Chapter 34

Wren's POV

The King's audience chamber was all gold and height and silence. King Aurelian and Queen Elinor sat at the top of the steps, with Lady Sabine a little to one side.

I made my bow behind the Prince's and was bending to kneel with Sol when a mild voice came down to me.

"Never mind that. You've the child. You needn't kneel."

It was the Queen.

"Thank you, Your Majesty," I said.

"Well, bring him here," the King said, pleased, his eyes already on the bundle. "Let me see him."

The Prince took Sol from me, still sleeping, and carried him up the steps and laid him before his father. I stood below with my hands together and my eyes lowered, though I couldn't keep from watching under my lashes. Don't let them see he isn't his, I begged whatever might be listening.

"Good little fellow," the King said, and touched Sol's round forehead with one finger. "Small, though."

Lady Sabine laughed behind her fan. Her eyes went from Sol's face to the Prince's and back. "I don't think he looks much like His Highness. Perhaps he takes after his mother?"

My fingers went cold.

"At this age they all look alike," the Queen said, without hurrying. "Their faces haven't come out yet." She held out her arms. "Give him to me, Evander. Let me look at him properly."

Before she took Sol, she looked at her son. It was a long look, and I couldn't read it.

She studied Sol, and stroked his cheek with a fingertip. "Look, my lord. The nose, the mouth. There's something of Evander at that age. They change every day. He'll grow more like."

"Mother," the Prince said, almost proud, "he has two crowns, like mine. Dunne says he's me all over again."

The Queen's eyebrows rose, very slightly, as if she truly hadn't expected that. She slipped the soft cap off Sol's head and parted his hair with her fingers.

Two whorls, side by side, turning toward each other, in almost the very place the Prince's were.

Her smile widened. "Look, my lord. Exactly like Evander's. Like father, like son."

The King leaned over, and the two of them bent their heads together and touched the top of Sol's head.

Perhaps it was too much touching, or perhaps he missed me. Sol stirred and opened his eyes, very dark and very bright, and looked up in round surprise at the King and Queen. He didn't cry.

"Oh, you're awake," the Queen said softly. "What lovely eyes."

"Those eyes," the King said, and laughed. "That's Evander. That's me. You can see he's a Dravane."

It was as good as saying it outright.

"Your Majesty is right," Lady Sabine said sweetly. Her eyes drifted, as if by accident, down the steps to me. "Though to me all babies look alike. Pink and round, every one of them. Only..." She let it hang. "I was looking just now, and I think he looks like his nurse. The brows. The little mouth. That line of the chin. You'd never notice at first, but look closely and it's quite a likeness. How strange."

Every eye in the room went back to Sol's face, and then, following hers, down the steps to me.

I felt them settle on me one after another, like weights going into the pan of a scale. I kept my head bowed and didn't move, and watched from under my lashes.

The Queen's hand stopped on Sol's cheek for the space of a breath, then went on stroking. The Prince's face didn't change at all.

"Sabine," the Queen said, gently amused, "I don't think you know much about nurses. A babe's face hasn't settled yet, that's one thing. And the old nurses have a saying, that a child drinks a third of his looks in with his milk. She feeds him night and day. Of course he'll take on a little of her. That's why good families are so careful choosing a nurse. You want the milk good, but you want her well made and good-tempered too. A royal house more than any." Her eyes passed over me, quite calmly. "I think Evander's chosen well. She's pleasant-looking, and she carries herself properly. A sensible woman."

Lady Sabine's smile stiffened for an instant, then came back brighter. "How much Your Majesty knows. I'm sure I'm very ignorant." She turned to the King. "Still. It is the royal blood. One can't be too careful."

My breath had only just come back, and now it stopped again.

The Prince laughed, softly, easy and careless, and everyone heard it.

"Indeed? Am I to understand, Lady Sabine, that you doubt whose son this is?"

He said it as if it were a joke. There was no laughter in his eyes.

"My lord," Lady Sabine said to the King, hurt, "I only care for the line. I meant nothing by it."

The King looked at her, and at the Queen with Sol in her arms and her face set. He was quiet a moment.

"Sabine isn't wrong," he said slowly. "The royal blood touches the whole kingdom. By the old law, a pup of the line isn't written into the book until his mark has come."

The words went into me like a nail of ice. I nearly swayed. I kept my face empty, and everything inside me turned over.

But the King's voice softened as he watched Sol begin to squirm. "He's too young yet. There's no hurry. When he's walking, we'll see."

"Father."

The Prince took Sol back from his mother. Sol's lip had begun to tremble, and the Prince laid him along his arm.

"He's my son. I looked for him a long time, and it wasn't easy to bring him home. There's no mistake." He looked straight at the King. "I'll stake my life on it. His blood is mine."

All the while he spoke, he was rocking his arm, very gently, without seeming to know he did it, to keep Sol from crying. I stood at the foot of the steps and watched his hand.

* * *

Adrian's POV

The sun was low, and our shadows went a long way ahead of us down the palace walk. I could hear my own heart louder than Isolde's chatter.

Those eyes.

On Midsummer Day, in the lane behind my uncle's house and again at the Green Lamp, the embroideress had been stained brown, with her hair bound up and a belly out in front of her, and even then I had wondered. Today there had been nothing in the way. The pale skin. The long neck. A dark red wisp under a nurse's cap. That curve at the corner of her eye. Piece by piece it had settled over the face of the girl I had stood beside once, at the moonstone, and never properly looked at.

It was Wren. The embroideress had been Wren, and the Prince's nurse was Wren.

My hand went to my wrist, through the sleeve, to the half of a red cord still tied there.

Why was she in Evander's house? How had she come to be nursing his pup? I wanted to ask, and there was no one I could ask.

"What are you thinking about?" Isolde said. "You haven't said a word."

I stopped and bowed to her and made my face ordinary. "Forgive me, Highness. I've remembered some business at the army offices that wasn't finished."

Her lip pushed out. "You're always like this. If it isn't the army it's something else. Can't you stay and talk to me a little?"

"Highness, I'm a soldier. I'd only say something clumsy and offend you. I really must go."

I bowed again before she could keep me, and turned toward the gate. I heard her breath catch behind me. I didn't look back.

* * *

Wren's POV

The Prince stayed at the palace no more than half an hour, then said the pup didn't like strangers and wouldn't settle, and took us home.

All the way back I sat in the little carriage looking at Sol's happy face, and couldn't tell what I felt. He should have been growing up with me, with nothing to fear. Instead he was in the middle of all this, and it was my doing.

At home, on the surface, the days went back to what they had been. But the Prince came to Sol's court much more often now. In the afternoon, or toward evening, he would come strolling in, sometimes two or three times a day.

He came for Sol, mostly. The moment he was through the door his eyes went looking for him, and he would hold out his arms and take him. Sol's eyes lit up whenever he saw the Prince, and his arms and legs went everywhere, and he cooed and babbled at him. When the Prince held him, his face had a softness in it nobody outside that court ever saw.

And somehow, every time he came, I was the one with Sol. I had just fed him and was rubbing his back, or I had him in the sun by the window, or I was singing him to sleep. The Prince would stand and watch for a while, or take him from me, and I would stand to one side with my hands folded.

Fletcher and Wick saw it. Whenever he went past the window of their room, they started up.

"There he goes again. She's got a gift for it, I'll say that."

"No shame at all. Opening her dress in front of him to feed. I ask you."

"Goodness knows what she did to make the young master take to her, and now His Highness as well..."

"Hush! Somebody'll hear. Never mind. It's a long road. We'll see."

Sometimes the wind carried it to me. When it did, I only went quieter, and took more care with Sol, and never once answered.

But I knew it wasn't only Sol he was coming for. Some of it, perhaps, but not all. Ever since that day at the palace, he had looked at me differently.