All Chapters of Carrying His Claim: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

We named her that evening, candlelight burning low beside the bed once Dessa had cleared the dinner tray and the household had settled, as much as it could, into its first full night since the battle. Both of us had finally found enough steadiness, after a day spent simply absorbing the shape of everything that had happened, to give the task the attention it deserved. We'd spent the afternoon receiving careful, quiet visits from Gideon, Ottilie, and a handful of others, each pausing at the threshold as though stepping into something sacred, and by the time evening finally settled, I found myself grateful for the stillness that came when the visits ended.Kieran had settled carefully onto the edge of the bed beside me, his bandaged arm held close, his eyes fixed on the small, sleeping bundle I still hadn't quite believed was real, even now, a full day into her life. He hadn't said much for a while, simply watched her with an expression I'd never once seen him wear before, something und

I found Selene in the healer's wing that afternoon, still recovering though well enough now to sit upright against her pillows, a book open in her lap she clearly wasn't reading. A folded letter sat on the small table beside her bed, and I understood, before she said anything, exactly whose handwriting had addressed it."Lucan," she said, following my gaze, something careful entering her voice. "He heard about the battle. About Wren. He wanted to offer his condolences, and his congratulations, both at once, I suppose.""That's kind of him.""It is." She said it a beat too quickly, and I noticed, watching her, that her hand had drifted to rest against the letter without her seeming to realize she'd done it, fingers pressing flat against the folded paper in a gesture that looked less like affection and more like something closer to bracing.I settled into the chair beside her bed, Wren sleeping against my shoulder, and studied Selene more carefully than I usually allowed myself to, reme

Three weeks had passed since the war council where Selene stood before the full Council and released Kieran from the betrothal her father had demanded he honor, and in all that time, Aldric Thorne had not written a single word. I counted the days without quite meaning to, the same way I suspected Selene did, each uneventful post arriving without his name on any of it.I understood the significance of that silence slowly, the way I understood most things these days, piece by accumulated piece rather than all at once. Selene mentioned it only once, in passing, early on, a brief, careful observation that she hadn't yet heard from her father about the battle, about Wren's birth, about anything at all. She hadn't mentioned it since, and I understood, watching her over the following weeks, that the absence of mention didn't mean the absence of weight.I found her in the library one evening, the same chair by the fire, a letter spread open in her lap that I recognized, from its careful, fami

I kept it in a small wooden box on the shelf above my desk, wrapped in a scrap of linen, like something you'd wrap if you feared it would crumble if you looked at it too directly. When I carried it back to Kieran's study, I found Gideon already there, summoned at Kieran's request, standing near the window with his arms folded and an expression of patient, wary attention."I should say first that I may be wrong about all of this," I said, setting the box on the desk between them. "I've told myself that more times than I can count these past weeks. I'd rather you both hold that thought while you look."Neither of them argued. I unwrapped the linen slowly, and the fragment lay there on the dark wood, small and brittle and blackened at its edges, the half-legible ink near its center looking, in the plain afternoon light, even more fragile than I remembered.*...ucan says I must act before it's too late, before...*Gideon leaned over it first, and I watched his face go very still. Kieran t

Wren woke before dawn, as she did most mornings now, with a thin, insistent cry that had nothing to do with hunger and everything to do with the simple outrage of existing in the dark. I lifted her from the cradle and carried her to the window, swaying and murmuring nonsense; when the cry wouldn't settle, I wrapped us both in a shawl and took her out into the cold.The covered cloister along the compound's eastern side had become our habit on mornings like this. Its stone arches blocked the wind, and the slow gray light that filtered in from the stable yard had a way of calming her faster than any song I knew. I walked it slowly, one slow circuit, then another, Wren's cries dwindling into hiccuping sighs against my collarbone.I was nearly to the end of the third circuit when I heard voices from the stable yard, low and close, carried up the stone as easily as if they'd been spoken in the next room."I asked you for so little, Selene."I stopped walking.Lucan's voice, gentle and wear