Fyne Sisters - The Star Witch Part 26

She lifted her head and looked him in the eye. "Do you think I could ever know peace with the man who disposed of my second-born son because he was inconvenient? What did you do to him, Sebestyen? Did he suffer?" Tears filled Liane's eyes. "Did you do what had to be done yourself, or did you pa.s.s the unpleasant task to another so your hands would not be soiled?"

He wanted to tell her that the child he'd named Alixandyr was alive and healthy, that he had never intended to murder his own flesh and blood. This is what she thought of him. She thought him a monster who would coldly murder his own babe... and that hurt more than anything he had imagined possible.

She returned her attention to the baby in her arms and even bent down to kiss his soft forehead. "I, too, wish that I had made different decisions."

Perhaps she wished, as he did, that they could go back and undo all that had gone wrong. "Do you?"

"Yes." She lifted her head and looked him squarely and bravely in the eye, and she whispered, as he had, so no one else could hear. "I wish with all of my being that when I finally had the opportunity to stand before you with a knife in my hand, I'd found the strength and the courage to drive the blade through your heart."

"WE'RE MOVING AWAY from the palace!" Lucan complained. It was not the first complaint he'dvoiced in the past two days, since they had been joined by the Anwyn party."That's correct," Juliet answered calmly."Exactly how long do you expect me to wait?"

Juliet cast a gentle smile at him. "I expect you to wait until the time is right, as any shrewd soldier would."

He continued to grumble. "I don't need an army to do what needs to be done. I could turn back and go into the palace on my own."

"You could," Juliet countered. "But you won't."Her confidence told Isadora that while Lucan did not like waiting, he would.Juliet looked at Isadora and smiled. "This man of yours is very impatient.""He can be." But there are times when he has an abundance of patience.Juliet smiled as if she knew her sister's thoughts. Maybe she did.Isadora took Lucan's hand as they continued on, moving deeper into the forest, following a trail that just barely lived up to its name. They were moving toward Sophie, Juliet said. Within a matter of hours, she

would finally be reunited with both her sisters.

There would be hugs and kisses and apologies. There would be a depth of grat.i.tude she had never before known.

And then they would address the issue of the curse. With Juliet's enhanced powers and what Isadora had learned from Thayne, perhaps they could make what had always seemed hopeless-breaking the Fyne Curse-a reality.

Thayne had said that before that happened, they would each hold that which they'd believed to be impossible in their hands. One, two, three. What could those impossible things be? If she could easily conceive them, they wouldn't be so impossible, now would they?

One step at a time. First, the reunion. Then saving Liane and her baby. Only then would she have time to ponder the details involved in breaking the curse.

"I do not like this," Lucan said in a lowered voice.

"I can see that."

"Your sister has taken complete charge of my battle plan."

"She knows what is best."

He scoffed but did not offer an argument. "The red-headed, surly soldier, he eyes me as if he would like

to rip off my head."

"If you persist in yelling at his daughter, he might try."

Isadora would have thought it a great coincidence that she and Juliet had both found their fathers in recent past, but if she had learned nothing else, she knew that there was no coincidence in life. All that happened was meant to be. Juliet said she'd seen that Sophie had found her father, too. What did the three men Lucinda Fyne had taken as lovers have to do with what was happening here and now? Was it possible that they would play a part in ending the curse that had kept Lucinda from daring to love any one of them?

Maybe it was just a gift, of sorts, that these men had reappeared in their lives, one after another. As women she and her sisters had rarely spoken of the men who'd sired them, but as children there had been moments when they'd wondered, aloud to one another and in quieter moments to themselves, about their fathers. Their das. Their papas. Maybe, just maybe, that long ago wondering was being rewarded now, years later. Could they have drawn the men to them... or rather, drawn themselves to the men?

It was only supposition, and still... she wondered.

"Juliet has become a bit demanding since being made Queen," Isadora observed. "I suppose that's only natural."

"I suppose," he grumbled.

She squeezed his hand. "Don't worry. You'll like Sophie. She's so gentle and sweet-tempered she wouldn't harm a fly."

"GET YOUR HANDS off of me, you filthy, wretched, good-for-nothing man!" Sophie screamed.

Kane looked quite taken aback at her outburst. Then again, he had missed labor with Ariana, and had no idea what to expect.

Sophie's anger turned to tears. "I'm sorry, but it hurts, and it's too early, and I tried to make the baby wait a while longer, but she won't wait, she insists on coming now, and the timing couldn't be worse." She gasped for breath. "I don't like pain. I know another beautiful daughter is worth any sacrifice, and I should be stoic and mature and I should suffer in silence, but why does it have to hurt so much? Pain is not good, Kane, and I don't like it at all. It just isn't right that something so beautiful should be marred by misery." Her apology turned to blubbering, but when a hapless soldier opened the tent flap, she screamed at him, "Get out!"

Well beyond the tent, the flame of the campfire grew with a burst of power, flooding the campsite with light for a moment. What little bit of sense she had left understood how dangerous directing her anger there could be, so Sophie turned her roiling pa.s.sions up, away from the rebels and friends who camped near the tent where she lay. In the distance, a crack of thunder rumbled in the night.

"I'm sorry," she said again. "I do not handle my emotions well when I'm in labor."

Kane nodded. "I can see that. Should I clear the campsite? Are the soldiers here in any danger?"

"No," Sophie answered, only slightly offended. "Odd things may happen, I'll grant you that, but I promise not to hurt anyone." Ariana was in another tent placed far away from this one, in the keeping of Maddox Sulyen-Sophie's father, Ariana's and this child's grandfather.

"How long before the baby comes?" Kane asked, a touch of hope in his voice.

"By morning, if we're very lucky," Sophie answered.

His eyes went wide, and in the glow of the lantern it seemed he paled. "By morning?" he asked, as if he

might have misheard.

"If we're lucky."

Kane nodded and began to prepare. He had never delivered a baby, but then neither had anyone else

among the rebels. This was not Sophie's first child, however, and she would be able to direct him as the hours pa.s.sed. He helped her to remove her clothes, and then he laid her on a thick bed of blankets and the finest sheets available to such a poor band of soldiers. He wrapped her warmly, and then he sat beside her and held her hand.

Ariana had been born in a soft bed in the family cabin on Fyne Mountain. This little girl would come into

the world in a small tent, padded ground as her bed. For now.

Sophie squeezed Kane's hand. "Just remember, no matter what I say in the hours to come-I do love you."

"I love you, too." She could tell he was more scared than she was about what was to come and about

the fact that the baby was arriving early.

She could feel a new pain coming, and she tried to ignore the gentle warning signs. "The next child will be born in a bed. With a midwife to care to the delivery while you wait in another room, as is right and proper for an anxious new father."

"Maybe in a little house on a farm," Kane said.

"A farm?" she said, her voice rising in hope. "You've never said much about what you want when this war is done. I thought maybe you'd like to be a soldier, still."

"Arik offered me a post in the palace."

Sophie's heart lurched. "He did?"

"I declined."

She squeezed Kane's hand very tightly as the pain grew to a height she could not ignore. As disturbing as

the physical pain was the realization that ending the curse would now be all but impossible. Without Kane's baby inside her, without the added power, she would be weak again. Just a few months ago, a year together had seemed like such a long time. A year to share love, and try to find a way to end the curse, and simply be together.

Eight months later, that year seemed very short.

Sophie swore, using words she had heard in her months with the rebels. Above her head, another rumble of thunder sounded in protest.

The pain faded. She took a deep breath. And Kane leaned down to kiss her sweating forehead.

"I like the idea of a farm," she said, as if their conversation had not been interrupted.

"Me, too."

"I think you have seen enough soldiering in your lifetime."

"That I have."

Kane was months from thirty. Mere months! If she did not break the curse, he would not live to see that

birthday-or his farm.

THE WIND CAME in unexpectedly, pus.h.i.+ng against the travelers and all but forcing them back.

Overhead, thunder and lightning crashed and crackled on occasion, coming and going, coming and going.

No rain had begun to fall as of yet, but Juliet had a.s.sured them rain would soon fall.

They had walked through the night, at Juliet's insistence. Even though she was very pregnant and

considerably smaller than any of the soldiers she commanded, she led the way with a.s.surance and

without a hint of tiredness.

Dawn was coming, graying the sky, but true light was not yet upon them as Isadora ran past a handful of soldiers to reach her sister. She did not have to look back to know that Lucan was with her.

"This is not a natural storm," she shouted, to be heard above the wind.

"No, it is not," Juliet said, without slowing her step.

"Sophie?"

"She's in labor."

The soldiers fought against the wind, and the trees in the forest danced dangerously, limbs bending almost

to the breaking point. The lightning flashes and rumbles of thunder came closer together than they hadwhen the storm had begun. "She's causing this?""Yes."

"This didn't happen last time," Isadora argued.

"If you will remember, it did rain a bit, there toward the end. We didn't think anything about it, at the time. Sophie is much stronger than she was when Ariana was born. Frighteningly so. She cannot always control what happens around her." The wind whipped tangled red curls, but Juliet did not seem to be affected by the gusts she fought to move forward. "We must hurry."