“My lord, there are traitors to Pry-Ree lurking everywhere, some even in your own household. You should not have risked riding alone, even a short distance. Your enemies seek to ambush you.”
“How fares my lady?” the Prince repeated, striding towards the keep.
“My lord, a moment first.” There was a firm tug at his sleeve.
“What is it?”
“My lord,” the voice was full of pain. “The birthing was early, but she did well. She was healthy yesterday. Her cheeks full of color. She was anxious to greet you with your daughter. But my lord, during the night, she fell sick. A raving fever has taken her. The milk fever. The Aldermaston has laid hand on her, but she will not recover. There is no Gift of Healing to be given. She is so weak, my lord. Every moment we fear is her last, but she strains to stay alive. To see you.” The steward’s lip quivered. “My lord, I am so sorry. She awaits you in your bedchamber.”
The Prince had prepared his heart for this. But even then, when the hour was come, he shrank from it. The pain of losing her sent shards of agony piercing him like arrows. His vision blurred with the rush of tears, but he shook his head and stumbled forward, dizzy with the news. His temples throbbed with thunder. A cleft had opened up inside him, gaping and savage. Nothing could have prepared him for that moment. The weight of it amazed him.
He took the tower stairs, rushing past servants until he shoved his way into the bedchamber, dark with shutters and curtains, only sputtering torchlight to see. The smell of the room was death and blood. The midwife was there, her face ashen when the Prince entered. She fell to her knees, sobbing.
The Prince walked past her, touching the crown of her head tenderly, patting her hair. Then he knelt by the bedside and gazed at the colorless face of his wife, her skin glistening with sweat. Her fevered lips were panting.
The urge to heal her was so strong, he nearly could not control himself. She was alive, barely. She clung to the threads. Beneath the coverlets, she only wore her chaen. Her sweat-soaked chaen. It was torture seeing her ravaged by the fever. A word of rebuke and the fever would depart. By raising his hand to the maston sign, he could preserve her life.
But the Medium forbade it. He knew what he wanted to do, yet he also knew what he was meant to do. He leaned down and kissed her forehead.
Elle’s eyes fluttered open. “You…came.”
His throat was too tight to speak. Her hair was listless, the color draining from it. He took her frail hand in his and kissed it. “I will not leave you,” he whispered huskily.
“She is…so beautiful. Our child.”
“From her mother,” the Prince said. He smoothed the clumps of hair from her forehead.
Her eyelids were shutting. “It is time. I waited…for you…long as I could.”
“Thank you. I love you, dearest. I love you, my heart.”
“I see it,” she whispered, her eyes shutting. “I see…the Veil…I see…”
His throat constricted and he stifled the moan before it escaped his lips. He kissed her hands, her eyelids. Like water seeping through his fingers, she left him. Her body remained, enshrined in the coverlets and blankets, sheathed in a blood-flecked chaen. But with his other eyes, he saw her, radiant and beautiful, rising from the bed. Tears coursed down his cheeks and he shuddered as she laid a ghost-like hand on his head. With her other hand raised in the maston sign, he heard her ethereal words.
I Gift you, Alluwyn Lleu-Iselin, with the Gift of Death. That you will not suffer fear. That you will not suffer pain. That you will feel nothing but the joy of having served the Medium faithfully. I will wait for you, my love, in the kingdoms of Idumea. Join me there, with my father and mother. With all our ancestors who have gone before. While the Abbeys still stand.
There was a tug as the Medium drew her away. In his mind’s eye, he could see her go, a shaft of light that winked and was gone, passing the Apse Veil into a better world.
“My lord,” Davtian said, his voice choking. “Do you wish to be alone with her? Shall we depart?”
The Prince rose shakily to his feet, using the bedstead to brace himself. “Where is my daughter? Where is Ellowyn?”
The midwife stared at him, her face ravaged with grief. “My lord, I beg your forgiveness. I did my best. There was no one sick in the chamber. I swear it!”
He looked at her with sympathy. “I do not blame you. Thank you for bringing my child safely into this second life. Where is she?”
“With the wetnurse, Myrrha.”
“Thank you.” His heart shuddered with dread. Myrrha was a hetaera.