The Beauty of Darkness - Mary E. Pearson Page 0,144

past a savanna, beyond a great river, past rocky hills and barren glens. These cries came from the clans of Venda. He had slaughtered more for whispering the name Jezelia.

CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

PAULINE

You need to name him.

But I had no name. My mind was too swollen with other thoughts to make such a decision.

I eased the child from the wet nurse’s arms and rocked him, fingering his locks. They were the color of a bright high sun. Like Mikael’s.

But after what Mikael had done, I didn’t want to think that he was any part of this child.

You have kin, Pauline. You are not alone.

But my aunt’s cold stare surfaced again and again.

After Lia’s hand had been treated and bandaged, we had cut away her clothes and washed her. She lay unconscious, limp, and they stared at her battered body lying across the white bedding. A diary of these past months was written across her skin. They saw the jagged scar on her thigh. The nick on her throat. The fresh cut on her lip where the Chancellor had struck her, the bruises on her face where the guards had hit her. And when we turned her to wash her back, they saw the raised scar on her ribs from where an arrow had been cut away, and then there were the remnants of the kavah trailing over her shoulder.

As every new mark was discovered, the queen or Lia’s aunts choked back a sob at her broken body, and the queen’s attendant—my own aunt—cast me an angry glare.

“This is what you led her into!” she finally snapped accusingly.

I turned my attention back to rinsing a cloth in the basin, unable to meet her gaze. Guilt rushed through me. It was true. I was Lia’s accomplice. If I hadn’t helped her, she might never have left. But if she hadn’t—

I looked up, staring into my aunt’s face that was rigid with anger and disappointment. “It was her choice to make.”

She pulled in a startled breath. “It was your duty to stop her! Not—”

“I don’t regret my decision,” I said, “and I would do it again!”

My aunt’s mouth fell open, appalled, but Lady Bernette reached out to her, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Pauline is right,” she said softly. “It was Lia’s choice and beyond any of us to stop her.”

My aunt remained silent, but condemnation still shone in her eyes. The queen sobbed quietly at Lia’s bedside, Lia’s hand clutched to her cheek.

I blinked back tears. “I have something else I need to attend to.” I spun and left the room, stepping out into the dark hallway. When I had closed the door behind me, I leaned against it, trying to swallow away the painful throb in my throat. Doubt flooded through me. I hadn’t even told her about the baby yet.

“What is it?” Kaden had rushed out of the shadows toward me. I’d forgotten he’d been waiting for word on Lia.

“She’s fine,” I said. “We don’t know about her hand yet, but the bleeding is stopped and her heart is strong.”

“Then what is—” He lifted his hand toward my cheek, then pulled back as if afraid to touch me. Even in the darkest shadows, he had seen my tears, but there was still a wall between us, distrust I couldn’t set aside, even now, and he knew it.

I shook my head, unable to speak.

“Tell me,” he said quietly.

My chest shuddered with uneven breaths. I forced a smile that I felt nowhere inside, but the tears flowed down my cheeks unchecked. “I have only one living kin in this entire world, and she thinks this is all my fault.”

A frown pulled at the corner of his mouth. “Your fault? We’ve all made mistakes, Pauline, and yours—” He reached up and his thumb grazed my cheek, wiping away a tear. “Your mistakes are the very least among them.”

I saw the regret in his eyes, my hurled accusations still swimming behind them. He swallowed. “There is not only blood kin, Pauline. Some family you are born with, other family you choose. You have Lia. You have Gwyneth and Berdi. You are not alone in this world.”

A long quietness hung between us, and I wondered if the mention of family had reopened his own wounds. I saw the same pained expression on his face that I had seen hours ago when he confronted his father. I wanted to say something, offer him some sort of kind words like he had just given me, but something fearful