Fire - Kristin Cashore [97]
IT WAS IN the coming days that Fire began to feel the lie in her words to Clara. It was true she was not jealous of Clara or Mila for anything they’d done with Archer. But she was not immune to the feeling of jealousy. Though she was brainstorming, plotting, planning with the royal siblings, her outward self focused on the details of the coming gala and the war, inside, in her moments of quiet, Fire was grievously distracted.
She imagined what it would be like if her own body were a garden of brown soil sheltering a seed. How she would warm that seed if it were hers, and feed it, and how ferociously she would protect it; how ferociously she would love that dot, even after it left her body, and grew away from her, and chose the way it would wield an enormous power.
When she became nauseated and fatigued, her breasts swollen and sore, she even began to think of herself as pregnant, even though she knew it was impossible. The pain was a joy to her. And then, of course, her bleeding came, and tore her pretending apart, and she knew it had only been the usual symptoms of her pre-bleeding time. And she found herself crying as bitterly to know she wasn’t pregnant as Mila had cried to know she was.
And her grief was frightening, because it had its own will. Her grief filled her mind with comforting, terrible ideas.
In the middle of December planning, Fire made a choice. She hoped she chose right.
ON THE VERY last day of December, which happened to be Hanna’s sixth birthday, Hanna appeared at Fire’s door, tattered and crying. Her mouth bled, and bleeding knees peeked through holes in both trouser legs.
Fire sent for a healer. When it was determined that Hanna was not crying over any injury to her body, Fire sent the healer away, knelt before the girl, and hugged her. She deciphered Hanna’s feelings and gasps as best she could. Finally she came to understand what had happened. The others had taunted Hanna about her father, because he was always away. They’d told Hanna that Brigan was forever leaving because he wanted to get away from her. Then they’d told her he wasn’t coming back this time. That was when she’d started hitting them.
In her gentlest voice and with her arms around the girl, Fire told Hanna over and over that Brigan loved her; that he hated to leave her; that the first thing he always did on his return was go find her; that indeed, she was his favourite topic of conversation, and his greatest happiness. ‘You wouldn’t lie to me,’ Hanna said to Fire, her sobs coming quiet. Which was true; and which was the reason Fire said nothing on the point of Brigan coming home this time. It seemed to her that to assure anyone Brigan was ever coming home was always to risk a lie. He’d been gone now nearly two months, and in the last week, no one had heard a word from him.
Fire gave Hanna a bath and dressed her in one of her own shirts that made a long-sleeved dress that Hanna found quite funny. She fed Hanna dinner, and then, still sniffling, the girl fell asleep in Fire’s bed. Fire sent word with one of her guards so that no one would be alarmed.
When Brigan’s consciousness appeared suddenly in her range, she took a moment to calm her own shaking relief. Then she sent him a message in his mind. He came to her rooms immediately, unshaven and smelling of the cold, and Fire had to stop herself from touching him. When she told him what the children had told Hanna, his face closed and he seemed very tired. He sat on the bed, touched Hanna’s hair, leaned down to kiss her forehead. Hanna woke up. She said, ‘You’re cold, Papa,’ crawled into his arms, and fell asleep again.
Brigan rearranged Hanna in his lap then, and looked over her head at Fire. And Fire was so struck by how much she liked having this grey-eyed prince on her bed with his child that she sat down, hard. Luckily there was a chair behind her.
‘Welkley tells me you’ve not been out of your rooms much this week, Lady,’ Brigan said. ‘I hope you’re not unwell.’
‘I was quite ill,’ Fire croaked, and then bit her tongue, because she hadn’t meant to tell him.