All Chapters of The Second Shore: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

He was afraid of the silence, which had no edges to it.Afraid of waiting for an answer that was never going to come.Afraid of what his own hands told him every time he touched her.Rosalind watched the grief and the longing sitting openly on his face, and the jealousy came up so hot it nearly burned through what was left of her judgment.She drove her nails into her palms and used the pain to steady herself, and made her voice softer still, with a sob laid into it.“Your Majesty—you still have me. I'll be beside you always, the way I was when we were children. Look at me. Please, just look at me.”He gave no sign of having heard her at all.He spoke only to Lionel, who was standing to one side barely daring to breathe.“Keep looking. The empire is a large place and it's full of unusual people. I refuse to believe there isn't one of them who can bring her back.”Something caught in Lionel's throat.“...As Your Majesty commands,” he said, quietly.Rosalind sat down where she

“Enough.”Lucien cut across the hysteria. He didn't raise his voice. What was in it instead was a cold, final, exhausted certainty.He looked at her—at the face that had once been the thing he thought about when he couldn't sleep, the most beautiful thing he knew of in the world, and which was now pulled out of shape by jealousy and spite—and found it completely unfamiliar, and found himself unspeakably tired of it.“At this moment,” he said, giving her each word separately and clearly, “I do not want to look at you.”He didn't look at her again. He turned with the sword still in his hand and went out of Aurelia Palace at a stride.“Your Majesty! Where are you going? Lucien!” Rosalind's screaming followed him down the hall until the servants caught hold of her and held on.Lucien swung up onto the first horse brought to him. There was no time to assemble a proper escort and he didn't wait for one; he took a single detachment of the guard and went out through the gates like someth

The teacup in Lucien's hand stopped moving.“A daughter,” he repeated, slowly. There was nothing readable in his voice at all. Only the knuckles, which had gone white.“Yes, Your Majesty. I watched the house for several days. Mrs. Rivers keeps to herself and rarely goes out, but when she does go to the market, or takes the child out and brings her home again, the way she carries herself is—it's the bearing of the palace.” Corwin put his head lower and didn't finish.There was a small, dry crack.The fine white porcelain had split under his fingers. Hot tea ran out over his hand and reddened it, and he didn't appear to notice.“Investigate,” he said, and his voice had gone cold as ice. “The husband. How the two of them met. That child—when she was born. Everything, down to the smallest thing. I want all of it.”“Your Majesty.”Corwin withdrew, and the study went silent again except for the candles.Lucien sat where he was without moving, like something carved and left out in the

The south. Clearwater Town.The spring was at its best, and the willow down was coming down through the air like slow snow.On a corner of one of the streets there was a small book-and-art shop called Rivers & Ink. The front of it was plain enough, but inside it had been kept clean and quiet and rather lovely.At this hour a woman in a plain dress, her hair pinned up simply with a single wooden pin, was bending over an open book with her finger under a line of it, saying something gently to the little girl leaning against her knee.The child was two, perhaps three, her hair tied up in two small tufts, her cheeks pink, her round eyes following where her mother's finger went, sounding it out in a soft, milky little voice.“The... sun... is... up...”The woman's whole face was gentle, and there was a smile at the corner of her mouth. She stroked the child's hair lightly.“Clever girl, Lily.”The cloth curtain at the back of the shop lifted, and a man in a blue-gray gown came out—c

Her hand had just touched the curtain when his voice came from behind her—and it wasn't the cold weight of an emperor anymore. There was a tremor in it he couldn't keep out, and something in it close to begging.“Come back with me.” He said it low, and every word seemed to cost him everything he had. “I've missed you.”The hand on the curtain paused. It was barely perceptible.And it was only for a moment.The curtain swung, and she was gone through it, and her footsteps were light, and they went away from him.Lucien stood where he was, still holding out one hand, and his fingertips had gone cold.From the front of the shop her voice came back to him, warm and perfectly ordinary, speaking to Julian.“Is Lily asleep? I'll go and look at what's on the stove. Mind the shop for me.”“All right. Careful you don't burn yourself.”The most unremarkable exchange between a husband and a wife, and it went into him like a whole paper of needles, one after another after another.She had