Page 16 of The Castle & the Cloister

But Fia held back.

“With your permission, Majesty?” she asked, looking only at the queen. After a brief pause, Ariana nodded.

An attendant passed the little prince to Fia as if the baby was madeof glass. When she took the child and cradled him it was jarring, to look down and see the queen’s dark hair and unfamiliar Inver features, rather than Miriel’s sunny face and cap of golden curls. The difference set a shocked, breathless pain inside Fia—the sort that came after a hard and sudden jolt.

Nevertheless, there were the attendants waiting. And there was Ariana, still lying among her blood-soaked sheets, pleading to Fia with her wide brown eyes. The baby’s cries had grown insistent, and so Fia did not hesitate. She pulled down the neck of her shift and bared a breast, bringing the king’s son to it with a deftness born of practice.

“Not in front of the queen!” the physician barked, though at the sight of the prince contentedly feeding, some of the tension drained from the room.

“Whyever not?” Fia asked. She looked down at the baby and smiled, as tears welled in her eyes and dropped gently onto the side of the child’s face. She couldn’t help it—the knowing that she’d left her own daughter behind, even for a little while, was an icy weight inside her. But the tears were a good gift. Already this little princeling had been blessed by blood and milk and saltwater, each sacred to one of the Beloved Three.

Perhaps it would make him gentler than his forefathers had been.

Crying in front of anyone made Fia irritable, though. She pushed a few loose strands of hair back from her face and fixed the physician with an unflinching stare.

“The queen’s got a pair of her own, hasn’t she?” Fia asked. “And I’d assume, if you were in want of a wet nurse, that the king objects to sharing them. Well, I’ve no king to worry about—no husband nor wife, either—so far be it from me to quibble over who sees my tits.”

An affronted murmur broke out among the courtiers, but they all fell silent as a hoarse sound came from the bed. It took Fia a moment to realize the queen was laughing.

“She’s right,” Ariana Inver rasped. “And I’ve no more need of any of you. Leave me. You’ve all done what you came for, and I won’t hold you any longer. Let me be alone.”

The physician looked as if he’d swallowed a frog, and as if he’d like to protest, but Fia carried the prince over to the queen and stood at her side stalwartly as the child gave suck. With a disgusted shake of his head,the queen’s warden swept out of the room, and everyone else trailed along in his wake.

When they’d all gone, Fia bolted the door. Still cradling the prince with one arm, she doused the fire with a hopper of sand, then crossed the room to throw open the shutters as well as the curtains. Clean mountain air rushed in, and at once the room felt bearable.

“There,” Fia murmured as the prince turned his small, wizened face toward the light. She spoke to him as she would to any new child, pointedly ignoring the fact that he was an Inver, and the king’s heir, and might one day sit on Honoria’s throne. “That’s Raea, the sun. Tonight you’ll meet Silith the moon, and Lyria’s many stars. They’ve all been waiting to get a glimpse of you, my love.”

“Fia,” Ariana called, her voice weary. Fia turned and saw the queen had dropped back onto the pillows and looked even worse than before, with her pale skin and blood-streaked legs. Holding fast to the bundle containing her stillborn daughter, Ariana beckoned to Fia with her free hand.

Fia went, instinctively falling into the rocking gait of a woman with a babe in arms.

“I couldn’t let them take the sheets,” Ariana said as Fia came up beside her. Her eyes locked on Fia’s own, and she still seemed to be pleading for help or comprehension, though Fia could not imagine why, now the irksome courtiers had left and the room was cooler. “Or the cloths, or the wash water. Not any of it. They burn what they can, and what they can’t is carted to the nearest ravine and tossed to the bottom, and it justliesthere.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Fia reassured her. “As soon as the prince is fed. Which of the Three would you like your women’s offering—”

But Ariana held a finger to her lips, and Fia could feel the strength of her fear once more, a sickening wave of terror as the queen pulled back a light fold of linen from the face of the stillborn child in her arms.

A shock ran through Fia, setting her aflame from head to toe. Small and silent as the queen’s infant daughter was, she blinked up with murky blue eyes and turned toward the sudden increase of light. A miniature crescent of snow-white stars marked her already, curving around the outer edge of her left brow and her eye.

“But—” Fia began softly, and the queen shook her head.

“She had no breath when they gave her to me, and no goddess mark, either,” Ariana said, so low that Fia had to bend closer to catch her words. “Then life sparked in her, and her mark appeared. They were all busy with the prince, and I knew—this is her chance, Fia. Her chance at freedom. I gave Celina what I could, helping to ensure she was placed at Raea’s cloister, but it will never be enough. She’ll always be caught between worlds—between her goddess and her blood. But this one—she can be whole. She can be Lyria’s alone, and never know otherwise. It’s the work of the Three themselves that you walked into this room just now.”

Ariana was begging, and Fia was powerless to resist. She’d left everything she knew behind in an attempt to gain a better life for Miriel. There was nothing she would not do to purchase greater security and happiness on behalf of her daughter. How could she refuse another woman trying to do the same, even if it meant involving herself in the affairs and intrigues of kings and queens?

“What can I do?” Fia asked, pitching her voice to match Ariana’s. “How can I help?”

Consciously, Fia strove to project what she’d felt from Matria Dolenza in difficult situations—an air of reassurance. Of competence, and certainty. Tears swam in the queen’s dark eyes, and Ariana pressed her lips together, struggling to regain composure before answering.

“You must take her to the Priest,” Ariana murmured. “He’ll know what to do.”

“The Inver Priest?” Fia asked doubtfully. “Are you certain?”

“Yes,” Ariana said. “But wait. What will you do if she cries along the way and someone overhears?”

Fia drew the little prince from her breast and covered herself. He’d fallen fast asleep, his sweet mouth gone slack, and he stayed limp and peaceful as she settled him into his mother’s arms.

“I’ll hide her goddess mark,” Fia said. “And say she’s the prince, who I’m taking to be blessed by your gods. No one will know any better.”