I was so occupied with these thoughts that Natiya had had to grab my arms and shake them, then repeat her news. She claimed she’d found Pauline. She said Pauline’s head was bowed and covered so she couldn’t see her hair, but she knew a pregnant belly when she saw one, and Natiya had chased after her just outside the cemetery gate. When she was close enough, Natiya called her name. Pauline seemed fearful, but she agreed to come.
I prayed she wasn’t afraid of me. Surely she couldn’t believe the lies. Or maybe she was only being cautious. She didn’t know Natiya, and perhaps she suspected a trap. But she knew the millpond had once been a favorite haunt of mine. A stranger wouldn’t have suggested it.
Maybe Berdi and Gwyneth had delayed her. Gwyneth was suspicious of everything, and here in Civica, rightly so. I should take that as a good sign.
But still my anxiety grew.
I paced the cottage and finally pulled out a chair and sat staring at the cottage door, my hands kneading my thighs. Bit by bit, I was losing everything. If I lost Pauline too, I wasn’t sure what I would do. What if she—
The handle rattled and the door eased open cautiously, its creak the only sound. As a quick afterthought, I put my hand on my dagger, but then Pauline stepped in, her hair dripping in wet strands, her flushed cheeks shimmering with rain. Our gazes met, and her eyes told me what I had feared. She knew. There was a condemning sharpness in them I had never seen before. My stomach floated even as my heart sank.
“You should have told me, Lia,” she said. “You should have told me! I could have dealt with it. You didn’t even give me a chance.”
I nodded, words stuck in my throat. She was right. “I was afraid, Pauline. I thought I could bury the truth and make it go away. I was wrong.”
She stepped toward me, hesitant at first, then earnest, throwing her arms around me, a fierceness in her grip. Angry. Her fists curling into my clothes, demanding, shaking, and then she leaned into me, sobbing. “You’re alive,” she cried into my shoulder. “You’re alive.” My chest shook, and I cried with her, the months and lies between us vanishing. She told me how frightened she’d been, the agony of waiting with no word, and the relief she felt when she saw me impersonating the queen. She, Berdi, and Gwyneth had been discreetly looking for me since then. “I love you, Lia. You are my sister, by the gods, a sister as true as blood. I knew what they said about you were lies.”
I wasn’t sure who held up whom, each of us heavy in the other’s arms, our cheeks wet against each other. “My brothers?”
“Bryn and Regan are well, but worried about you.”
Now it was my fists that curled into her clothes, and I choked back tears as she told me they hadn’t stopped believing in me either. They had asked a lot of questions trying to get at the truth and promised that as soon as they returned, they would find it. She said Berdi and Gwyneth were here with her and she told me where they were staying. I understood now why Natiya hadn’t been able to find them. It was a small tavern down an alley that let rooms above the shop. I remembered it. There was no sign. You had to know it was there. No doubt Gwyneth had found that one.
I finally stepped back and wiped my cheeks, surveying her girth. “And you’re well?”
She nodded, rubbing her hand over her belly. “I spotted Mikael weeks ago, but I only had the courage to confront him recently.” A bittersweet smile creased her eyes, and we sat down at the table. She talked about him, recalling her dreams for their future that she thought had been his dreams too, all the times they held hands and talked, and planned, and kissed. She went over memories and details as if they were flower petals she was plucking one at a time and then letting them go in the wind. I listened, feeling a part of me break.
“He’ll never be this child’s father,” she finally said. She told me with calm resignation about the girls on his arm, his denial, and all the doubts she’d carefully tucked away that came to life before her eyes when they spoke. “I knew what he was like when I met him. I thought I was that one girl special enough to change him. I was a happy fool living in a fantasy. I’m not that girl anymore.”
I saw the change in her. She was different. Sober. The dreams she’d had were swept from her eyes. I saw all the reasons I had lied to her, thinking if her fantasy stayed alive, maybe mine could too.
“You were never a fool, Pauline. Your dreams gave flight to my own.”
She pressed her hand to her back as if trying to counter the weight of the baby pulling against her spine. “I have different aspirations now.”
“We all do,” I answered, feeling the tug of lost dreams.
She frowned. “You mean Rafe.”
I nodded.
“He showed up at Berdi’s inn looking for you. When I told him about Kaden, he started giving orders, saying more men would come to help, and they did, but none of them ever returned. At first I feared something had happened to them, but then I wondered if he had deceived us just like Kaden. Berdi guessed that Rafe wasn’t really a farmer, which only fueled my worries that he couldn’t be trusted—”
“Berdi was right. Rafe wasn’t a farmer,” I said. “He was a soldier—and also Prince Jaxon of Dalbreck—the betrothed I left at the altar.”
She looked at me like I had lost my mind back in Venda.
“But he’s no longer a prince,” I added. “Now he’s the king of Dalbreck.”
“Prince? King? None of this makes sense.”
“I know,” I said. “It doesn’t. Let me start at the beginning.”
I tried to tell her everything in the order that it had happened, but very quickly she interrupted. “Kaden put a hood over your head? Then dragged you across the entire Cam Lanteux?” I saw the hatred in her eyes that Kaden had feared she would harbor.
r /> “Yes, he did, but—”
“I don’t understand how he could share a holy feast with us at Berdi’s table in one moment and threaten to kill us both in the next? How could he—”