She ducked her head. “The healers can give me herbs to stop it.” But the pain when she answered made me wish I’d never brought up the subject.
“Then you won’t . . .”
“Be able to breast-feed? No. I cannot do that when I’m trying to put all the pieces back together again. My city is shattered, my homeland lies smoldering in ruins. They are taking me away from my child . . . I have lost everything, and soon, I will be alone and in charge of a nation that I never wanted to lead.” She sounded on the verge of emotional collapse, and she didn’t look all that hot, either.
I wanted to urge her to fight them, to say no and walk away, but the memory of what we’d witnessed, the utter destruction, hung heavy in my mind. I squeezed her hand tighter.
“We will be here for you. We will do everything we can to help you. And we’ll look after Chase. He’ll come around. He’s just scared and hurt right now, and afraid of losing you. I’ll make him understand. I promise.” I had no idea how I was going to fulfill that vow, but I was determined to do my best.
Sharah let go, slowly. “Thank you. I wish . . . I wish you were my sister. I wish I was part of your family.” She blushed when she said it—elves generally weren’t that expressive.
I hugged her. “You are,” I whispered. “Chase is my brother, so you are my sister. Always.”
And then, as I stood back, she motioned to Trenyth, and they wheeled her away to prepare her for traveling. She stared ahead, a numb expression on her face, but I knew her heart was torn to pieces.
I glanced at Camille, and she nodded to the room where Chase was still lurking. Without a word, I headed over and pushed through the door.
Chase looked up. His dark eyes were filled with anger and he was sitting stiffly in a chair. The room was obviously a break room for the staff, with a coffeepot and some cookies on the counter. I found a mug and poured him a stiff cup of the steaming coffee, then shoved it in front of him. Turning a chair around, I straddled it, swinging one leg over the side.
As I settled down beside him, he stared at me dourly. “What do you want? I really don’t feel like talking right now.”
“Too fucking bad. We’re going to talk. Or rather, I’m going to talk and you are going to listen.” I let the words sink in and, at his startled look, added, “The mother of your child is being carted away. She’s making the most difficult decision of her life, and you are sitting here like a whining idiot. You cannot let her go with you in this mood or so help me, Chase, I’ll slap you silly.”
He brought his fist down on the table. “What the hell am I supposed to do, then? She’s leaving me and . . . she didn’t even want to help name our daughter. She’s abandoning us—”
Aha, the core of the matter. Chase had abandonment issues, and he was projecting them onto Sharah. He’d been so terrified about not being a good enough father, and now that he was faced with raising the child alone, his fear was coming back full force.
“Like hell she is.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? She’s leaving—and our baby’s just born.”
“Get it through your head, Chase. You’ve fallen in love with someone who isn’t human. Who isn’t remotely human. On top of that, Sharah is a princess. She’s a member of royalty. And said royalty just vanished in a buttload of flame and fire and tumbling tons of stone. Sharah has to go home or her people won’t have any hope. They won’t have anyone to look up to. Every country must have a leader, and she’s the only one left, Chase.”
“But . . . her child . . . our baby . . .” Chase looked hurt, but by the sound of his voice, I could tell that he understood the circumstances. He just didn’t want to face them.
“You suck this up and you deal with it. Sharah’s hurting enough without you giving her crap. You saw what happened over there—well, you were trapped and didn’t see the worst of it by any means. But I was there. Camille and I saw what went down and let me tell you now, we’ll never, ever be able to get the images out of our heads. People were dying right and left, Chase. Our father is probably among the dead—we haven’t heard from him, and he was last seen with Queen Asteria. Who, by the way, is lying crushed under a thousand tons of stone and wood.”
He winced, staring at the ground, but I could see the stubborn line of his jaw and I realized he wasn’t quite ready to budge yet. Pausing, I tried to think of another way of getting him to own up to what was going on.
“Listen, if Sharah was in the ES army and had to go to combat, you’d stay home and take care of the kids, right?”
Still silent. Exasperated, I smacked him on the shoulder—not hard, but enough to get his attention. “Right?”
Apparently, I’d dislodged the last bit of resistance.
“All right, already! Enough.” The glint in his eyes shifted and he deflated. “I get it, Delilah. I just don’t like it. But yes, I get it.” Straightening his shoulders, he looked over at me. “I didn’t totally fuck it up, did I?”
“You will if you don’t get your ass out there now and tell her good-bye and that you’ll wait for her and take good care of your daughter. Your daughter as in the child you both produced, and whom you will not turn against her.”
Standing, I yanked him to his feet. “Get moving, Johnson. Before I kick you in the ass again.”
He wiped his mouth, then turned toward the door. “Delilah,” he said over his shoulder, without looking back. “Thanks. Kick me in the ass any time I need it, okay?” And then, he was off and jogging down the hall.
I followed more slowly. Chase and Sharah had a long, hard road ahead of them and a lot of obstacles working to block them. But he didn’t need to know that right now. He just needed to do what was right for the moment, and deal with the consequences later.
Camille and I wandered over to the nursery—or what had been turned into a nursery for the baby. She was tiny, and delicate, with Sharah’s nose and ears, but Chase’s shock of dark hair. The nurse let me pick her up and it felt strange to hold her—she was so small. I tried to imagine having one of my own. It would happen, one day, the Autumn Lord had made that clear, but for now, I was content to leave it to the future. Too much danger surrounded us to ever think about having a child until we’d dealt with the demonic war.
I glanced over at Camille. “What about you? You still not interested in this?” I motioned toward the baby.
She laughed. “Only from a distance. I really . . . there’s no pull. I know Smoky wants one, but you know, even the chance of us finding a way to interbreed is remote. And having a child because somebody else wants you to, when you’re not ready? Beyond stupid. I’m not mother material. I mothered you and Menolly most of my childhood. I’m done with that. Now it’s my turn. I’d make one hell of an auntie though.”
With that, I brushed a kiss across baby Johnson’s forehead and handed her back to the nurse. We returned to the nursing station just in time to see Chase leaning over Sharah to kiss her. She caught my eye as he hugged her, and smiled. It was a rough, wan smile, but it was a smile. And then they wheeled her away, and Sharah was gone.
I glanced at Camille. “I guess . . . we’d better get a move on.”
“First, you get your hand looked at.” She pushed me toward where Mallen was standing, looking over a chart.
He rebandaged my hand. “It’s healing well. Keep it clean, and keep using the salve. Replace the dressing twice a day. You’ll have a scar, definitely, but you’ll live.”
And with that, we headed out. We had work to do, and I had a feeling we’d have a lot more work as the days went along.