The Beauty of Darkness (The Remnant Chronicles #3) - Mary E. Pearson Page 0,115

a housekeeper armed only with an iron pot had nearly done in the Assassin of Venda.

How the Rahtan would laugh at that.

The name dug into me with a surprising sting—and longing. Rahtan. It brought back the familiar, the feeling of pride, the one place in my entire life where I had felt like I belonged. Now I was in a kingdom that didn’t want me and in a cottage where I wasn’t welcome. I didn’t want to be here either, but I couldn’t leave. I wondered about Griz and Eben. Surely Griz was healed and they were on their way by now. They were the closest thing I had to family—a family of poisonous vipers. The thought made me grin.

“What’s so amusing?” Pauline asked.

I looked at the severity in her gaze. Had I done this to her? I remembered all of her kindnesses back in Terravin—her gentleness. I had thought that the young man she so earnestly waited for couldn’t possibly deserve her and then when I learned he had died, I had hoped it wasn’t by a Vendan hand. Maybe that was what she saw when she looked at me, a Vendan just like the one who had killed her baby’s father. Though my smile had long faded, her gaze remained fixed on me, waiting.

“Nothing’s amusing,” I answered, and looked away.

Another hour slipped by, and it seemed one labor pain hadn’t subsided before another began. I dipped the rag into the bucket of cool water and wiped her brow. She didn’t resist this time, but closed her eyes as if trying to pretend it wasn’t me. I was getting a bad feeling about this. She was racked with another spasm.

When the pain finally passed and she relaxed again against the makeshift pillow I had made for her, I said, “We may have to do this alone, Pauline.”

Her eyes shot open. “You deliver my baby?” A smile broke her face for the first time, and she laughed. “I promise you, the first hands that touch my little girl won’t be a barbarian’s.”

I ignored her barb. It didn’t hold the same venom as an hour ago. She was getting tired of fighting me. “You’re so sure it’s a girl?”

She didn’t get a chance to answer. She was seized with a pain so strong, I was afraid she wasn’t going to breathe again, and then on its heels came a sobbing scream. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “No. I think she’s coming. Blessed gods. Not now.” The next moments were hot and blurred, her anguished wails tearing through me. She cried. She begged. I held her shoulders, and she bent forward in pain. Her nails dug into my arm.

My heart pounded furiously with every scream. It was coming. There was no more waiting. Dammit, Lia! I eased Pauline back against the pillow, lifted up her dress, then pulled her underclothes free before I could think too much about what I was doing. A head crested between her legs. She said a hundred things to me between each pain, a breathless one-way conversation of pleas to the gods and curses. She fell back crying, too tired to push.

“I can’t,” she sobbed.

“We’re almost there, Pauline. Push. I see its head. It’s coming. Just a little more.”

She cried, a weak happiness briefly washing over her face before it vanished and she screamed again. I cupped the head, more of it emerging.

“One more push!” I yelled. “One more.”

And then the shoulders came, and with a last quick whoosh, it was in my hands, wet and warm, its tiny body arching, a small hand waving past its face. A whole baby, in my hands, slivers of eyes already peering out at the world. Peering at me. A gaze so deep, it carved a hole in my chest.

“Is it all right?” Pauline asked weakly.

The baby cried, answering her question.

“He’s perfect,” I said. “You have a beautiful son, Pauline.” And I laid him in her arms.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

It was almost like a full tavern, so many crowded into one place.

I tried to imagine it as Terravin.

Except there was no ale. No stew. No laughter.

But there was a baby.

A beautiful perfect baby. Berdi sat on the end of the bed, crooning over him as Pauline slept. Gwyneth, Natiya, and I sat at the table, and Kaden lay sleeping on the floor in front of the fire. He was shirtless, his shoulder freshly bandaged, and his head rested on a folded blanket that Natiya had brought.

The rain poured down relentlessly. We