“Please, Alexandal,” Montague said, pointing outside. “We need some room.”
Alexandal went back by the entrance and looked on, biting his nails and shaking at the knees.
Beneath the queen, her blanket became soaked. There was a slow trickle running down her legs. She was in labor.
Five hours passed before Olivia gave her last push. The baby boy entered the world of Men, and a new king was born.
The baby’s skin was pale gray; his lips and eyes framed in a shade of blackened-blue. He wasn’t crying or breathing. Montague attempted to push tiny breaths of air into the baby’s lungs. But he remained lifeless.
Olivia’s life was slowly fading, too. She was clammy. And she lost blood faster than the handmaids’ cloths could stop the bleeding.
Montague noticed the maids’ reaction to the baby’s appearance. “A lack of oxygen,” he said, rubbing the limp baby’s back, hoping his comment would pass for an excuse to occupy their minds as a reason for why his skin was so strange.
He didn’t say anything about the baby being dead to Olivia. He couldn’t; not in her condition. He just wrapped the infant in a cloth and placed him in Olivia’s arms. Montague was sure that she didn’t realize that the baby wasn’t breathing. She couldn’t focus. “Our new king,” he said softly, an artificial smile blanketing his dejection. “What will you name him, my queen?”
Olivia’s eyes were fixed on the slit of the bivouac’s entrance. Drops were spattering on the desiccated ground. Montague couldn’t believe that after spending months in drought, the moment it began to rain was during the birth of the next Volpi.
Lightning crashed just above the hilltop.
“Rain,” she whispered, preparing a smile before the last breath escaped her body. Then Olivia became as lifeless as the infant seemed to be.
The queen was dead.
A great sadness brought Montague to his knees. The sorrow felt like it was consuming him.
Alexandal stormed out of the bivouac, scolding the guards. There was both devastation and fury in his tone.
Montague felt a black hole begin to vacuum every ounce of hope from his heart. He sat between two dead Volpis, shaking. Burton was wrong. I wasn’t strong enough, he thought. I have failed.
Lightning flashed again, a few yards away. Thunder rattled bones.
Suddenly, the baby boy began to scream louder than any new-born should. Montague felt the blood rush back to his face. The stranglehold on his hope was broken. The king of Ikarus, Rayne Volpi, lived.
Montague took the baby, making sure to wrap the cloth high enough to hide the baby’s gray skin. Exiting the bivouac, he held the infant up high. “Our king has arrived!”
Alexandal was stopped between his words with the guards and turned to Montague.
“Rayne Volpi!” Montague yelled. ‘Rayne’ had been Olivia’s uncle’s name, a great general of Illyrium.
Gretchen was crying next to Indrid and Anna while the guards cautiously cheered. She assigned a handmaid to stay with the children and raced over to Montague, taking the baby from his shaking grip and back inside the bivouac.
Montague couldn’t decipher the thoughts that were racing through his mind at the moment. He couldn’t even feel his emotions. How will the rest of the people of Ikarus react when they find out that their queen is dead? What will they do? And how will they feel about a future gray-skinned king? Montague kept his speculations to himself. He knew from this moment on, things were going to get very difficult for him. It seemed as though his true test was yet to come. Not only did he have to worry about preparing for the Nekrums’ next move, he had to play politics in defense of the strange and helpless child.
Montague confronted one of the guards. “What happened?” His voice stammered.
“My lord…I…I don’t know what happened.” The guard stood at attention and kept glancing over at his companion. “We both heard something strange last night. We went to see what it was, but we don’t remember what happened after that. We woke up, but we never went to sleep.”
“What do you mean you never went to sleep?” Montague asked.
“I mean, we don’t remember going to sleep. Please, my lord, we beg for your forgiveness.” They were looking downward, still embarrassed by Alexandal’s scorning.
Montague found Alexandal sitting on a rock under the large redwood, cleaning a bottle of wine. “I know who did this,” Montague said, kneeling next to him. “It was them. The symbols on Olivia’s belly were of ancient language and the only ones who religiously study it are Demitri and his people.”
“Why?” Alexandal asked. His eyes were glazed. “Why would they do all of this? Why not just kill us?”
Montague refused to say what he really thought. Now was not the time. But he knew that the Nekrums needed a live Volpi to extract the blood; that was what the mage was after. At least he thought so. “We are on unclaimed territory; we’d better make our way back before we are ambushed again.” Montague avoided the question because he didn’t know the answer. He blamed himself for what had happened and felt ashamed that he’d failed to protect Olivia, the young girl he’d cared for like the daughter he never had.
The small army wrapped the queen’s body in blankets and carried her in a large trunk sprinkled with flower petals that stored the royal clothes and supplies.
Alexandal walked with the reins of his steed in one hand and a half-full bottle of wine in the other. He spoke loudly and clumsily, telling stories about the plans he and Olivia had for the future. He was like a dog that had lost its home.
While Alexandal went on, Montague heard a crackling in the trees to his left. A mysterious woman peeked in and out of the brush, stamping through leaves and twigs.
“My lord! There! That is the woman we saw!” one of the guards shouted and pointed at the dark shape dancing between the elm trunks. “I remember her. I remember seeing
