Child of Flame (Crown of Stars #4)

“You have changed, Henri,” Alia replied, not with rancor but as a statement of fact. “You have become the ruler I thought you might become in time. I am not sorry that I chose you instead of one of the others.”

He rocked back on his heels as at a blow. Adelheid’s small but firm hand tightened on his. “What do you mean? Chose me instead of one of the others? What others?”

She seemed surprised by his outburst. “Is it not customary among humankind to be making alliances based on lineage, fertility, and possessions? Is this not what you yourself are doing, Henri?” She indicated Adelheid. “When first I am coming back to this world, many of your years ago, I go seeking the one whose name is known even to my people. That is the man you call Emperor Taillefer. But he is dead by the time I am walking on Earth, and he has left no male descendants. I cannot be making an alliance with a dead man. It is to the living I must look. I am walking far in search of the living. Of all the princes in these lands it is in the Wendish lineage I am seeing the most strength. Therefore I am thinking then that your lineage is the one I seek.”

Henry had color in his cheeks, the mark of anger, but his voice betrayed nothing of the irritation that sparked as he narrowed his eyes. “I seem to have misunderstood our liaison. I had thought it was one of mutual passion, and that you were gracious enough to swear that the child you and I got together was of my making as well as yours. So that the child would seal my right to rule as regnant after my father. Do I understand you instead to say that you had another purpose in mind? That you actively sought me or any young prince of a noble line and chose me over the others because of the strength of the kingdom I was meant to rule?”

“Is it different among you, when you contract alliances?” Alia seemed genuinely puzzled. “For an undertaking of great importance, are you not sealing bargains and binding allies who will be bringing the most benefit to your own cause?”

Henry laughed sharply. “Had you some undertaking in mind, Alia, when first you put yourself in my way in Darre? How well I recall that night!”

She gestured toward the garden, dark now except for the light of moon and stars. Inside, the stewards had gotten all the lamps lit. St. Thecla’s many figures on the tapestries shimmered in the golden light; her saint’s crowns had been woven with silver threads, and the lamplight made them glimmer like moonglow.

“What other undertaking than the making of the child? Was this not our understanding?”

“Truly, it was my understanding. I understood why I needed to get a child, even if the getting of the child came second to my passion for you. But never did I understand that you wanted a child as well.” He spoke bitterly. “You abandoned the two of us easily enough. What could you have wanted a child for if you were willing to walk away from him when he was still a suckling babe?”

She walked forward full into the light from the four dragon-headed lamps that hung from hooks in the ceiling to illuminate the center of the chamber. Despite her tunic, she could not look anything but outlandish, foreign, and wildly unlike humankind. “In him, my people and your people become one.”

“Become one?”

“If there is one standing between us who carries both my blood and yours, then there can be hope for peace.”

Fortunatus stirred beside Rosvita, and she pressed a hand to his wrist, willing him to remain silent while, around them, Henry’s attendants whispered to each other, puzzling over her words.

How could Alia’s people seek peace when they no longer lived on Earth, and perhaps no longer lived at all? Of all their fabled kind, Alia alone had walked among them once, some twenty-five years ago, and then vanished utterly, only to reappear now looking no older for the intervening years.

But the years had not left Henry unscarred. He pulled out a rust-colored scrap of cloth and displayed it with angry triumph. Alia recoiled with a pained look on her face, as if the sight of the scrap physically hurt her.

“I held this close to my heart for all these years as a reminder of the love I bore for you!” In those words Rosvita heard the young Henry who, coming into his power, had not always known what to do with it, and not the mature Henry of these days who never lost control. “You never loved me at all, did you?”

“No.” His outburst might have been foam flung against a sea wall for all the impact it had. “I made a vow before the council of my own people that I would sacrifice myself for this duty, to make a child who would be born with the blood of both our peoples.”

Finally, as if his voice had at last reached his ears, he schooled his expression to the haughty dignity worthy of the regnant. “For what purpose?”