“You’re awake?”
“Yes.”
“You’re awake.”
“Apparently.”
“You’re never awake before me.”
“Now, that’s an insulting overgeneralization.”
Rhapsody rolled over and stretched, then slid her small, callused hand into his. “Very well, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you awake before me until this morning. You are usually deep in the sleep of a hibernating dragon and almost impossible to rouse with anything short of the overpowering stench of that nasty coffee you like so much.”
Ashe drew her into his arms and rested his nose against hers. “I dispute that utterly. It is remarkable how easily I am roused when you are here, m’lady. If you are complaining, I insist on the opportunity to prove my point.”
“You’ll get no complaint from me,” Rhapsody said. “On the contrary, I am impressed at your prowess, as always, even more so after last night. You must have been practicing in my absence. I hope you were alone.” She laughed as Ashe’s face colored, then kissed him warmly.
“Well, I am happy to hear that you were not disappointed after traveling all that way to come home.” He pulled her against his chest and lay back on the pillows with a contented sigh, reveling in the contrast of the warmth beneath the down coverlet and the cool sting of the wind above it. “Did you manage to attend to all your affairs of state in Tyrian?”
“Yes.”
“Good; glad to hear it, because I don’t intend to let them have you back any time in the foreseeable future. And as you know, dragons can foresee quite a way into said future, so I hope Rial obtained your signature on whatever he needed for the next several years.”
Rhapsody chuckled, then sat up and regarded Ashe with a thoughtful expression. “I did indeed make certain that all of Tyrian’s business requiring my attention received it duly, because I now hope to undertake a project that would have me here in Navarne for an extended period of time. After the excursion to Yarim to rejuvenate Entudenin, that is.”
Ashe sat up as well. “Oh, really? I’m intrigued. What project might that be?”
“The care and education of a child.”
“You adopted another honorary grandchild? How many does this make now? Are you over one hundred yet?”
Rhapsody shook her head, her green eyes kindling to a darker emerald shade. “No, only thirty-seven. And that is not what I meant.”
“Oh?” Ashe felt a slight chill hum through his skin at the tone in her voice. “What did you mean, then, Aria?”
The coals on the fireplace, a moment before nothing but cooling gray ash, gleamed red again, matching the blush in her cheeks.
“I think it’s time we had one of our own,” she said, her voice steady, though Ashe could feel a slight tremor in her hand.
He stared at her, trying to force the words that she had spoken to pass from his ears into his mind, until he saw her wince in pain; quickly he released her fingers, which he had unconsciously clutched to the point of unwelcome tension.
Slowly he sat up more fully, swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and leaned forward, bringing his chin to rest on his folded hands. He could tell by the change in her heart rate, her shallow, rapid intake of breath, and a dozen other physiological signs his dragon sense was aware of that his reaction was distressing her, but he was too upset by her words to do anything to relieve her anxiety. Instead he concentrated inward, trying to beat back the jumble of words from the past that were echoing in his mind.
In a sudden swirl of muscle and bedsheets Ashe rose and went to the wardrobe, trying not to see the look of astonishment and hurt on his wife’s face. He pulled on a shirt and trousers, then turned finally, not meeting her eyes.
“I must return to my meetings with the councilors,” he said flatly. “I am sorry to have wakened you; I should have let you rest longer after your long journey.”
“Ashe-”
He strode rapidly across the room and took hold of the door handle. “Go back to sleep, Aria,” he said gently. “I will have them bring you a tray in an hour or so.”
“You told them you would not be meeting today.”
“That was inconsiderate of me. They have been held captive here for weeks; they doubtless want to finish and return to their provinces.”
Rhapsody tossed back the coverlet and rose from the bed, pulling on her dressing gown.
“Don’t be a coward,” she said evenly but without rancor. “Tell me what has you so frightened.”
The vertical pupils of Ashe’s eyes expanded, as if drawing in the light and her words. He met her gaze for a moment, then opened the bedchamber door.
“Rest,” he said simply.
He closed the door quickly and silently behind him.
She found him later that afternoon at the top of one of the carillon towers that flanked the main gate of Haguefort.
Rhapsody knew her husband was aware of her presence, would have felt her coming from a great distance away, so she assumed he was willing to be found. She waited in the doorway at the top of the tower stairs, following his gaze over the rolling hills of Navarne, where the sun was painting the highgrass in swaths of yellow light and deep, cool green. Finally, when she saw his shoulders rise and fall as he exhaled deeply, she spoke, breaking the silence that heretofore had been interrupted only by the occasional whistling breeze.
“Is it Manwyn’s ranting? Is that why you are afraid?”
Ashe said nothing, but continued to stare over the foothills toward the Krevensfield Plain. Rhapsody stepped through the doorway and stood beside him, resting her hands on the smooth stone crenellations of the parapet, newly rebuilt after being destroyed in rank fire and burning pitch three years before. She waited in silence, breathing in the sweet summer air, following his gaze over the hills.
Finally, when he spoke, his eyes were still fixed on the seemingly endless sea of green meadow beyond the walls of the keep.
“Stephen and I used to roam these fields endlessly in childhood,” he said quietly. “Sometimes it is as if I can see him there still, chasing imaginary warriors, flying kites, lying on his back staring at the clouds and reading the future in them.” He shook his head, as if shaking off a chill, then turned and regarded her seriously. “Did you know his mother, like mine, died when he was young?”
“No.”
Ashe nodded, then looked back over the Plain. “Consumption. It withered her away from the inside. His father was never the same afterward—took his spirit with her when she left. Stephen barely remembered her. Just like Melisande doesn’t remember Lydia.”
Rhapsody sighed. “I am not going to die, Sam,” she said, using the name she had once given him long before, in their own youth when they had met on the other side of Time. “Manwyn told you that as well. She said so directly, in fact—‘Gwydion ap Llauron, thy mother died in giving birth to thee, but thy children’s mother shall not die giving birth to them.’”
Ashe shook his head slightly in the vain attempt to silence the words in his mind, recounted in excruciating detail by the dragon in his blood. It had been more than three years since he stood in the dark temple of the Oracle of Yarim, Manwyn, the mad Seer of the Future, who by a curse of birth was also his great-aunt, and shuddered at the odd inflection in her voice as she pronounced a prediction she had not been asked for.
I see an unnatural child born of an unnatural act. Rhapsody, you should beware of childbirth: the mother shall die, but the child shall live.
Rhapsody’s hand came to rest gently on his bare shoulder but he shrugged it off, trying to break the grip of other words in his mind, spoken in his father’s voice.
I assume you are aware of what happened to your own mother upon giving birth to the child of a partial dragon? I have spared you the details up until now—shall I give them to you? Do you crave to know what it is like to watch a woman, not to mention one that you happen to love, die in agony trying to bring forth your child, hmmm? Let me describe it for you. Since the dragonling instinctually needs to break the eggshell, clawing through, to emerge, the infant-Stop.