Maeve
My hands move to my stomach on instinct, cradling the heavy swell and the baby currently kicking the absolute life out of me. My lips part with another heavy breath, but words fail me as the phantom, the man who blesses my dreams, lifts his head and meets my eyes.
He looks… the same, but different. That wry, charming boyishness has bled into something hard and dark–hollow, just like I’ve felt for nine months. He’s wearing that same dusty blue backward ball cap, but his hair is a little longer, curls poking out around his ears. His eyes are the same trio of colors but lined with dark circles–exhaustion, I realize, as I take another tentative step into the room, not daring to blink lest he disappear.
The column of his throat bobs as he holds my gaze, searching my eyes, my face, his eyes uncharacteristically wetting as he licks his lips and lets his gaze lower to my stomach.
I feel a sudden jolt of uncertainty, maybe even shame.
“Soren,” I suck back the word as it splinters into a shallow, choking sob I can’t contain.
He moves, taking four long, swift steps, his hand suddenly caressing my cheek, his thumb swiping tears from my skin, and I know then, without a shadow of a doubt, that this isn’t a dream.
“Oh, my Goddess,” I croak, and he carefully, gently, presses my cheek against his chest and curls around us–both of us. Me and our daughter.
His hand glides down my back, resting right over the sore, aching spot that’s been bothering me for days, pressing in just a bit, like he can feel it, too. His other hand brushes down my arm before smoothing over my stomach. He presses a kiss into my hair before inhaling deeply, sighing, his body damn near trembling as we stand in the center of the room, late evening sunlight playing over our bodies.
The baby kicks against his hand. I feel his soft smile against my temple as more tears slide free from my lashes.
“She’s yours,” I whisper.
“I know,” he says so softly I almost miss it. “Maeve, I–” He pulls away enough to look down at me, taking my face between his hands.
I look up at him, my hands holding his waist, and… and I know I should say something. That he should say something, anything, but… we can’t. Nine months of what I can only describe as anguish flash before my eyes. Nine months questioning the power of what I felt for him, what it meant, if it was even rational or if I’d lost my mind entirely.
Soren just shakes his head, his mouth parting in a rushed inhalation of breath, then says, “Gods, I fucking missed you–” His mouth crashes into mine before he even finishes his sentence, pressing the words against my lips instead.
I sob against the kiss, the dam of emotion I’ve been building since the day we parted ways releasing in a torrent of feeling so strong I can’t feel anything else. He breaks from the kiss to embrace me again, squeezing me but careful of the baby between us.
“What are you doing here?” I manage to ask, pressing my face against his chest, breathing in his scent of clean, forest air and everything male, musky, and sharp. Goddess, he smells amazing. The same way he used to, I’m sure, but I didn’t realize how much I missed until I couldn’t find that scent again anywhere, and I craved it.
He tilts my chin to him with his finger and kisses me again, deeply, his hand gliding down my back. He doesn't answer the question. Not right away. I’ll ask again later. There’s much I need to know, so much he needs to know, but that doesn’t matter right this instant, does it?
Have I not wished for this? Begged for it?
But then I smell something new, something that brings back a rush of memory when I start sliding his leather jacket from his shoulders, and my hands stop, pressed to his chest. “Soren? Are you bleeding?”
My hands travel down the length of his arms as I take a step away, shoving myself out of the haze of reunification and into reality. He flinches sharply when my hand grazes over his right forearm. Dread fills my body as I look up into his eyes, seeing more pain than I’ve ever seen there.
“What happened?”
“Maeve, I need you to listen to me,” he says gravely, taking me by the shoulders. “You need to go.”
“What? What are you talking about–”
“Go to your parents and grandparents in Veiled Valley. You’ll be safe there. You need to pack now, and I’ll take you there myself. Please–”
“What the fuck is going on?”
He shakes his head but then goes suddenly pale, like the blood is draining from his cheeks in real time.
“Soren? Soren?!”
He starts to slump forward as the smell of blood swells. Blood seeps down his wrist, dripping onto the white carpet as I catch him to the best of my ability, kneeling against his weight as he starts to fall to the ground.
“JANE!” I scream, sending her name down the mind-link between us; a similar link, I suppose, between shifters as it is to witches. But in the event she’s nearby already, I scream again, now on my knees with Soren’s head in what’s left of my lap.
He grimaces, his eyelashes fluttering.
“Don’t move, okay?” I tell him nervously, sniffling as I try to pull his jacket free of his arms. I grunt with the effort, then stifle a gasp as his undershirt–long sleeved and deep gray–soaks with blood from his elbow to his wrist on his right arm. “Oh, Soren,” I breathe, my heart rate skyrocketing. “What have you done?”
The door to my suite opens, and Jane’s rapid footsteps carry through the hallway, echoing behind her. “Your Majesty–”
I turn to her, my eyes glassy. “I need–I need five healing drafts. Please. Hurry!”
Jane stares at me, looks down at the man in my arms, then back to me again. She swallows what questions she had on the tip of her tongue and nods, hurrying away without a single word.
I close my eyes for a moment, taking a deep, deep breath, and start tearing his shirt open at the shoulder. His skin, even on his upper arm, is mottled purple and an even angrier red as the fabric tears down, and down, until…
“No,” I whisper, tears flooding down my cheeks as my chest convulses.
A bandage soaked red with blood covers his forearm… right over the scars left from the silver band. I beg myself not to react, swallowing past the lump in my throat, and shiver uncontrollably as I unwind the bandage.
I want to scream, but I can’t. Nothing but a choked whimper leaves my lips, pursed tight, as the bandage falls away. His arm is completely mangled, skin flayed, burned in places, with glimpses of bone. A ring of new wounds around his forearm tells me all I need to know. The band was put back on… and he somehow got it off by himself without the use of magic.
“How bad is it?” Soren asks weakly.
“It’s infected, you fucking idiot,” I sniffle, struggling to maintain my composure.
That wry smile…. Goddess, even at his worst, that smile works its way through my body, untying the knots around my heart. “Who did this to you?”
“An ironsmith,” he says, his eyes opening to slits as beads of perspiration appear on his hairline. “An expensive one.”
“You paid someone to do this to you?”
“I had to.”
“Why?”
“I had to come to you. When I found out, I had to come. I should have–I should have been here months ago. I shouldn’t have let you go in the first place.”
My chest squeezes around his words, making it impossible to take a breath.
Jane’s footsteps sound through the hallway again as she huffs and puffs, desperately out of breath from sprinting what must have been the length of the castle and back. She’s bright red when she skids to a stop beside me, kneeling with two handfuls of healing drafts clutched in each hand, her eyes wide and mouth gaping as she sees Soren’s arm. “It’s not going to be enough–”
“I know, I know,” I cut in, waving her off. “It’ll be enough to help, at least, until I… until I decide what to do.” Who to call, more like it. I grind my teeth as we start popping corks. Soren tries to shy away, growling his protests after I dump the first draft into his mouth, and he promptly spits it out all over us. It’s bitter, I get it, but he needs it.
“Stop–”
“Shut up and take your medicine,” I bite out, clutching his cheek, pinching his mouth open until he stops fighting and allows us to help him.
Jane collects the empty vials, dumping them into a wastebasket in one of the side bathrooms, then hurries back to my side. “What do you need me to do?”
I wonder if she recognizes him. She has to, given that she tied Soren to a chair once, watched as I dumped icy water over his head and slapped him repeatedly. Now, his head is in my lap, his cheek pressed against my belly, where his daughter is repeatedly kicking him, unused to someone else touching her. I doubt he’s aware enough to notice much of anything right now, let alone that, but he leans into the sensation as the drafts begin to wind through his body, his tense expression relaxing.
I wrack my brain for solutions, chewing my lip as I devise a solid plan of action, at least for the next few hours. “I can’t lift him into bed, so I’m going to stay here with him for a moment, and when he gets some strength back, I’m going to–to put him up with me,” I tell her.
She nods, dutifully knitting her fingers together over her apron.
“Soren is an honored guest of my court,” I continue. “If anyone asks, he’s my guest, but no one is allowed on this floor for the time being, especially here, in my suite.”
“Patton,” Soren breathes, wincing.
We look down at him. “Patton? What about him?” I ask hurriedly.
“He’s here. In Moonrise.”
“Where?” I give his cheek a few gentle pats to keep him awake and talking while the healing drafts begin to settle, some of the bruising on his arm already fading.
“One of the hotels near the train station. The big one… with the blue paint.”
I turn back to Jane. “Have… Niall fetch him. He’s tall, with dark hair and blue eyes. Have Niall tell him he’s being summoned by the queen. He’ll come. And Niall needs to be discreet about it. No signing in. No ID checks. Nothing like that.”
“I’ll make sure.” Jane nods. Niall is one of my favorite guards at the castle–kind and always joking around but serious and deadly when he needs to be. I trust he won’t ask questions.
“Other than that, can you find him some clothes? And have a tray of food brought up when he wakes? Something warm and hearty. Stew, steak, red meat or whatever the kitchen has that can be made and brought up as soon as possible.”
“Whisky,” Soren says through gritted teeth, the color in his face returning.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” I reply sharply, sucking in a breath. “Wine is better for this. Uhm, have Trinity in the kitchen fortify it with herbs and heat it just a bit. I’m thinking… cinnamon, nutmeg, and other warming spices. Heat it in iron.”
“For the healing. For the blood,” Jane nods, likely recalling the rigorous potions curriculum every witch in Moonrise had to pass during our school years, including me.
“Exactly.”
Jane turns on her heel and leaves, shutting and locking the door behind her, and silence swells.
Soren takes a heavy breath, then another, struggling to keep his eyes open. I wince as I stretch out my cramping, aching legs, readjusting his head on my thighs, and wait.
His arm is far too mangled to be healed using drafts. It’ll kill the infection, I hope, but otherwise… I need Misty. I might even need Cole, to be honest. I could, I guess, use the clinic downstairs, but the questions that would arise….
“You’re huge,” Soren says almost dreamily, riding the edge of what I assume will be a full body stupor in a matter of minutes.
I glare down at him. “Did you really just say that to me?”
“How much longer?” he asks, his eyes finally closing.
I chew my lip to stop it from trembling as I absently run my fingers through his hair. “Until you heal? I don’t know. Several hours, but it won’t be complete–”
“Until she comes?” He turns his face against my stomach, his words slurred as potion induced sleep washes through him, his body relaxing more than I think it ever has in his life.
“Any day now,” I whisper, fighting tears again, forcing myself not to think about what happens now.