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Chapter14
Phaedron
THAT BASTARD
“What, what?” Alindra stutters.
Damn. My gut pulls tight, and I stare at the charred fish on the stone beside me as if they have something to add to this particular conversation. I didn’t want to bring this up. Voids, I didn’t even want to think about this. But memories of my mother claw their way to the front of my consciousness and damn it, if Alindra is pregnant, then I have to tell her. I take a deep breath and force myself to meet Alindra’s dark eyes.
“It’s not safe,” I finally say.
Alindra lets out a breath that sounds like an explosion inside her mouth.
“What?” she demands. “Why? What would your people do to me?”
“No, it’s not that,” I stammer, although by the nine hells, I haven’t even thought about how the good citizens of the Kingdom of the Fall would receive a magician refugee from Grathgore’s court.
It turns out I haven’t given this much thought at all.
“It’s because you’re pregnant,” I say. The word comes out awkwardly; it’s not a word I’ve had cause to speak. Not for hundreds of years.
Alindra frowns at me like I’ve lost my mind, and a distant scream rattles around the back of my skull. Charay forced me to leave her stone hut once it was clear the birth wasn’t going according to plan, but I still heard the screaming. The screams, and the moment when they stopped.
“No one has babies in the Lands Below,” I continue, speaking slowly so she can’t possibly misunderstand me. “It just… it doesn’t happen.”
Alindra’s mouth falls open.
“You haven’t had any children in all these years?” she says.
I shake my head.
“None,” I answer. “The only people living in the Lands Below are the ones who were forced through the crack in the mountain that Rensivar the Wicked opened.”
But that’s not entirely true. My throat feels tight and small, like the air from this world is scraping it raw.
“Except,” I manage to say, “for one.”
Alindra watches me with wide eyes. I wonder if she realizes she’s wrapped both arms tight around her belly, as if she’s already protecting the little spark of life in there.
“Rowan,” I tell her.
“Your brother?” she asks.
I nod.
“But, how?” Alindra stammers.
I run the back of my hand across my lips.
“Our mother was pregnant when we went under the mountain,” I say, trying to ignore the jumble of images that are rolling over each other inside my head.
Hiding under a cloak as we passed beneath the dragon’s massive wings. Holding my hands against the taut skin of her stomach, watching with horrified fascination as the creature on the other side of that barrier moved in response to my touch.
Screams from Charay’s little hut. Blood pooling on the floor. The end of those screams.
Alindra frowns like she doesn’t understand, and it occurs to me that I’ve never had to tell anyone this before. Everyone in the Lands Below either already knew what had happened or didn’t care enough to ask. I’ve never had to find these particular words, to place them in this exact order.
“She died,” I force myself to say. “Giving birth to Rowan.”
