Claimed by the Elven King: Part Four (6 page)

“Shall I remain here to watch over her for the night, Your Majesty?”
she asked.

Sethian shook his head. “I shall call for you is there is need.”

She bowed again without protest and turned to me one last time.
“Rest—at least for a couple days just to be safe. I do not want you walking
around unless absolutely necessary.”

I sighed but nodded. So much for that trip into Talloth tomorrow that I
really had been looking forward to. I swear the universe really was conspiring
against me.

“You may take your leave,” Sethian said formally, and after squeezing
my hand affectionately, Yara quietly left the room.

Now that we were alone, I expected Sethian to immediately start
grilling me on what had happened, but instead of the Spanish Inquisition, I was
met with dead silence and a hard stare.

I wet my lips uneasily and said, “Sethian?”

Only then did he seem to shake himself and look back at me with a more
normal expression. “They can wait,” he said enigmatically.

Puzzled, I watched him swiftly round the bed and then climb onto the
mattress beside me. He pulled a couple of pillows from beneath the coverlet and
used them to prop himself up against the headboard. Then he held out his arms
to me.

“Come. I need to feel you against me. I need to hear our child’s soul.”

I didn’t need to be told twice.

I settled myself between his legs, sitting with my back pressed up
against his chest. His arms immediately snaked around my middle until both
hands rested on my baby bump.

For a long moment, we just sat together in silence, his nose buried
into the crook of my neck where he would occasionally inhale deeply as if
savoring my scent, before he said simply, “Tell me.”

“Something or someone pushed me from behind while I was standing near
the edge,” I said with utter certainty.

Whatever hit me in the back could be explained away by a piece of
falling stone that had suddenly broken off from the castle walls above, or
other such debris—if it hadn’t been for that invisible force that had tried its
damndest to pull my leg off before Saeria and Lariel could pull me back up, and
I said as much.

I felt him go positively rigid beneath me.

“Have you ever felt something like that before?” he asked in a voice so
devoid of emotion that it was chilling.

I shook my head, suddenly unable to talk around the huge lump of
anxiety that had formed in my throat as I felt his presence swell around me
until it had become a physical thing that was slowly weighing me down from all
sides. He must have sensed my sudden distress because the suffocating pressure
around me immediately lessened, and his hands started to rub soothing circles
over my belly.

“I shall find the one responsible, I promise you,” Sethian said, each
word dripping with a potent anger.

Once again, I could only nod my head. Although his anger scared me, I
took some comfort in his obvious outrage.

“How did you know I was in trouble, anyway?” I asked once I could make
my tongue work again.

“I heard your cry of fear.”

“So you were already nearby? Thank God for coincidences.”

I felt him shake his head. “No. I heard it here.” I followed his hand
with my eyes as he lifted it to tap the side of his head. “And here.” He placed
that same hand over my heart.

I looked back at him incredulously. “How is that possible? I’m not an
elf. I can’t do incredible things like that!”

“Is it so strange to think that when you cried out with your voice with
such strong emotion, your soul cried out as well? One needs only the ability to
listen. After all, you have ‘heard’ the voice of my soul once before.”

“Huh? Oh…that’s right…” He was referring to the Incident, the one that
he
still
hadn’t explained. The one I would have to bring up later because
right now I had a more important question.

I turned a little in his arms so that I could see his face better. His
expression was grim. “Do you know why someone would want to try to—to try to
k-kill me?” I asked tentatively.

The queen’s face flashed through my mind, but it was a choice so
obvious that I immediately dismissed it. Besides, it wasn’t that long ago that
she had warned me in a roundabout way that something like this could happen.
Although she probably wasn’t the culprit, that hint alone said that she knew a
lot more than she was telling either me or Sethian.

Sethian’s lips tightened as his anger resurfaced. “Unfortunately, there
are more reasons than I can name, any just as likely as the other,” he replied.
“There are some that had hoped my coupling with you would fail, that after a
hundred years or so without an heir being conceived, my claim to the throne
would become invalid by reason of sterility.”

“Then—this isn’t about me being human? Someone wants your throne?
Someone in the queen’s family maybe?”

As soon as those last words left my mouth, I wished desperately that I
could take them back. I hadn’t meant to accuse her at all given my obvious bias
against her from the beginning, but I was still severely shaken by my
near-death experience; the pause button between my brain and my mouth was
apparently still broken.

However, instead of an increase of anger, Sethian’s expression merely
became much graver.

“Perhaps yes to all of that,” he said. “Today you saw some of that contempt
firsthand when a few from the court looked upon you. It is resentment born from
feelings of failure. How can we need the genes of humans to insure that the
next generation is fertile, especially when it was those same human genes that
caused the sterility in the first place?

“On the other hand, there are more things afoot than the desire to
erase an imagined shame. Limira’s people have always coveted the power my family
wields. A king will never bear their family’s name. Their desire for the throne
has been something of an open secret for millennia, a deadly game our families
have played against each other since my ancestor won the right to rule over our
people tens of thousands of years ago.

“Of course, the House of Vanvir aren’t the only ones who covet my
throne. I am certain members of my own House were equally troubled by your
extremely swift pregnancy. Had I been confirmed sterile, then the next in line
to the throne would have been given the chance to either conceive a child with
Limira, or even a human wife, in order to cement his claim to be king.”

He suddenly leaned forward and brushed his lips briefly against mine
before pulling back and flashing me a tight smile. “I imagine whoever was
behind the attempt on your life is now desperately hoping that the child is not
male because, as you humans say, hell will freeze over before anyone will ever
get near enough to you again to try.”

That I was now living in a gilded cage was an understatement.

The day after my attempted murder, Sethian had assigned what amounted
to a small army to stand guard at every possible point around the royal suite
and my personal garden. Visits to said garden had been reduced by Sethian’s
order to only once every few days, and never on the same day. What I had loved the
most about my previous walks in the garden was the openness and sense of
freedom that it had given me after being cooped up within the castle walls for
long periods of time. That air of freedom no longer existed as the moment I so
much as stuck a toe outside, I was immediately surrounded by no less than
twenty elven guards, making me feel even more claustrophobic than when I was
indoors.

At least I still had sitting out on the balcony to look forward to, but
even my access to that had been, understandably, severely restricted. Unless
Sethian, himself, accompanied me, those doors were kept tightly locked.

These days I often felt like one of those clichéd princesses that were
locked up in a tower for whatever reason served the plot. To someone like me
who had spent practically every night of her life gazing up at the stars, being
cooped up indoors was practically torture.

That trip to Talloth? At this point, I’ve pretty much given up on
seeing it anytime soon. Sethian had tried to assuage my disappointment by
assuring me that after the baby was born, we would all be taking a trip across
the realm to introduce the new royal child to the elven people once the baby
was a few “moon-cycles” old. However, I had tried not to get too excited or
even to think about the trip very much because the way my luck had been going
for the past few months, something catastrophic was sure to happen the day
before we were to leave, thus forcing Sethian to cancel the trip.

Today was one of my “garden” days, and even though my back had been
killing me all morning, I was determined not to miss my walk outside. Well,
waddle really, as I now resembled a beached whale. My stomach had grown so
large in these last couple of months that I was afraid that I was going to have
twins, no matter that Sethian had constantly assured me that he could only hear
one soul. The thought of giving birth to one baby was already scary enough.
Having to go through it twice within minutes was a terror that was unfathomable.

I had only been walking for less than half an elven-mark when a sharp
pain abruptly shot from my back, then radiated through my abdomen, causing me
to stumble and fall heavily to my knees onto the thankfully soft grass.

“Emily!” Lariel cried, instantly falling down to her knees as well beside
me, placing a hand worriedly on my shoulder. “Are you all right? Did you hurt
yourself?”

Another sharp pain closely followed the first, and for a couple of
seconds, I was unable to answer her as I doubled over. By then, Rinwen had also
dropped down to her knees beside me, and the circle of guards had moved in more
closely.

What the heck? Everyone had always said that contractions didn’t come
this closely together until a woman was pretty close to delivery. Maybe that
lower back pain I had been feeling since the middle of last night hadn’t been
so benign after all. Of all places—why did this have to happen to me
now
?

“I think I’m in labor,” I finally managed to gasp.

Both Lariel and Rinwen’s hands instantly jerked away from my body as if
they had suddenly been burned. Then both women rose to their feet and hastily
backed away from me, the guards following their lead just as quickly. What in
the world was going on?

I moved as if to get up, and Lariel immediately said, “Emily, don’t try
to get up! Just please sit down right there for now.” She turned to the other
woman. “Rinwen, please go find His Majesty.”

“Lariel, why did everyone step away from me all of a sudden?” I asked
in bewilderment as I did as she had instructed and let myself sort of topple
over from my knees to my backside.

“His Majesty didn’t tell you?” she asked in surprise.

Once again, I seemed to be missing something major. “Tell me
what
?”

“It is forbidden for anyone other than the father of the child to touch
a woman once she has gone into labor. The birthing process opens your soul and
the child’s soul up in a rather unique way in order to forge the familial bond
between mother, father, and child. Even the physical touch of an outsider can
contaminate that sacred bond, and that
must
be avoided at all costs.”

I cradled my stomach in my hands, wincing as another contraction hit.
If that was the case, and I had indeed been in labor since last night, then I
just screwed up royally as all three of my friends had touched me at least once
while helping me bath and dress this morning.

Lariel made a sympathetic noise. “Just a little while longer and His
Majesty will be here to take you to the royal birthing room.”

At least Sethian had told me about that particular room one night when
I had grilled him about where I would be having the baby, though I had not been
allowed to see it beforehand. When I had asked why, his answer had just been
confusing, something about “disrupting the energies of the room” whatever that
meant. When I had pressed for more details, he had just shrugged and said it
wasn’t something he could really explain, that the room had been created by the
mages of old using archaic forms of magic now lost to the pages of history to
ensure the power of the royal family.

That had made me a little nervous. I had wondered what exactly those
mysterious “energies” within that room would do to the baby, if anything.
Sethian’s answer of “what needs to be done” was less than reassuring. I was
coming to understand that there were many aspects of the elven culture that I
would never understand, or more correctly,
couldn’t
understand, simply
because I was human.

The fact that I still couldn’t “hear” my baby’s soul had driven this
point home better than anything else. It was something that I had been really
worrying about over the past few days as the possibility of going into labor
had gone from “sometime in the near future” to “maybe in the next few seconds.”

How would I even know if the baby was hungry or distressed or sick or
anything
if elven babies didn’t cry and I was the first human mother in their history
that was mentally and emotionally deaf to her child? Sethian had told me not to
worry so much about it, that it would definitely happen at birth. He had seemed
so genuinely confident about it happening that it should have reassured me, but
the fear just wouldn’t leave me. Now that the moment of truth had arrived, I
was more scared about finding out whether or not Sethian was right than of the
pain of actually giving birth. Before I had started freaking out about my
possible defectiveness, I had thought that nothing could be scarier than
childbirth.

Another contraction hit, and I doubled over with a moan. Although that
one had been slightly more painful, there had definitely been a longer interval
between it and my last contraction. The frequency of the previous two had
probably been a fluke, thank goodness.