“Jeren? Are you quite well?” Doria leaned in to her side, a soft hand resting on Jeren’s arm. “Do you want to dismiss them? You’re pale. Maybe you need some rest.”
She shook her head and gave half a smile. “It’s nothing. Tell Vertigern that his sister has delivered the child. He can go to her now. She’ll appreciate his presence.”
Doria stepped back, spoke to an aide, but didn’t move any further away. Jeren squirmed under her very determined glare. Doria wasn’t going to let her dismiss her own health so easily. If she thought there was something wrong with Jeren there would be a healer called in an instant.
So Jeren hid the sudden pain that ripped through her and sat as still as any of the statues outside.
An hour passed before she could decently dismiss the court. The official announcement of the birth was met with a mixed response, though she herself celebrated it. They didn’t know what it meant.
It meant she was free.
Jeren left the clamouring groups who gathered to talk over the news and stepped into the sweet calm of the ante-chamber. Ilydona waited with a cloak and she wrapped it around herself without a word. The air was cool and fresh, holding the promise of snow.
She missed the snow. It made her think of him.
And that was part of the problem. She didn’t want to think about him, about everything she had lost.
Jeren made her way to the courtyard of statues where the carved faces of her ancestors gazed dispassionately down on her. She stopped beneath Felan who still wore his Shistra-Phail braids as proudly as she did. Another voice she would miss, though he was stoic and too acquainted with a grief like her own. Behind him, two other statues stood tall in stone finery but as yet unfinished. Their faces were still blank but her orders had been firm and specific. She would have both her father and her brother depicted here. And Gilliad would be the man as he had once been, or might have been before his madness and after his death—the man she had won back from his magic, if only in the confines of her own mind.
For a while she’d had a brother again.
But they were all gone now. Gone to a child who would need their wisdom, who would know them throughout his life. And who, hopefully, would have better guidance than her brother had ever had. Who would be shown how to use the sword and keep himself sane.
Her nephew took precedence. Relief brought up a guilty sob from deep inside her. And with it came grief, loss, such as she had never fully experienced before. She climbed up onto the plinth and nestled at Felan’s feet, hiding her tears from River Holt even now. A moment later, the soft pad of feet heralded Naul. The wolf—less of a cub now than a gangly legged youth—jumped up beside her and she wrapped her arms around his neck, burying her face in his warm fur.
She couldn’t say how much time slid past. It felt like hours and seconds, probably the latter. Jeren, as the Lady of River Holt, was never afforded much time on her own. She’d learned to block people out. She’d had to.
A discreet cough brought her attention to another companion.
Elayne.
“I’m sorry, Jeren. They’re asking for you. The boy needs to be presented and formally named.”
Jeren scrubbed at her face with the heels of her hands. “Of course. Has Alyssa decided on a name already?”
Elayne hesitated. “Raethyn. A family name. Vertigern was pleased.”
Jeren let the half smile flicker over her face, and relief coloured Elayne’s features. “Raethyn’s a good name. Her grandfather’s I believe.” Better anything than a name associated with the child’s father, anyway. Not just for Alyssa’s sake. It would take generations for River Holt to recover from all Gilliad had done. Once the richest Holt, it was now living hand to mouth. Whole families were missing or dead. No one had escaped unscathed.
The sooner her brother’s legacy was replaced with his son’s, the better.
She hoped.
“Indarin and the Ariah are here,” said Elayne. “They’re asking for you.”
“I’ll see them now, of course. How does she look?”
Elayne shrugged. “Radiant, I suppose. Isn’t that how all pregnant women are supposed to look? Hard to tell though. She’s Feyna and imbued with more magic than most of us will see in a lifetime. She always looks radiant to me.”
Jeren laughed and climbed down from her perch, Naul jumping down after her and circling her protectively. Elayne eyed him.
“I swear that wolf doesn’t like me much.”
Jeren ruffled the fur between Naul’s ears. “Of course he does. He hasn’t bitten you, has he? He didn’t like the South Holt ambassador’s gifts though. Or the proposal.” She smiled at the thought of the priceless desert orchids sent to her, chewed to a dark green mess that may or may not have also been vomited on the antique rug which had accompanied them. And the man’s face when confronted with the growl of a wolf instead of a meek Holtlady with her tame lapdog.
He hadn’t come back. She couldn’t call herself broken-hearted.
Or rather, she could, but not because of him. Her hand strayed back to the wolf at her side. Her comfort. Her friend. Her last connection.
Saying goodbye was not the hardest thing in the world. Doing it in such a way that no one—not even those who knew her as well as Indarin and Lara—would notice cut deeper into her heart than Jeren had ever imagined. But she did it. She smiled, and laughed and pretended throughout the banquet and subsequent entertainments that she would see them in the morning, that all was well and nothing—nothing at all—had changed.
Moonlight spilled across the floor from Jeren’s balcony over the Falls. It made the ghosts of rainbows in the spray. The thunder, once a torment, was a comfort now. Long ago the water had saved her life, and allowed her to escape with Shan. It still sang to her of that time. Of Shan, his murmured promises. Of Anala, lost to save them both. Even if it had only given them the briefest time of joy together.
The sight of the moonlight on River Holt still made Jeren’s heart weep. There was no way to explain it. She tugged the pins out of her hair and let the braids fall down her back, tossing the pins onto the dresser. It was done. That was all that could be said about it. For good or for ill, it was done.
The joy had been to see Indarin and Lara again, to embrace her friends and feel the kick of a rare and treasured Feyna child in her womb. The Shistra-Phail were ecstatic, for the Ariah would always be one of their own, more than a Seer or a Crafter. She had been Shistra-Phail first. It was a feeling Jeren knew well. Indarin glowed with pride, with love, never leaving her side. He reminded Jeren too keenly of Shan, so much so that she could barely bring herself to speak more than a few words of congratulations.
The presentation of Raethyn as her heir had gone off without a hitch, just as she had foreseen it in the pools of Aran’Mor so long ago.
Vertigern and Elayne would care for Gilliad’s son. When he came of age, Indarin would train him. He would inherit River Holt and she was free. So she should feel happy, shouldn’t she?
Except that she was alone.
There was no alternative. Not anymore. And this was all she had seen. This was her future come to fruition. The end at last.
Jeren picked up the sword. Naul gave a whine as she knelt down on the floor and lodged the thing on an angle before her, its point against her chest. Its narrow blade shimmered like water bathed in moonlight. So beautiful, Feyna steel. Like everything they made. Like everything about them. But dangerous, unnaturally sharp, and so very strong. Feyna steel would not break, no more than the people themselves. But she was not Feyna. She’d given up that dream with Shan.