NOT EXPECTED TO SURVIVE

Elaris's POV

I remained perched on the stone bench within the shrine wall.

The blood moon had risen high enough to spill the crimson light nearly everywhere in the courtyard.

It painted a strange shade on the rocks at my feet.

I kept my hands clasped loosely and neatly in my lap.

The guards had distanced me farther than at first, yet I knew well enough to remain cautious.

They would not deliver food.

They would not deliver water.

They would not return with another report on Maevra.

The last things I learned were that she lived and that Averic was at her side.

I clung to the knowledge.

The child remained unusually quiet.

I fought my instinct to panic and pressed lightly against my stomach.

Stay with me.

There came a minute shifting.

My shoulders loosened just slightly before I turned my head toward the road that ran back to the palace.

Nothing.

No Averic.

No healer.

No message.

Just the red moonlight that hung between the treetops.

Beyond the shrine grounds, Virelle remained stationed at the far gate.

Distance stretched between us with precision.

Even seated where I was, I could see the paleness of her hood in the moonlight.

She kept her own hand against the rounded swell of her stomach.

At intervals one of the guards approached her.

She listened.

She nodded.

She dipped her head in silent acknowledgment.

The tableau was all too familiar.

A grieving woman.

Perhaps a mother, should this child live to see another sunrise.

The ex-lover who had hovered anxiously at the palace entrance waiting for news of the Alpha's mum.

I watched her for several seconds before turning away.

I did not want to know what she wore or didn't wear in the privacy of other's presence.

Judging by what I knew of her, grief could most easily worn, not felt.

A younger guard brought Virelle a waterskin.

Another adjust the torchlight at her side.

Nothing was done for me.

It was enough of a change that the household had already begun deciding which of the women deserved comfort more than the other.

A council runner arrived, went to Sennik, whispered something, then left.

Sennik did not respond.

Later another showed up.

It was the same for the second runner.

They came nearer.

Whispered to him.

Watched.

Left.

Whatever news they carried was never shared with me.

The escorts became even quieter when the second note was delivered.

One of them kept looking toward the palace.

The other scanned the road.

The air grew colder still with the oncoming night.

I pulled the folds of my dress tighter against my skin.

Even so, I refused to ask again.

If the young woman's news had changed, I would be informed when it served the council's turn.

The words curdled unpleasantly in my stomach.

I turned my thoughts toward the moon.

The night moved on, regardless of what I felt.

I forced myself to separate known items from guessed ones.

Maevra has assured me that my child was the true heir.

She had also made Averic swear to watch over it even if the politics said otherwise.

The man who had once been Virelle's liaison had been the one to admit opening the east gate.

The smoke had failed.

The examination had been postponed.

That was what was known.

The rest was guesswork.

I refused to turn speculation into prophecy.

The most certain thing was right then was that I needed to survive until morning.

If the examination occurred, the facts of my child's blood could be known.

If it was delayed, I would face that situation when it arrived.

I couldn't waste what strength I had on tomorrow's fight during tonight's vigil.

The child stirred again.

Stronger this time.

I pressed my palm over the movement.

"I know you're there."

The words were barely more than a whisper.

"But I need you to keep fighting."

I straightened my spine.

No matter what was waiting beyond the wall, I would not arrive already weakened and in retreat.

The air shifted toward middle-of-night.

Torch-bearers appeared on the road from the palace.

More than a dozen of them.

A larger party than usual arrived at the shrine grounds wrapped in moonlight.

First came the banners of the Council.

Then came the senior assistants.

Then came the group of healers.

The procession was considerably more ordered than I would have expected for an ordinary medical report.

I rose to my feet before anyone could call for me to do so.

Virelle moved at the same time.

The guards around both women stood taller.

No one said anything as the delegation slowed as they neared the outer ring of the shrine.

For several heartbeats I was distracted by the sound of the wind as it rushed through the trees.

It was an unpleasant noise, one that twisted my stomach into knots.

Whatever had happened within the palace had evidently been severe enough that the council had come out in person.

And councils rarely came out at all, much less in greater numbers, unless it was to report a death.

Sennik came forward to meet the approaching group.

He stopped them just before the gates to the shrine.

They formed a loose but tight circle around him.

The group spoke in hushed tones.

I couldn't hear all of it.

One healer, a council member, and someone's gaze toward the palace were the most I could catch.

Sennik listened intently without interrupting.

Then, as if he has been given some satisfactory answer, he lowered his head.

When he looked up again, the tension in his posturing was gone.

In its place was something measured and cold.

A royal decree, perhaps.

He turned toward us.

Toward us and the two rings of guards that stood waiting.

I knew what he was about to say.

My stomach knotted.

I did not sit down.

I did not move at all.

Sennik took his place in the center of the shrine grounds.

His voice carried clearly enough for every attendant to hear.

“Maevra Thorne has died.”

His words did not echo, but that wasn't necessary.

It was as if the sentence had landed somewhere in the middle of the courtyard.

"The Alpha is with her."

Sennik paused.

"The palace is being shut down until further notice."

I stared at him as if he'd spoken a foreign language.

He continued, just as evenly, "Both claimed mothers will remain under council protection here at the shrine. No one will leave prior to the Alpha's statement and the council's decision on the matter."

No mention was made of the examination room.

None at all of the blood moon.

No inquiry into whether or not it now held any meaning.

The council had made a statement.

It was enough for them, apparently, that Maevra was dead.

Everything else was icing on the cake.

I heard one of the guards sucking in a breath.

Virelle lowered her head, across the courtyard.

I remained on my feet.

Maevra was dead.

The words did something strange inside of me.

I remembered hands that had clasped mine.

Words that told me to stop begging.

The look in her eyes when she'd looked at my stomach just before she'd fallen.

Her insistence that I keep my child and take whatever road was needed to protect it.

Protect the child.

Hold to the truth.

Protect the child.

Choose the truth.

It all ended with memory.

I wanted to weep.

I wanted to demand to know what the hell was happening to my child now.

I wanted to turn back toward the palace steps so Averic could grieve his mother in whatever miserable way men seemed to feel inclined to do so.

Instead I remained at the mercy of whoever had decided my child and I could not leave a blood moonlit courtyard because the council wished it so.

My fingers curled toward my stomach.

The child shifted once, just once, before I was able to encircle the movement gently with my hand.

"I'm here."

My voice did not crack.

Neither did my spine.

But something had shifted inside me.

Maevra had done everything she could to see the future for my child was still born.

And now I needed to keep breathing until I reached the other side.

Virelle's reaction was swift, but not unkind.

She took a half step forward.

Then another.

Her knees seemed to buckle with the weight of the news.

A guard caught her before she could fall.

Her hand went to her mouth, the other remaining a protective cover across her stomach.

“I can’t believe she’s gone,” she rasped.

Her voice carried farther than the distance might have allowed.

Several young guards looked toward her concern.

One of them moved to her, another asking if she needed a healer.

Virelle nodded through her tears.

The sympathy was instantaneous.

I watched without really watching.

I could not say whether she grieved or not.

I knew what the sight would be seen as to others who knew nothing of the circumstances.

Pregnancy and loss were powerful images.

Mine, unfortunately, was the one that included no tears and no dramatic swaying of the body in mourning.

I understood the optics of things well enough.

I did not pretend to know exactly how to fake the sorrow.

No one came to console me.

Sennik gave out new orders to the escorts present.

"Keep the second mate where she is."

I turned my gaze to him.

“Can I see Maevra?”

He hesitated too long.

That was worse than if he'd outright said it.

"Not tonight.

She was my Luna too."

His mouth was tight with the words.

"The palace is locked down.

And Averic?

He remains with his mother."

My ribs felt as if they'd been split.

I turned from him before the expression could be guessed.

Behind me the shrine hall remained shuttered.

The examination room lay within, untouched and unused.

The instruments remained in their wrappings.

The blood moon turned in the sky.

Maevra's loss was an ugly end to an entirely different night.

I remained on this end, where every woman was apparently a threat unless contained.

I sat again.

The bench was colder this time.

The time passed between the announcement and the next arrival of runners at the gates stretched without meaning.

The council remained in the courtyard.

Virelle remained with the guards.

And I remained where I was, still on the outer ring of palace property, watched over by men in the uniform of the palace protectors.

Everything was paused.

As if they were waiting for the new turn of events to arrive with some new interpretation of exactly how Maevra had died.

By accident? Illness? Poison? Assassination? Or something of a different variety.

I caught fragments of conversation from the various escorts.

Nothing substantial, but enough to know the subject had moved from news to evidence.

Talk of medicines and final doses and healers and access led to silence the moment I was watching.

Which meant, inevitably, that the woman's supposed death was now up for reinterpretation.

I lowered my gaze to my hands.

If anything, I wish it had been enough to know what Averic thought.

But he was not here.

He was somewhere inside this palace with dead woman who had once believed, briefly, that she might have him for her own.

I turned my face toward the rising light.

Just before morning came, another runner appeared in the courtyard.

He was panting when he came to a halt beside Sennik.

This time the exchange was shorter.

The man said something rapidly and then looked toward me.

His gaze lingered longer than was altogether proper in deference to his betters.

My stomach twisted into knots with the look.

He turned toward the assembled group of escorts.

"The healers have finished with the initial examination of the body."

No one said anything.

The runner looked toward the body again.

"The final dose was tampered with, in the same manner as the previous ones.

The only name the woman asked for on her deathbed was the second mate's."

My breath caught in my lungs.

My gaze went toward the palace.

Maevra had asked for me before she'd died, that much was certain.

Except it could be twisted to mean almost anything.

Sennik's expression remained an unreadable mask.

The blood moon was dimming behind the rising light.

The test that should have revealed the final secret of Maevra Dain's death had not occurred.

The woman was dead.

Her final medicine had been altered and her last coherent request was for the woman currently seated on a stone bench outside the palace gates

My hand hovered over my stomach as if it could still be pulled away.

The first public blade had been quietly drawn.

Nothing was said, nothing outright accused.

But those surrounding me knew precisely where the council wanted their questions to begin.

And this time, the dead woman couldn't answer them.