and feelings the rest of us have. But you’ve never been very concerned with feelings, have you? Except when you can use them.” He frowned at the stubborn denial in her pale blue eyes. “Did you think you could use the children the way you used the parents?”
“Stop making me sound evil! I would have taught them, shaped them—”
“Made them tools for your ambition. What gives you the right, Andrade?”
“You want me to admit it?” she shouted, wrenching away from him. “Yes, I used them all, starting with my own sister and Zehava! I took the chance, hoping they’d produce a prince with the gifts. When they didn’t, I tried again with Sioned and Rohan.”
“Who next? Tobin’s sons? Andrade, you can’t use people that way—not and stay human yourself!”
“I loved them! I love Rohan and Sioned as if they were my own—and Tobin, and Chay, and their sons—” She leaned her shoulder against the smooth stone walls, arms wrapped tightly around herself. “I loved them too much. I wanted too much for them. And I hated Roelstra even more than I loved the others. Does that make me human enough, Urival?”
“I think there’s something you haven’t learned yet,” he responded softly. “There’s nothing you can do now. Whatever you’ve set in motion, whatever your reasons, you’ll have to wait it through—just like everyone else.”
He was astounded when tears glittered in her eyes. “Drive in the knife a little deeper, why don’t you? Am I bleeding enough yet?”
He was even more astounded when he put his arms around her. “It’s not like you to be helpless,” he whispered against her silvering blonde hair. “It’s not like my Lady at all.”
The gardens Princess Milar had planned and cared for so lovingly wilted as summer dragged on. The grotto waterfall dwindled to a thin ribbon and the pond below it was nearly dry, thirsty plants and mosses drinking up what little moisture the spring provided. But it remained a haven of cool shade in the oppressive heat and silence of Stronghold, and it was to the grotto that Sioned often went in the long days of her waiting.
She did not go there to be alone. The keep was empty; she, Tobin, and Ostvel remained, along with Myrdal and three servants. The rest had gone with Rohan or north to Tiglath or to escort Sorin and Andry to Remagev. Solitude was a fact of life in Stronghold.
Neither did she seek the grotto to indulge herself in memories. The paradox was that empty as the keep always seemed to her when her husband was gone, his presence filled the place. The delicate balance between the ache of missing him and the ache of sensing him everywhere perfectly matched her equally precarious juggling of serenity and rage. Most of the time she preserved her equilibrium. When she could not, she went to the grotto and counted off each day of Ianthe’s bearing, numbering the days left until midwinter when she would return to Feruche.
She had lost count of how many times she had felt the touch of Andrade’s colors on the sunlight. She had rejected each assault with defenses Urival had taught her—not because she feared Andrade would sway her, but because of her jealous guardianship of hard-won balance. The Lady’s arguments and prohibitions would have loosed Sioned’s rage, and she could not afford it. Not until midwinter, when she could face its object.
It was after yet another attempted contact one day, an insidious weaving of great skill that very nearly worked, that Sioned left the sunlit inner court where she had been currying her horse and made her way through the half-dead gardens to the grotto. A few paces from its sheltering trees she stopped, transfixed by sudden music. Ostvel’s lute sang so rarely that its notes brought tears to her eyes. It was said that the Storm God rarely gifted Sunrunners with the music that was his voice in the wind and water; Mardeem’s talent had been an anomaly. But Ostvel, for all that he had served most of his life at Goddess Keep and was now steward to a faradhi princess, had been gifted with the sensitive fingers and soul of a bard.
It was Camigwen’s favorite song he played. A sprightly ballad when she had been alive, since her death it had slowed to a stately tune that slipped every so often into a minor key. Sioned was filled with tender, painful memories of her friend’s dark face and lustrous eyes, her scolding