the plan. And it’s not just me she…” She stopped and turned to him now. “Shana came in, right after Yseult finished the poison. Keegan, Shana’s pregnant with Odran’s child.”
“I’m sorry for it.”
“But not surprised,” Breen realized. “Why aren’t you?”
“Did you think Odran had Yseult bring Shana to him so she could scrub floors or stir up stews?”
“No, but I thought he took her in for her knowledge. Her father had been on the council, she slept with you. She knew—knows—things.”
“Aye, he’d want all that, of course. Add she’s young, beautiful, and surely ripe for the planting. She’ll birth a demigod for him in time.”
“And you know why. I don’t have to tell you he drains his own children, babies, sacrifices them—murders them—for power. Yseult gave him three. You knew this.”
“Not how many of Yseult’s, but logically she’d have proven herself to him this way.” Understanding sleep was done, he rose again to pull on pants. “I send spies to Odran’s world from time to time, as your father did, as those who led before him did.”
He shoved a hand through his hair before reaching for a shirt. “You think, why don’t we find a way to save them, these innocents?”
“Babies, Keegan. There has to be a way. Beyond the fact he increases his power through them, weakens the portal seals with their blood, they’re babies.”
“The taoiseach before your father lost three warriors in a rescue such as this. Two, both wounded, brought three infants through the waterfall. They lived in our world less than an hour.
“He marks them at birth,” Keegan told her, “so they can’t survive the coming through. They die there, by his hand, or here by his mark. Still, Eian tried, in his day. We would counter the mark, unwind that curse before bringing a child through. He sent a witch to pose as anursemaid, and as she began to unwind the curse, the babe died in her arms. She sits on the council, does Rowan, and still can’t speak of that moment and her own sorrow.”
It made her sick, in body and spirit, but she made herself get up. “He made a mistake with my father. He didn’t mark his son, didn’t see the need. And the longer he kept up the pretense of being husband and father, the better the chance he’d conceive another child with Nan—another vessel to drink.”
“Aye, you see it clearly enough. He doesn’t make the mistake again.”
“Why didn’t he mark me when he had me?”
Keegan tapped a finger on her temple. “Use your head, woman. You don’t come from his seed.”
“All right, bloodline isn’t enough for this kind of infanticide. You can’t save them, and I know that weighs on you.”
“We think his death breaks the curse and removes the mark. But we can’t know until we know.”
“She didn’t care. Shana.” Breen picked up a band to tie back her hair. “I think, though Yseult gave up her babies willingly, she felt something. It cost her, if you know what I mean. She didn’t hesitate to pay the price, but it cost her. Not Shana.”
In the mirror, her eyes met Keegan’s. “The pregnancy gives her status, and she’s enjoying it. The child itself means nothing beyond that. She can, she said, always make another. Her concern was how she looks. She ordered Yseult to create an illusion so she doesn’t look fat, as she put it.”
“Well, that fits, snug as a round peg in a round hole.”
“She bragged about killing Loren. I’m not telling you all this to slap at you for having a relationship with her before.”
With a shake of his head, he laid a hand lightly, briefly, on Breen’s shoulder.
“I cared for her. I won’t deny the sex held the biggest part of that, but I cared for her, or what she showed me of her. I saw her flaws, and I thought clearly enough. There I was wrong, as they weren’t so simple as flaws, but deep and wide breaks in her. I regret not seeing what should’ve been clear.”
“I don’t think it was clear, over and above how sex and beauty cancloud vision. Something snapped in her, so all those breaks inside, smoothed over by charm and beauty, killed who you’d cared for. If she’d convinced you to marry her—”
He let out a half laugh. “That, I can promise you, would never have happened. I cared, but only that.”
Because it felt important, she turned to face him.
“She believed otherwise. I’m saying if she’d managed to pull in more power, she’d have abused it, and snapped. There was no way for you to win with her, Keegan.”
